musician aquarius r2r dac any good?

@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?

I have to say, problem #3 is probably specific to certain equipment. Why not work with iFi and Musician to see if there is a fix? Plus, if I’m hearing you right, the solution is simply turn the Aquarius off and on and then it works. Is that really so hard? While the Terminator Plus May be a bit better (soundnews.net rated the Terminator a 94 and the Aquarius  93) it’s a MUCH more expensive unit, and even more so if you need to add the Gaia. While I’d love to have a Terminator Plus too, for the price difference I think I could live with turning the Aquarius off and on, and that’s IF this is an issue with other equipment at all and IF that issue can’t be fixed with firmware update, etc.). Just some thoughts/perspective FWIW.

@soix

While I’d love to have a Terminator Plus too, for the price difference I think I could live with turning the Aquarius off and on, and that’s IF this is an issue with other equipment at all. Just some thoughts/perspective FWIW

100% Agreed.