Thread for the various Denafrips dacs
The Ares II is pretty great overall considering the cost, a dac with great energy and fun, holographic spatial recreation, a warmer more rich signature, overall pretty great dynamically, solid speed and speration, good timbre. Overall a great choice for a more rich and fun dac.
I haven’t heard the pontus and venus to comment as much, but for the Terminator II, it’s a more forward cleaner leaning dac with great grip and command overall, very fast speed and separation, pretty holographic stage, overall great clarity at the expense of some organicness and naturalness
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Gave you heard the terminator plus in comparison?
Unfortunately not. I can try and speculate though and assume the Gaia + T II is similar, because from what I know the plus is mainly digital improvements like clocking. The Gaia really did help out the TII and corrected some of the things I disliked, but that further pushed it into higher price brackets, but I really would pick up a Gaia if I had a TII, it is worthwhile for sure
For anyone who is connecting up a DDC with a Denafrips DAC, I’ve learned something today:
Denafrips DACs have the following I2S modes, and there is only one right setting for your DDC / DAC combination:
If you want to find the right setting, this means you have to go through testing 8 options. At first I thought only one setting would work. but all 8 played music just fine 
So how to find the “right one”?
First off, I’m using the Denafrips Iris with Pontus II via the Pangea Premier SE I2S cable. I would follow the same process with any DDC and cable. But if you want to compare your results with mine, this is my setup.
I used the Tidal Audio Line-Up Test Tones to evaluate the settings. I’m sure other test tone sets will work as well, but this one was good for me.
The 3 pin pairs listed in the table above correspond to the following:
Data is the bit stream of data
BCK is the clock used to register each bit of data as it comes in
LRCK is the Left / Right Word Clock used to “de-mux” the left and right channel information from the serial bit stream.
The beauty of knowing this is you can eliminate half of the options by first trying Mode 0 and Mode 4, since these use the opposite polarity L/R word clock. Run a Left / Right test track (again, I used the Tidal Audio Line-Up Test Tones). One will be oriented correctly Left / Right, the other will be swapped. For my setup, Mode 0 was correct. With this I’ve cut the solution space in half, only Mode 0 - 3 will have the stereo channels correct.
Now I have to pick between the 4 remaining options. Listening to various tracks that I know, I could hear subtle differences, but I couldn’t decide which one was “correct”. These 4 options give all of the possible data / clock alignment options:
+data / +clock
+data / -clock
-data / +clock
-data / -clock
But how do you hear the difference in clock / data alignment? As long as it isn’t completely broken…
What I eventually noticed is with the “in phase” and “out of phase” test tones I could hear that one sounded like it was in the middle of my head, the other sounded like two blob sounds, one over each ear. Going on the assumption that “in phase” will sound like the sound is in the middle of your head I went through and tried all 4 settings, each with PCM and DSD inputs. What I found is that 2 settings worked (in phase sounded correct, in the middle of my head) for PCM and 2 worked for DSD.
And from there, only 1 setting worked for both PCM and DSD: Mode 2 (010).
Going back and listening to various songs, it’s obvious that this is a sonic improvement over my previous WRONG setting of Mode 0 (000). I had just assumed Mode 0 would be correct, since it’s a Denafrips DDC and Denafrips DAC. But I was completely wrong!
Hopefully this helps someone else work through these settings!
And please, someone create a universal I2S standard!
[and one final note, I used HQPlayer to generate my DSD source]
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Hadn’t notice that Denafrips made a master clock. Reasonably priced given that some I’ve seen out there are in the $10K range.
Anyone tried it?
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Has anyone had a chance to demo any of the new 12th anniversary editions Denafrips has put out? I’m curious how different they are to the standard version of their DACs.
The cynic in me says these releases are just a play to generate sales from existing customers without actually releasing entirely new products.
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I chuckled a bit when I came to this thread. For a forum, what I feel is our meat and potatoes is digital and for a brand like Denafrips, there being only a handful of posts says something. Not sure what though. lol
Maybe it says that as a group most of us were further along in our DAC progression that the Denafrips offerings are in the rear view mirror.
Chiming in though now as a few months back I picked up a Pontus II with the 12th anniversary FPGA update, not a 12th anniversary model.
