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!
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!