Cen. Grand DSDAC 1.0 (vs Pontus II)

@painter24 buying an almost unknown piece of gear is always a risky move but also an exciting one. I bought my Pontus a couple of months before all the hype and choose it instead of a (used-but-mint) Holo Audio Spring 2 Kitsune Edition, very well reviewed.

I love the Pontus (and I will keep it for years) but I continue to be curious about other dacs:

NOS type: Audio Note, Lab12, Abbas, Metrum

DSD upsampling: Cen.Grand 

Just a loosely related add on... Presently listening to both the T+A DAC 200 and Cen.Grand DSD DAC 1.0 (CenD1) and liking the CenD1 more. Bigger sound stage front to back and side to side, detailed and extremely smooth. I like the feeling of the space between notes having their own body and air, and the CenD1 does that, a quality that only my M-10x does (obvious not as well), but that's a different story. So having also tried the Denafrips Terminator, I would again give the absolute nod to the CenD1, I've always enjoyed my Sony headphone amps FPGA DSD conversion and I'm very much sold on what Cen.Grand is doing.

Hi @ja_kub_sz thanks for your post. I'm glad you're enjoying your Cen Grand. Can't believe mu OP was over a year ago; boy how the time flies 

Anyway, thanks for your post; your observations certainly match my own. I did however have issues with my first Cen Grand unit, the Standard edition, and eventually had to call the distributor again. I was going to give up on Cen Grand at this point (left channel kept dropping out, after changing ICs, I couldn't get any sound out of it at all). The distributors customer service was top notch. 

I asked him to order me a Pontus II and I would return the Cen Grand, but he offered me the next up in the Cen Grand DAC line; the Super Clock edition which comes in at £3200, for no further cost of what the Standard version cost £2500 iirc.

This was last Spring and still going strong, no problems whatsoever, and the Super Clock just raises the bar over the Standard, more of everything.

I've also had a speaker upgrade since the Cen Grand; swapped out my Triangle Comete 40th Anniversary for a pair of ATC SCM 40's, and also brought in a Marantz Model 30 in place of my Atoll IN200. 

At the moment, not looking to change anything; very happy.

Merry Christmas everyone, hope you and your familes all have a great festive period, and a Very Happy New Year 🥳🎄🥳🎄🥳🍻🍾👍

I have a question about this dac. If one isn’t interested in DSD, is this dac still a contender for redbook and hi res recordings otherwise? I have a Pontus II and I like the NOS sound. Is the Cen Grand dac something I’d like? Or is it so different from an R2R ladder dac that I’d run screaming from the room?

@painter24 the "left channel drop" happened to me once while switching the DSD up conversion rate. I dropped the DSD rate down, then stepped it back up to 1024 and the left channel came back, but concerning none the less since you mentioned it and this problem worsened for you.

Has your new unit perform better?

Customs did a comple number on my unit, like I was shocked at how they went through everything and kinda just threw stuff back in. The dealer offered me a new unit, but he called it from the get go and asked me to look to see if the unit was "retaped on the bottom" which it was and had the obligatory customs corner punch mark underneath.