Denafrips Pontus II Clicks Or Static?

atp001:

Are your ticks and pops loud, or more soft in nature?  What has the response from Alvin at Vinshine been like?

I had previously wrote to Alvin about the issue, citing a review of the Pontus II 12th at goldensound.com.

Denafrips needs to seriously address this issue.  In a recent video, Alvin has said that a firmware update will be coming this year. Hopefully this will be fixed soon; some people do not report problems with the ticks & pops.

I would not characterize the pops/ticks as soft or loud, just audible and at music levels.

I have been communicating with Vincent in support.  He had suggested I try USB but I relayed that I am currently not using USB.  That was six days ago and he has not responded.  Not sure how that was relevant anyhow.  I would like the dacs to function properly using spdif.

I suppose that it I were not focused on listening to the music I might not always notice the pops/ticks.  In that sense, one might say they are soft.

No issue on my Ares I.

I am very familiar with the issue, and it ultimately caused me to sell my Pontus II. I now use an admittedly much more expensive Aqua La Scala DAC, but would likely have continued with the Pontus were it not for that issue and the way that it has been handled by Denafrips.

This has now been a known issue for at least a couple of years, and no, as far as I know, there is no software/firmware fix. So I believe that the company made a calculated decision to engage in damage control, rather than offering a hardware fix, which would have been expensive, assuming that they have the knowledge to execute such a fix.

There was also what I consider to be an effort to obfuscate, or deflect blame, by floating the suggestion that it was only happening with certain transports. I had the issue with a Moon 260DT, which is a high-class machine, and in any case, the Pontus is responsible for the problem, as it should obviously work smoothly with all transports.