musician aquarius r2r dac any good?


I am about to pull the trigger on Musician Aquarius r2r dac. I would like to know if it is any good comparing to other DAC around 3k-5k USD? Please share your opinion, it will be highly appreciated!!

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Pontus II + Hermes DDC with OCXO clock is in your price range. I’ve shared my thoughts in another recent thread, so I won’t go off about it here, but the combination, in my system, is far greater than the Pontus II alone and the price is still not that high. It makes the Pontus II alone sound comparatively unfocused and unappealing to me.

Side note of interest: according to some online data I found, OCXO (in the Hermes reclocker) is approx 50-100 times more frequency stable than TCXO technology (in the Iris reclocker). I’m not suggesting that the Hermes clock replaces the duty of the Femto clock in the Pontus II, but my opinion is that it adds magic and the premium for using both devices is certainly worth it, at least in my system.

@anzaanimalclinic Ah crap — thank you for the correction.  My bad.  Prices now look like $6405 and $1772, respectively.  Still, it’s more than double the price of the Aquarius so the principle holds.  A much more apt comparison would be with the Venus ll. 

On second thought, I left out some pertinent info about my Pontus II + Hermes setup that's needed to make more sense of it.  I'm not using USB. I'm using AES/EBU from a streamer and the I²S connection between the Hermes and Pontus II.

@gladmo The Pontus ii is very comparable to my current Hugo2, so for me it is more like a side way move rather than moving up the DAC ladder. In case you dont know, I am planning to use a DDC with my new Aquarius DAC, maximizing the i2s inputs.

Whether a Pontus ii is better then Hugo or not is of course subjective. But I can tell you they’re quite different in how they sound. Either way, it looks like you’ve already settled on Aquarius. Congrats!