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

Alvin from Vinshine Audio is THE man! I purchased the Denafrips ARES II DAC earlier this year when it was on back order and Alvin communicated every week or so with an update on the production status and estimated shipping dates. It arrived professional packed (double boxed) in bullet proof foam enclosure.

Hooked it up to my Mac mini and it played straight away with no setup and just kept sounding better and better as it burned in. Definitely as advertised...very analogue sounding DAC. I also have a Benchmark DAC1 Pre USB as my reference which is a very neutral DAC so it was easy to hear the difference in my setup.

I switched it over to another system that used Windows 10 and could not get the USB input to play. I thought maybe the unit was defective, but it was ultimately user error :) Alvin took the time to walk me step by step and trouble shoot over the course of a few days via email until it was working perfect again. Not only did he help, but he taught me a bunch of things along the way with some articles he shared.

For the price and sound of this DAC and the support from Alvin at Vinshine there is no doubt this is the BEST VALUE in hifi audio. If you are on the fence, do not hesitate to do business with Alvin and try out the Denafrips brand. Was a five star white glove experience from start to finish!

Wow, looks like I set off a mini-storm above with my Roon settings.  

1. With the Terminator, you get options with DSD or PCM, both of which sound excellent in my system.  I had a pure, PCM-only ladder DAC, which I really enjoyed (Yggy Analog 2 and others), but I wanted options and even better sound quality- that is why I bought the Terminator.

2. Ultimate sound quality for the dollar is the raison d' etre of the Terminator IMHO.

3. The DSD section was not added to the Terminator as some after thought like a display dimmer setting.  

4. The argument above about wasting money if one is using the DSD- section, I can make the same argument to you...  why did you "waste" your money on the Terminator, which has a DSD section you also paid for, but are not using?  Using your logic, go buy a PCM only ladder DAC and save your dollars.  I don't view DAC's as commodities so I don't personally agree with this logic but I have no problems if others view things that way.  

5. I didn't say oversampled DSD with the settings I listed is the ultimate or that I exclusively use DSD, or that my settings can beat up your preferred settings.  I listen to PCM and oversampled DSD on my Terminator and enjoy both (I don't have any DSD music files). 

Enjoy and remember, we Denafrips owners are all on the same team.  This is just a hobby and we like what we like.

I’ve been listening several nights now while changing formats both upsampling and native. I haven’t been able to get the distortion to appear. Guess I’ll just enjoy the music for now and see what happens.

I’m with the others on the DSD vs PCM. PCM is why R2R exists. As I said in a prior post, I prefer it to both native and upsampled DSD. I may actually prefer native DSD “downsampled” to PCM. Not sure if that is a hit on the DACs Sigma Delta/FPGA or a compliment to its R2R. Most likely it’s the R2R is that good. None the less, I still tend to listen to DSD in native format for “fear of missing out“.

There is a caveat to my preference that I mentioned in a prior post. The level changes dramatically when I shift between DSD and PCM. DSD being much softer. I do try to adjust for this using the volume control, but it does make a direct comparison difficult. Is there a setting in Roon that can help equalize the difference so I can get better results?

As for upsampling in roon vs over sampling through the DAC I find myself slightly gravitating to leaving oversampling to the DAC. It’s a close call. I also experimented with using both simultaneously—the thought being to share the load so neither is working as hard. However, oversampling twice equals two sets of filtering which bothers me so I only use one or the other.

Curious, Anyone know what rate the Terminator oversamples to? Is it a multiple of the source? Knowing may help me help me with some more trials.

On another subject. Even though clocking and buffering before the dac, only for the dac to redo it all, makes absolutely no sense to me, new GAIA on the way.  

new here

heard the terminator

nice sound but definitely in the brighter/less weight camp