Denafrips Pontus II Clicks Or Static?

I have had my Pontus II nearly two years and have never experienced any pops or clicks. I run mine in NOS mode and use a Coax connection to my CD transport and Toslink to my streamer. I wanted to connect my Pontus simultaneously to both my McIntosh Integrated and my Topping headphone amp. Alvin at Vinshine stated that using both the XLR and RCA outputs simultaneously would seriously degrade performance. Alvin proposed a work around and sent me a design of a custom “Y” cable which connected to the XLR outs on the Pontus and split off into dual RCA connections to both amplifiers. I had the folks at Morrow Audio build this custom cable to Alvin’s design and it has performed flawlessly. I wanted to mention this performance degradation Caveat to anyone who wants to connect their Pontus to dual amps although it probably has nothing to do with this pop and click issue. I have been extremely happy with my Pontus and am very sorry to hear that this great product has been marred with this annoying defect.

I have been playing my Pontus II with the new FPGA firmware update for about a week now and I can confirm that the random pops/ticks I was experiencing are now absent.  This mirrors my experience with upgrading the firmware on my Ares II.  So it seems the issue was in fact software based.  Below are the changes associated with the new firmware as described by Alvin at Vinshine:

"Notes:
1. The FPGA firmware update is for all DENAFRIPS DACs with the latest FPGA BGA chip.
2. It does not apply to the older DSP (Amanero, released in 2017-2019). If you have a DENAFRIPS DAC purchased after 2020, in general, it is upgradable.
3. The firmware update fixes some bugs, and enhance the sound quality for all digital inputs
4. The firmware update changes the NOS response to what Vinshine Audio believes it's NOS (Raw, Staircase Waveform output for 44.1kHz / 48kHz)


Areas of Improvement:

• Improved Adaptive FIFO Buffer & Reclocking Architecture
• Reduced the effect of Buffer overrun/underrun due to the Source's Clock and the DAC's Clock differences
• Reduced Audio Latency
• *Eliminate Phase Difference between L/R Channels
• Optimised DSP to improve the sonic performance"

I have to commend Vinshine for being very responsive to the issues I was having.  Never did they claim this would fix my problem with certainty.  I think their stepped approach to troubleshooting this issue was appropriate and worked out me in the end.

So if this was a software issue, why is the issue not being reported by more people?  I don't have a good answer, but I tend to have very analytical tendencies.  When I listen to music, I listen equally to my equipment.  I would not be surprised if some Denafrips owners have the issue but haven't noticed because of the way they listen to music or perhaps to the type of music played.

I have been playing my Pontus II with the new FPGA firmware update for about a week now and I can confirm that the random pops/ticks I was experiencing are now absent. This mirrors my experience with upgrading the firmware on my Ares II. So it seems the issue was in fact software based.

I am skeptical of that conclusion, as if it were true, there is no reason that the problem could not have been fully resolved. Instead, we get this:

• Reduced the effect of Buffer overrun/underrun due to the Source’s Clock and the DAC’s Clock differences

"Reduced", not eliminated. What this suggests, and I would say clearly, is that it is in fact a hardware problem, which they are attempting to mitigate with a software patch.

Perhaps the approach will prove effective in reducing the audible artifacts to a very low level. But as I have pointed out numerous times previously, there is no reason that such a problem should exist in a relatively expensive, otherwise high-quality DAC. In other words, it is either a design flaw, or corners were cut on the related hardware.

@atp001 - how did you get the new firmware for the Pontus ii? Alvin said the update would not be available until the beginning of April. In addition to eliminating the pops, did the upgrade improve sound quality? If so, how? 
 

@whipsaw - you make a great point. Reduces is a lot different than eliminates. 

@whipsaw 

With respect to the topic of this post and the issue I personally experienced, the firmware appears to have corrected the problem.  Thus logically, it was a software related issue.

Now, regarding other aspects of the sound quality that you are speculating about, the Ares II and Pontus II have received almost unanimous acclaim for their sound quality.  If the new firmware improves (at least objectively) on that sound, then I'm happy for it.

@stevebohnii 

I suppose I was lucky in that I communicated my issue with Vinshine just as they were preparing to announce the new firmware update.  So I got early access.  If the sound has improved in any other way, I have not noticed.