A couple more thoughts:
Last year I drove a couple of hours to hear an over $300,000 system featuring very high end costly speakers. The DAC in this system was the 4 box dCS Vivaldi system (priced at $108,000 in 2014 by Stereophile Magazine).
Not only was the sound of this system very digital, it actually was painful for me to listen to.
The demo was held in a high end store, in their best acoustically treated room and the speakers were set up by none other than the designer/manufacturer himself. So the sound could not be attributed to room anomalies or improper speaker placement. Nor could it be attributed to faulty source material. In the course of the hour long demo the first minute of many many CDs were played and they all demonstrated that harsh digital quality that I find objectionable.
It was something in the system itself that was the ''digital'' culprit.
There were approximately 35 of us listening to that demo and I am of the opinion that no one was very impressed, because at the end of the demo, there was only silence. And when the speaker designer/manufacturer asked for comments or questions, no one said a word.
I was very glad when I arrived home, fired up my system and listened to what I consider to be very a musical and analogue presentation.
And this was before I had the Terminator and I was still using the AMR DP 777 SE.
Of course, I could never do a comparison in my system between the Terminator and a DAC that costs $100,000. I don't have that kind of money. Hell, I couldn't do one with DACs costing $10,000 or $15,000 dollars. My limit was the AMR which cost $4995.
But lack of direct comparison notwithstanding, the fact is that I could not stand the sound of that very costly system and, if I hadn't felt it too impolite, I would have left after 10 minutes of it.
Of course I cannot single out the Vivaldi as the culprit... but it was an integral part of a system that, in my opinion, sounded awful.
I guess the real point, however, is this:
That demo confirmed something that I firmly believed... price is NO guarantee of quality. It is possible to have high-end sound without paying high-end prices.
And the Denafrips Terminator is a good example of this... because its sound is indeed very high-end.
Last thing:
If you use Facebook there is a Denafrips thread with 437 members that has been in progress for quite awhile. On it Alvin Chee of Vinshine (the Denafrips distributor in Singapore) today has posted a review of the Terminator by written jtl@hendy. The review is entitled ''Terminator-an End or a Start?''
The reviewer says that he has had a number of different DACs in his system. Amongst them he mentions are Meitner DAC 6 $10,000) and the La Scala.
Most germane to this thread however is that his latest DAC prior to the Terminator is a Holo Springs.... which he was very impressed with.
However, If you are interested in seeing how he compares the Terminator to the Holo Springs, just go onto Facebook and type Denafrips Audiophile Owners in the search field.
My system:
MacMini running either Pure Music or Audirvana 3.0 > Denafrips Terminator via USB > Crayon CFA 1.2 > Spatial Audio M4 Triode Master speakers.
When I went to hear the demo, I did not have either the Terminator nor the Triode Masters. At that time I was running the AMR DP 777 SE and Spatial Audio M4 Turbo S.
Both the Terminator and the Triode Masters have brought significant improvement to my system.
Last year I drove a couple of hours to hear an over $300,000 system featuring very high end costly speakers. The DAC in this system was the 4 box dCS Vivaldi system (priced at $108,000 in 2014 by Stereophile Magazine).
Not only was the sound of this system very digital, it actually was painful for me to listen to.
The demo was held in a high end store, in their best acoustically treated room and the speakers were set up by none other than the designer/manufacturer himself. So the sound could not be attributed to room anomalies or improper speaker placement. Nor could it be attributed to faulty source material. In the course of the hour long demo the first minute of many many CDs were played and they all demonstrated that harsh digital quality that I find objectionable.
It was something in the system itself that was the ''digital'' culprit.
There were approximately 35 of us listening to that demo and I am of the opinion that no one was very impressed, because at the end of the demo, there was only silence. And when the speaker designer/manufacturer asked for comments or questions, no one said a word.
I was very glad when I arrived home, fired up my system and listened to what I consider to be very a musical and analogue presentation.
And this was before I had the Terminator and I was still using the AMR DP 777 SE.
Of course, I could never do a comparison in my system between the Terminator and a DAC that costs $100,000. I don't have that kind of money. Hell, I couldn't do one with DACs costing $10,000 or $15,000 dollars. My limit was the AMR which cost $4995.
But lack of direct comparison notwithstanding, the fact is that I could not stand the sound of that very costly system and, if I hadn't felt it too impolite, I would have left after 10 minutes of it.
Of course I cannot single out the Vivaldi as the culprit... but it was an integral part of a system that, in my opinion, sounded awful.
I guess the real point, however, is this:
That demo confirmed something that I firmly believed... price is NO guarantee of quality. It is possible to have high-end sound without paying high-end prices.
And the Denafrips Terminator is a good example of this... because its sound is indeed very high-end.
Last thing:
If you use Facebook there is a Denafrips thread with 437 members that has been in progress for quite awhile. On it Alvin Chee of Vinshine (the Denafrips distributor in Singapore) today has posted a review of the Terminator by written jtl@hendy. The review is entitled ''Terminator-an End or a Start?''
The reviewer says that he has had a number of different DACs in his system. Amongst them he mentions are Meitner DAC 6 $10,000) and the La Scala.
Most germane to this thread however is that his latest DAC prior to the Terminator is a Holo Springs.... which he was very impressed with.
However, If you are interested in seeing how he compares the Terminator to the Holo Springs, just go onto Facebook and type Denafrips Audiophile Owners in the search field.
My system:
MacMini running either Pure Music or Audirvana 3.0 > Denafrips Terminator via USB > Crayon CFA 1.2 > Spatial Audio M4 Triode Master speakers.
When I went to hear the demo, I did not have either the Terminator nor the Triode Masters. At that time I was running the AMR DP 777 SE and Spatial Audio M4 Turbo S.
Both the Terminator and the Triode Masters have brought significant improvement to my system.