Cen. Grand DSDAC 1.0 (vs Pontus II)

There is a lot of stuff on the web about this brand.  It looks like like nice stuff, but personally, I like to stick to products with more of a track record. I doubt anyone here has any real experience with it because I’ve never heard it mentioned.

I too just discovered this dac the other day, Power Holdings in USA has it on Black Friday sale at present. May be perfect time to purchase as loss leader, may be trying to gain foothold in North American market. Haven't seen a single review.

Sure looks like the same process as Ted Smith's at PS Audio.

Chinese? What do ya know?

Yep, I think I'll swerve Cen. Grand for now; just not enough to go on. The distributor says he's sold a few of the higher tier versions after taking them to a clients home, and the units have stayed with the client. 

There is a Chinese site, looks like the equivalent of ASR, with measurements of the DAC; Google Translator mangled what was written, but what was legible wasn't very flattering. But there weren't any listening impressions given, only measurements. 

This may well be a hidden gem, just like Denafrips DACs were to begin with, but I'm not going to risk it. The distributer has offered 7 day return if I don't like it, but that's not a lot of time to see if I can live with a DAC, what with work, dogs, life etc so I'm opting for the tried and tested Pontus II

Seems like a rip off of PS Audio's Direct Stream and now Direct Stream Mk II DAC.

The Cen Ultimate version of this DAC is $5.3k so not much reason to buy it when you can get trade ins off buying the PS Audio DAC, on any components.

PS Audio and Cen both upsample everything including PCM to DSD, personally I don't think upsampling is necessary with today's DACs. YMMV.