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

Thanks again David. Of course, it has to be an intermittent problem. The most difficult to resolve. Might not happen again for another week, might happen twice tonight. Very difficult to troubleshoot unless you can monitor 24 seven for days if not weeks.

When I bought it, the new board had just gone up for sale, I asked Alvin about it prior to purchase and he said mine would ship with the latest. I was not aware that there were three boards as you said. Any approximate timeline on when the second came out?

Going off memory here, so I'm not a hundred percent certain....

The original (first board) when the Terminator was initially released.

The second board approximately one year (~ a year +) ago.

Latest board was released about 1 month ago? or so .... it is pretty much the same in terms of upsampling.
the "artifacts" you are experiencing, are you by any chance using HQPlayer or the upsampling capabilities within Roon?

New D/D converters. 
I am toying with the idea of purchasing a GAIA to pair with my Terminator. (Have some other issues to resolve with the Terminator  first, see above posts).


Looking at the Terminator’s block diagram it appears the signal from I2S inputs (coming from the GAIA) is buffered and reclocked again by the Terminators FIFO. Is this correct? Am I reading the diagram correctly?

If so, it seems that most, if not all, the magic of the $2000-ish GAIA’s OCXO clock is for naught if the DAC is basically going to buffer the “perfectly” timed  bits then assign its own timing through a “lesser clock” before sending them on their way.

I’ve seen some anecdotal proclamations that it sounds wonderful. Doesn’t seem to jive with the science. I’m fairly new to all this so please educate me. With the science part preferably. Opinions and individual experiences are valuable, but not what I’m after here.

are you by any chance using HQPlayer or the upsampling

capabilities within Roon?

I am streaming mostly through Qubus and Tidal. A few downloads also.  I’ve been experimenting a lot with up sampling through Roon, sometimes I use it and sometimes I don’t. I have not been paying enough attention to make the connection between upsampling and the hiss. It is so random and intermittent that it will take me a while to check these things.