Denefrips Pontus "burn in" period?

Yea give it every chance and THEN kill it..

I know nothing about that unit but some of the fancy rigs have teflon caps and silver clad wire/PTFE. All of that stuff can drive you nuts trying to get it Broken in. 

I've never been real to up date on DACs but gear in general, usually, the better the gear, the longer the break-in.  Especially big high voltage boutique caps. 500-1000 hours.. Cables that aren't at least, conditioned take a while to break in too. Copper with silver clad.  Copper plug, drop and walk.. All that can make a difference. 

Then there is the chance it's a pile.. I can make Yoko Ono sound like Barbra Streisand with my rig.

What you don't want is Barbra Streisand sounding like Yoko Ono.

As you may know Alvin ships his DACs with 100 hours of burn in. This is a very cool thing. Not many makers do that. Now when orders back up could the 100 hours turn out to be 5 hours?

I bought the same DAC in December. I was traveling for the holidays 

so I loaned to a buddy to get some hours on it. 

 The instructions advise against turning it completely off.

Rather use the standby mode.

It it does not sound better than the the bluesound something  is very

wrong. Contact CS at Denafrips and let them review setup with you.

If it is defective there is a warranty. Use it.

op did not mention his speakers - he may well not have a system resolving enough to hear a meaningful difference

the pontus is very good, especially in terms of portraying an expansive soundstage and excellent tonality notable in its warmth and body -- though treble may have a touch of grain, even with an excellent source signal

I had that exact amplification chain of RP1 and ST100 and compared 3 DACs - Qutest, Brooklyn DAC 2 and Bryston BDA3. The new DACs Qutest and Brooklyn 2 took around 200 hours to sound their best (closed in, murky and confused before they settled). I ended up with the Qutest.
But I digress…the point is the Rogue set up is more than resolving enough to highlight the differences between the DACs. Are your speakers up to the task though?
Give the Pontus 200hrs of run time. If no improvement then it is what it is. 
Few more things to take into consideration…

1. The best power cords should be on your source components (DAC, preamp)

2. BJC cables are decent but they’re not great. Something to consider as a potential area for improvement. They should still allow you to hear the difference. 

Put on your parachute. DACs don't need a warm-up or "burn-in". Stop listening to the uninformed and delusional! Mechanical things need a bit of "run-in" time - but not electronics.