Just about to pull the trigger on Pontus 15th ...

@lanx0003 

I have the Pontus ll and I love it.  The full sized Liav DAC is somewhere between the Aries ll and the Pontus ll.  The uLiav is much closer in sound to the Aries ll in both sound and price.  If you have the budget,  I’d go for the Pontus 15. It’s using most of the parts from the Venus 12th and it’s a very nice improvement over the Pontus ll.

All the best.

I was nervous about buying the Denafrips long before the threat of tariffs. I just didn’t have as much confidence with buying from China a product that (for me) was the most expensive DAC I purchased to date. I have owned Benchmark, Schiit, and other lower cost DACs before but the Ares was getting a lot of positive customer feedback. The company did not disappoint me yet and the R2R configuration gave me the most organic, natural presentation of music. I just bought an analog setup and spent north of $5000, The streamer I have combined with the Pontus sound just as good as my $3500 turntable, $1500 cartridge and $1000 preamp. Also the Pontus feeds a CD transport and that sounds very natural as well across the frequency spectrum. That’s my experience.

Help me out here guys, is it MM, MC, or does it run both? It's so small that I thought it might be a step up transformer. 

"Help me out here guys, is it MM, MC, or does it run both? It’s so small that I thought it might be a step up transformer."

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/zOlhHakrKeE

@mattw73

Kinda was in same boat and from my understanding they ran outa of a copper wire used in the production of the Pontus 15.

Anyway mine shipped out 3/13/2025 and arrived 3/17/2025 so hopefully you get it soon. Even without burnin it’s sounds much better than the Ares ii it replaced.

The wait was worth it. @audioman58 was helpful and kept me informed of delay and just one of those bad timing situations. The popularity of the Pontus 15 and tariffs caused a surge in orders.

@2psyop the only advice I can offer is make sure you buy from A authorized dealer. Denafrops will not honor warranty or repair a unit bought from nonauthorized dealer. Sure might save a few bucks but if unit is faulty or ever needs repairs the will not be of any assistance.