Denafrips FPGA Firmware Update

Yeah, I would occasionally get a pop/skip before the update but now it's a few seconds into each and every single track without fail.

@audiofilo123 "Changing my system to pursue the dac “new sound” seems really absurd to me."

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I would have to agree with you on this. Now it comes to the realization of whether the new dac sound is actually an improvement to your system. This would be the system synergy. 
By changing the streamer may not be enough, you probably have to change the interconnects, speaker cables, and so on. It is absurd to me too. For the past 40 years in this habit, I have had so many gears passing through my system, from the classics of Marantz Model 9, Mcintosh MC225 to Krell, Pass Lab, Joule Electra, Legacy Whisper, and on and on. After down sizing of life, luckily I am now still having the Kimber Select interconnects and speaker cables that I will not let go. And, just by changing the Kimber pure silver to silver-copper hybrid, the sound becomes warmer, relax, and musical. And the price for the pure silver ic is almost double the hybrid. This is system synergy. And it is not about the price. 

To me, the updated firmware is great. It leaves us with a lot of potential. :)
 

From what I read in HeadFi forum, apparently Denafrips are aware of the complaints and diligently working on releasing new firmware updates for Pontus II with both EP4CE22F and EP4CE6F chips. We shall see...

Anyways, I  have never seen such an active interaction between a manufacturer and audiophile community...  simply amazing.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I'm following the discussions at other forums as well. Denafrips is great. To the point mentioned earlier, I have also started taking some measures to voice my system due to the change and for now have simply moved some power cords around. Most notably I had a power cord with Rhodium plated copper plugs on the Pontus II and decided to use a cord (same design) with pure copper plugs to offset some of the high frequencies and bring back a bit more warmth. If there is a way for them to bring back the tonality with a bit more warmth/fullness/natural high end, but with the clarity and detail of the new update, that would be great.

My Ares II had the occasional skipping issue.  Also an early production unit, Ares II circuitry in an plain Ares box.  Confirmed by Alvin.  Update went smoothly.  No more skipping.

Prior to the update there was a definite sound difference between positive and negative phase selection. After the update unable to detect a difference.  

Listened to a couple reference tracks prior to update.  Same tracks after the update were much cleaner.  Individual notes had more separation, impact and decay.  Overall, a major improvement.