Finally! A Denafrips Terminator 15th review. (Hint: It did well)

Congratulations!

I lied about the article i will read it...

 My deepest  respect...

Thanks for sharing.  I just wish he’d had something in the Terminator’s price class to compare it to, but clearly it’s a superior DAC its price point.  I see you have the Hermes — did you notice a significant improvement with it, and what connection and cable are you using between it and the DAC (didn’t see that on your system page).

@soix

My Hermes I’ve had for about 3 years. It was connected to my previous DAC, the Denafrips Venus II. At that time I had the Tublus Argentus I2s between them. I use the Hermes as an input selector between my Aurender N200 and my CEC TL1x CD transport. At the time of implementation of the Hermes 2 things jumped off to me. I had a better more defined bass response-not just bigger but more detailed too.  Secondly the soundstage became wider, deeper and a tad bit more delineated in the layering. With this in mind, I never removed it when I added the Terminator 15th, which I bought in December 2024. What I did was added two Oyiade 510 BNC Clock cables and initiated the clock out sync feature on the Terminator. I knew that this enhancement was available, have read it helps on pervious Terminators such as the Terminator Plus which this DAC is really a replica of with newer FPGA software. Since then I have replaced the Tubulous with a Revelation Audio Labs I2s/HDMI cable. I like the RAL a little better as it’s more dimensional and enhances Timbre. 

@fthompson251 I use the same Oyaide 510 clock cables between a Denafrips Gaia and Terminator Plus with great results. For i2S I tried a cheap Blue Jeans HDMI cable (it was OK, warm sound but missing details) Tubulus Concentus V2 (very detailed but a bit bright) and finally an AV Play HD300 which was a perfect balance of clarity and dimensionality. I use the RAL umbilical on my Pass Labs XP 20 preamp. I almost bought the RAL i2S cable but I am perfectly happy with the AV Play cable. 

@rrboogie  I have a RAL umbilical between my HD Plex LPS and Legacy Wavelet.