Denafrips 12 anniversary

Yes now that we have a Gustard R26 for $1600 that sounds as good or better than my Terminator II, will Denafrips be forced to up its game in the lower price bracket gear war to stay competitive, or does it go upscale and try to compete with Chord or even MSB? I think in many ways it would be easier to use better parts and tighter tolerances etcetera than having to innovate and cost cut...

What Denafrips failed to see is that China labor costs are 4-5x less 

and they still want To read the higher $$ 

if anything with thus current economy they should have went up 10% at most 

@kairosman ,

have you heard the R26 and it’s really that good? 
 

thanks

Last year I was sucked into buying the Pontus Before the 12/17/21 price hike.

I did. Guess what. No hike. They have the game down. I sold the damn thing

and broke even. No more Denafrips for this buyer.

while we share the sentiment, i also feel there is no need to throw a baby out with bathwater

i believe the pontus, for ~1500 bucks used, is an excellent dac, outstanding build quality, lovely spacious well embodied sound with just a subtle grain heard on only the most resolving systems... there is always something new coming out in the dac market, this gustard r2r thing, the musetec thing, whatever...

but despite my dislike for the commercial behavior of denafrips and their sales channel, let’s please not lose sight of the fact that the pontus will make a lot of people very happy in how it makes digital music sound very good