The differences between the two are tweaks/improvements to the power section and not much more but the 12th anniversary software is reputed to change the signature quite a bit and it’s been documented in a variety of trustworthy reviews out there.
Just wanted to give some high level feedback on this old unit, they can be found pretty much anywhere for under $1.2K and with some patience, I picked mine up for $1k, so for this commentary I’m placing it at that pricepoint in any comparison to other DACs out there.
Existing Chain:
Roon > Pi2AES > Pontus II (via SR Boomslang AES) > Bryston BHA-1 (via Gabrield Gold Rapture II RCA cables) > D8KP using Lavricable Grand balanced.
In the past I’ve had a Pi2AES; I’ve had the Final 8D8KP as well as the Bryston BHA-1 and the only new component to me is the Pontus II. Aften really finishing my 2-CH, I’ve slowly combe back to putting together a respectable mid-fi HP chain and selecting pieces that I’ve enjoyed for one reason or another and applying things I’ve learned over the years about squeezing the most sound I can get from a chain by best practice means. For example I’ve had the Pi but as I piecemeal documented here I’ve gone back to the entirety of the chain and addressed every aspect of the best practice things that we know make a difference to one degree or another. But not throwing crazy cash at this project. Simply trying to optimize the chain and selecting pieces to achieve harmony, hoping to put together somethign that sounds better than the $um of its parts.
I’ve gone and addressed the power conditioning and using a Shunyata Hydra V2, their Venom NR cables and I’ve even (a first for me) bought a good HP cable instead of making my own. Addressing vibration issues and generally everything I’ve done on my 2-CH except on the cheap.
Which brings me to the DAC because I’ve come to appreciate what it does, especially for the pricepoint. The Pontus II with the 12th anniversary firmware updates feels like a very balanced DAC.
It’s got good amount of stage, good detail and great timbre. It’s organic enough and it’s got body, it’s not thick and certainly leans on the warm side of neutral but it’s got body and enough slam for late night EDM. I found myself just enjoying it as part of this chain and since getting the Bryston amp inline thanks to @Camus I’ve found it to be super complimentary to it for my tastes in music. It’s not smooth, but it isn’t raw either, it’s got a good balance, forward and certainly fun, not shooting for the audiophile moniker, but manages doing everything well enough or better. Great if you grade it on a curve given the bargain pricing.
I’ll go as far as saying that if you’re putting together a good mid-fi chain and you’re not looking for reference neutral, you’d be remiss not to try the Pontus II with the 12th FPGA update, there are a lot of them out in the wild so you won’t wait long to come across one.
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I enjoyed the Pontus2 when I had it. Mine was the non-12th with the 12th update as well. I noticed a few improvements with that update
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Will the Pontus II 12th Anniversary Edition be any good? I’ve been interested in trying Denafrips for a while now. When the Ares II first came out, I skipped it due to the audio lag for gaming. Has this issue been resolved?
Also, the new Pontus 15th Edition seems to use the same internals as the Venus 12th. I keep kicking myself every time I see used Denafrips DACs for sale.I should have tried one of those instead of ordering Schiit.
I believe @Delta9K has been interested in Denafrips for a long time.
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Didn’t know anything about this issue but I actually have been gaming various Blizzard games on Battlenet over the holidays and didn’t notice a thing. Interestingly enough I was thinking to myself how great the Diablo II music was, 20 some odd YO game and it was masterfully scored.
The new Pontus 15th is effectively the old Venus. The OG Pontus II and the 12th edition Pontus 2 have minimal HW differences all PS focused but I’m sure they’re meaningful. So a cheap 12th annyversary may be the sweet spot in the used market.
This is the first and only Denafrips DAC I’ve listened to.
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For context, the last DAC upgrade I made was purchasing the Pontus II (with 12th anniversary upgrade) almost 2 years ago (for my work from home chain, my main chain is still Soekris dac2541 to Violectric V281). I still have yet to get an itch for an upgrade. It pairs perfectly with my Luxman P-1u. That chain is very good with IEMs as well, much to my surprise. Sure, it’s overkill for IEMs, but when you factor in that it also drives my Diana V2 and Auteur Classic extremely well, that speaks volumes about it’s balance and versatility.
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