musician aquarius r2r dac any good?

@anzaanimalclinic You put word into my mouth! I would never compared the Aquarius to the Terminator. They are belonging to a different leagues. The Aquarius can only be compared to lower tier of Denafriqs DAC.

Having said that, have you ever heard the Terminator and the Aquarius in person?

Having said that, have you ever heard the Terminator and the Aquarius in person?

Always the most pertinent question.

Charles

I just recently replaced my Qutest because I felt it was bright on extended listening sessions. I now have a Musician Pegasus and find it to be just the improvement I was looking for. I know it was not expensive but it's a great sounding r2r dac.

My system consists of the following.

Rogue Audio RP-7 preamp

Parasound JC1 monoblocks 

Focal Kanta 2 speakers 

Optical Rendue streamer, Antipodes Server.

@dubz thanks for the infor! how do you describe the sound of the Pegasus?

I have the Musician Aquarius and it has a beautiful smooth sweet sound. I don’t have experience with other dacs to compare it to. I bought it based on the recommendation of Sandu Vitalie of Soundnews. Later Sandu Vitalie’s top recommendation was the Terminator Plus, although his Cons list is interesting:

• Not the most detailed sounding unit in its stock form
• Not the fastest sounding unit in its stock form
• If you want to squeeze the absolute best out of it, Denafrips GAIA is a must-have upgrade

Three things irritating in the daily usage of the Aquarius:

1- It has no remote.

2- The led lights are the size of pinheads making them impractically small to see in daylight.

3- The last issue is probably specific to my streamer. I have an ifi streamer connected to the dac through USB. When I power up my system Tidal detects the ifi streamer, but when I press play there is no sound. I have to restart the Aquarius, press play again then I get sound. This happens every time.

I bought the Aquarius new because I was in a hurry and didn’t want the Pontus. If I could do this all over again, I would go for a used Terminator Plus or a used Aqua La Scala MKII Optologic even though I would pay about 2k more. It is worth it the dac is the heart of the system.