Did you feel one outperformed the other sonically?
Were there any areas where the ANK exceeded the performance of the Pontus/Venus?
If you were to recommend one on its sonic performance alone, which would it be?
on sonic performance alone i think the venus is superior overall to both the pontus and ank 4.1, by a slim margin
the pontus comparatively has greater midband warmth but this to my ear comes from a slightly recessed and smeared treble and a greater sense of fine grain in the mids you get with the pontus... you don’t hear this delta till you compare the two side by side
vs the ank the solid state output stages of the denafrips defines bass better, more solid, less overhang while the sense of imaging is equal (a real coup for the dena models, imo) as well providing a lower noise floor, and thus microdetail is a touch better - one can argue the ank gives more ’air’ around the bass notes (think audio research tube amp bass versus hegel solid state bass) but i prefer a more tight deep neutral bass presentation
once again the key caveat here is i did not get into rolling tubes in the ank, and with effort here, there may be more sonic upside to the ank unit than how i heard it