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Questions to Denafrips Terminator Plus owners (the break-in)

I just registered to this forum as I saw a number of people using this dac, so I might receive some useful feedback from you guys.

I have just received it a few days ago and it only has less than 48 hours in my system (playing random songs and pink noise). From my research, this dac takes a long time to fully break in and it is recommended to be left on (standby or otherwise) 24/7.

Well, those are fine... but I’d like to ask how it sounds during the break-in? Now, still breaking in, I really don’t like the sound. the Terminator Plus replaces my Ayre QB9 Twenty, and whilst I can hear some more details with the TP, the sound in general, especially vocal is not pleasing at all... full of sibilant and mid-high irritation! I can’t believe this is the sound from R2R dac (which is generally known to be liquid and warm).
So for anyone who also have (or had) this dac, how was it in your system during break in? Would it be better after 200-ish hour mark? For now, I’m so disappointed with its sonic performance.

FYI, I’m using USB and I know that best practice is to use Denafrips’ DDC (e.g. Gaia / Hermes) to feed I2S, but I don’t believe the dac requires that DDC to sound "acceptable". My source is Aurender streamer which should at least send out acceptable quality USB signal, of course, currently my old dac sounds way, way better!

Thanks
tortor
vonhelmholtz
911 posts
 

Looks likes OP registered one very negative review and rode off into the sunset.

christianb5s4
233 posts
 

I've had mine now for about two months. I found that after a week of use and leaving it on 24/7, it smoothed out a fair amount. That was the most significant change in my opinion, after that it was consistent. And the improvement over the Venus 2 it replaced was very noticeable from day one.

tortor OP
1 posts
 

@vonhelmholtz No mate, I’m still around! Actually it has been several months since I started this thread, and I made quite a lot of changes (more like additions) to the system. Now I believe I tuned it to my liking.

 

As of now, I still have the T+, and these are the changes:

- Adding the Hermes

- Getting 2X Synergistic Research’s Atmosphere X BNC cables to sync the clock with the T+

- Adding an I2S cable - Tubulus Concentus which sounds so so good

- Replacing power cords from wall to isolation transformer, and from isolation transformer to the Hermes DDC, to ones with more agreeable tonality.

- Lastly, adding HifiStay isolation to my streamer / network switch / amplifier / DAC (shown in pic below). I couldn’t believe isolation feet would make such a big difference.

All these costed me around 6 grand but the system now sounds much more to my taste.

 

EDIT to add that... of course, even without all those changes, putting 200+ hours on it helped smoothen the tonality quite a bit, and two components that made biggest changes are power cord to the DDC and isolation feet to the DAC.

vonhelmholtz
911 posts
 

Good to hear all turned out to your liking, but this audio thing is sure a money pit.

christianb5s4
233 posts
 

@vonhelmholtz The good thing is that if you are smart in selecting components, you don’t have to worry about spending more because you’ll be content with the system and not feel the need to change things.

 

There's also a significant point of diminishing returns for an exponential increase in cost. I think for most, a well done but not crazy expensive system that gives you 90% of what a much more costly one would provide is something you could happily live with and not feel like you're missing out.

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