musician aquarius r2r dac any good?

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.

@tjag I have no issue with your problem 1 & 2. But #3 does worry me though. I do not know how the DAC will interact with my transport (window 10 machine).

My question is: why do you pick the terminator over the Aquarius if the terminator will be the slower DAC?