DENAFRIPS DAC ---- Owner Impressions, Feedback, General Discussion, Questions and more....

The dry run of the demo was a successful and fun event for everyone involved.  The process I had planned on went without a hitch, the feedback was plentiful and helpful, the food was good, the music was great, and the company was even better.  What I got out of the meeting were:

- All four models have a similar Denafrips "house sound" that was enjoyed by all
- Even though it was a blind test (none in the audience knew which model was playing until the end when they have already formed and written down their opinion), the results were as expected, with one (explainable) exception - everyone picked the Terminator as their favorite and the models' performances were commensurate with their price points, except the Venus, which sounded a little constricted (less open-sounding).  That is probably due to the fact that the Venus had the least number of hours of break-in as compared to the other models (I have had the Terminator for almost 2 months and the Ares and Pontus were review samples).  So the Venus needs some more break-in time before AXPONA.
- For the demo at AXPONA, a pairwise comparison between the Terminator and whichever model has the most interest from the audience - e.g., its price point is right - playing the same musical passages in quick successions would be best to show their respective performances.
- The system sounded right with all genres of music and is primed to show off well at the show.

Thanks to all participants, who came from NJ, NY, PA, and MD (whose representative drove 3 hours each way to attend the event, thank you Richard).   AXPONA here we come!
Vinh Vu
Gingko Audio and Danacable

@bube   Congratulations on a successful demo and test for the upcoming Axpona show. 

If any of the participants are active on Audiogon, it would be great hearing their takes on the demonstration event Vinh organized.

Along with Al, Doug, Rich, Rick, and of course, Vinh, I also attended yesterday's DENAFRIPS demo.

Vinh did an excellent job laying out how everything went.  The cameraderie was fantastic, and I enjoyed one of the best audio get togethers in a long while.  It felt like we were all longtime friends.   I'll add a few things, and surely will some of the others.  Maybe I'm wrong, and will get corrected here, but it seemed like we didn't diverge much, if at all, in our opinions.  Quite the surprise, as unanimity happens rarely in this hobby.

As Vinh mentioned, the overriding theme became the excellent DENAFRIPS house sound.  Outside of one outlier, the Venus, due to less break in than the other three, I found the distance between the Ares, Pontus, and Terminator far less than what anyone, myself included, would have thought.  Especially, in light of Dana's previous comments.   Moving up each rung brought a subtle but discernible improvement in clarity, separation, refinement, and weight.  What's a bit difficult for me to understand and explain is how small that difference was in light of everyone agreeing on the ultimate ranking.   Really, what separates the $760 Ares from the $5000 Terminator requires effort from the listener (or, at least, me) to come to.  That said, does the product line make more sense with three offerings instead of four?

Later, we also spent a bit of time with the Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ and a non-oversampling Metrum model from less than a decade ago.   The latter saw itself easily outclassed by the rest of yesterday's participants, and having served as a more than adequate component during the time it was offered, shows how much the past decade has benefited digital music reproduction.   The Mytek presented real competition for the products we listened to yesterday.  I didn't pay deep enough attention to it, and we didn't A / B with the DENAFRIPS offerings while I was there to accurately rate it, but it surely held its own.  The preamplifier, phono, filter options, and American assembly only add to its appeal.

As some have brought up, DENAFRIPS success in the North American market will reflect it investing in building the requisite infrastructure or not.

In the end, I feel a bit unsure about where to recommend a person getting in.  The Ares is a straight up no brainer.  For me, the question becomes, does it make more sense for one wanting to spend more to get more to consider one of the middle units, or step all the way up to the Terminator?

Look out AXPONA show goers, you're in for a real treat in Vinh's room!

I too ( the attendee from MD) attended the very enjoyable session at Vinh's  this past weekend, and first want to thank Vinh for his gracious hosting of this get together and effectively managing the setup and flow of the afternoon.  And for me it was also (in agreement with trelja above) a most congenial and collegial group and we surprised me with our high level of agreement/analysis on the afternoon's activity and outcomes.

Vinh set things up so that the process was experimentally "blind" to the  rest of us.  We did not know which models we were hearing/comparing and we , not Vinh, were the ones that chose the units to be used in the pairings (and that was done in a random fashion with us drawing numbered beans from a bowl and not knowing which bean represented which Denafrips model).  And for the most part we didn't reveal our impressions to each other until the end of the "test" sessions. We were of course, at some level of consciousness, aware of the in vivo reactions of each other as the session progressed.   

At the end of the "testing" , through discussion we each revealed our personal focus as to what makes a component/system sound "good", and despite the usual differences in these factors, we pretty much agreed on the degree to which the Denafrips models contributed to our preferences.  Bube (Vinh) and Joe (trelja) have described that above.  As Joe stated, it was a very unusual occurrence that several 'audiophiles' unanimously agreed on the afternoon's results!!

The Denafrips models have much to offer our community and I hope many of you will have the opportunity to drop by the Gingko room (Rm 1524) at AXPONA to hear them.  I will have the privilege of being there to help Vinh present.

Rich 

Hi Vinh @bube 

A friend alerted me to this thread. Very interesting methodology and findings. I am going to be at AXPONA. How do I make sure to engage with the demo there? Did I read you were doing one every hour? Or is there a "special" session that has to be signed up for ahead of time?

Please advise!