musician aquarius r2r dac any good?

Here is a curved ball.

The Musician Aquarius/Pegasus DACs don't have a clock out for syncing like the Terminator. Therefore, " if " the ranking Blake wrote (below) were correct, then:

Aquarius/Pegasus + PhoenixUSB   (USB interface)

would rank higher than 

Aquarius/Pegasus + Gaia without its "clock in" feature engaged.  (I2S interface)

Oh dear lol

the ranking of best sonic performance was:

1. Terminator Plus + Gaia with the Terminator Plus "clock out" feature engaged upstream to the Gaia.

2. Terminator Plus + PhoenixUSB

3. Terminator Plus + Gaia without Terminator Plus "clock out" feature engaged.

4. Mutec MC-3+ USB

@auroravengeance Did you have to do anything to get the Douk to work with the Pegasus?  I have both but I get no sound when trying to use the Douk into the Pegasus’ i2S input.  Thanks for any tips. 

@soix I am using Windows 11 and the Douk is plug and play. I connected the Douk to my Pegasus using cheap AmazonBasics HDMI cable and it worked like a charm. The Douk will appear as XMos XS1-U8 on your Windows so make sure you select it as the system output. Roon infuriatingly does not use it by default and I have to manually enable it again after each Windows update. 

@tjag I used the I2s with my Pegasus and I had to say the difference with the USB input was minimal if any, but I still used it anyway because with the Douk I could actually adjust the volume in Windows. Without it I had to reach to my amplifier volume knob. With my Lab12 Dac1, the difference between with USB and Coaxial is more significant, probably the coaxial implementation is more well thought out. 

 juanmanuelfangioii   -    Trere is a dealer for APL  hi fi  in America  -  APL USA  usa-sales@aplhifi.com

I have APL  DSD AR dac now  and it's great - extremely detailed and dynamic sound, converts all pcm formats to DSD - I bought it blindly but it was worth it.  - outstanding dac.