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Denafrips Pontus II Clicks Or Static?

There have been some who have reported clicks or static occasionally with their Denafrips Pontus II DAC units.  And there is a test measurement review of the Pontus II 12th on the golden sound website talking about the following:

"When DACs oversample, they can sometimes encounter a situation where the reconstructed/interpolated waveform goes above 0dBfs (the maximum possible digital value)."

"The Pontus 2 is susceptible to intersample overs, and unfortunately, in a particularly bad way."

"The Pontus 2 does not clip, but instead when a sample value reaches above the maximum, it ‘wraps around’ to the minimum negative value, causing a huge sudden transient which will be very audible and may appear as crackling/popping."

Has anyone with a Pontus II encountered this anomaly when playing CDs?  If so, can you elaborate about that?  I am aware that the Pontus II can be firmware upgraded, so if this is an occasional issue, it could be eliminated with an upgrade.

 

 

fastcat95
atp001
15 posts
 

I am happy to report, to my surprise to be honest, that the firmware update appears to have fixed the problem with my Ares II.  I have listened to about ten hours of music since the update and have not heard any pops/ticks.  Although I feel it may be a little early to make any definitive conclusions, what I can say is that before the update i was invariably getting 1-2 pops/ticks per hour of playback.  So for now, the pops/ticks are no longer present.  

As whipsaw and fastcat95 had elaborated, I also thought the issue would be hardware related.  However, no pops/ticks are emitted when the dacs are idle nor when playing a low level test tone, suggesting the issue is signal dependent to some degree.  So maybe a firmware fix makes some sense?

I should get from Vinshine a firmware update for the Pontus II soon.  Let's see what happens in this case.

fastcat95 OP
36 posts
 

Good!   Keep us updated on the Pontus II firmware update, and also if it makes any change in the sound.

designsfx
793 posts
 

@fastcat95 

In reading this I find it hard to believe that a reported issue like this has not been resolved by the manufacturer- I’m really sorry to hear about this. When you say “pops and clicks” are these similar to the sounds a dac makes when syncing up to a source or the sound sometimes heard when the incoming sample rate/frequency has changed from the playback source?

whipsaw
758 posts
 

@designsfx 

Alvin originally told me that the issue was "likely caused by the FIFO buffer overrun".

The first attempted firmware fix was released almost one year ago.

designsfx
793 posts
 

@whipsaw 

Honestly- if they’ve been dragging their feet on this issue for that long you made the right decision in getting rid of the Pontus. 
How is your La Scala working for you? 

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