musician aquarius r2r dac any good?

@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! 

@arafiq I am very nervous though. This is the first time I use r2r dac. I always use delta sigma DAC in my system, so I dont know what change I will introduce to my overall synergy.