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hello from germany. i am not very sure, if the tdai 1120 is going to work well with my nubert nuvero 140. there is no additional pre amp in my system, just the lyngdorf. do you think the power is enough…!? regards
instead of listening for a difference, just measure the difference. record both dac, invert one recording in its phase and overlap with the first recording & level match them, whats left is the difference. if there isnt any, there will be silence. and no ear in the world can hear what isnt there.
Happy to note your respect for Tarun (A British Audiophile). He’s my go-to reviewer and I have bought equipment based only on his reviews. His description of the Sibelius as “the truth” made me weep that I can’t afford them.
Please try this. My favourite. Bought from Apple Music, I don't like streaming. I got 10 years on you, was raised on this. Bing & Rosie: The Crosby-Clooney Radio Sessions
Cool, I think the question is. Which one accurately reproduces real instrument tone, timbre and presence. Want these DACs to compete with my vinyl. Unfortunately normally the PCM source is the issue. Looking forward to listening to the samples
Harley, wonderful video. I see the FBA-800 is back for another listen, I’m very interested to hear your second impressions of the FBA compared to the SPA-4.
Of course the why you keep going abck to it is because it is: D-ynamic, E-xquisite, N-atural, and A-ttractive. as well as: F-idelity R-efined I-ntoxicating P-ure S-ophisticated 😁
Very interesting thread as usual on this channel. But….😂there is a new star on the sky of the ladder DACs, Harmony DAC( $2,700.0) and Srajan from 6 Moons declared it replaced a $10.000 DAC. 😊It would be great if you could get one for review. It’s definitely lighter and imo more utilitarian.
Have a Venus II-12th. Glad to see the 'frips gettin' some love. It had seemed for a while that after they dumped Alvin over at Vinshine, some of the luster/prestige they had been enjoying lessened significantly.
Denafrips is all about the music , I have the Pontus 2 with the Iris DDC connected via I2S ( Jays Audio cable ) , the analog nature is just so enjoyable, connected to my Willsenton R8i 50W class A amp with rolled tubes ( PSVane legend etc - tubes cost more than the amp ) - it is magical and non fatiguing. Luckily I live in China so it costs around 25-30% less. I don’t think I will change this set up for years to come. The only thing I would change is upgrade my Eversolo A6 Master E streamer , I heard Eversolo is working on dedicated streamers so I’ll wait until that is launched. Eversolo is another great brand. Chi fi has truly evolved and highly specialized products are now being made to truly audiophile standards. A great time to be a music lover. But once you tried a Denafrips DAC, it’s very hard to go back to Delta Sigma DACs IMO.
Не сложно вернуться к дельта сигме. В Понтус и лампах нет скорости и удара это физически не возможно для такой цены, поэтому выкинуть этот Понтус и вилсентон и купить moon 861 и gustard x 30!!!
Charming:-) Very happy with my Ares2 and 12th in two systems. Got a Hestia 12th from Alvin at Vinshine just in time before they dropped Denafrips:-/ Beautifully made good sounding products nonetheless 😊
There was Pontus in 2018, Pontus-II in late 2019 and early 2020, then Pontus 12th anniversary a year later and then the Pontus 12th-1 last year and now the Pontus 15th… so no wonder people are pissed off! My Pontus II is now “obsolete”… lol
Hear, hear Harley, despite its made in China moniker, I believe the Pontus 15th represents a respectable endeavor. One must open their minds to honest, quality engineering. We all may have our preconceived notions when it comes to brilliant audio, but I believe this Dac is sincere in its intention and execution. Simply stated, this is good honest audio, much like your beloved Sibelius speaker.
Looking forward to the comparison, Harley. I see a Sugden FBA 800 has appeared on the lower shelf and it would be good to hear that working with the DACs in all its glorious revelation.
13:34 « I don’t think there is any chance of jitter occurring in this DAC ». I think this is an area where it would be interesting to see you experiment in the future. Because if things are done « wrong » then there could still be up to quite a lot a jitter happening at that final stage. In fact any DAC is sensitive to the source it receives the digital signal from. And that can cause some degree of jitter at the DA conversion. So it would be interesting to see you experimenting with high quality digital transports to hear what you would experience. Thanks for the great video Cyril
Call me a philistine , I changed from a moon 100 to a Heed , the less expensive one about 2 grand Canadian, couldn’t tell you if either one is a ladder dac or a delta sigma, I know the Heed sounds nice, that’s it, no other opinion on offer from me Oh I feed it with a moon 260 transport into a moon 340i and fyne f502sp speakers
I've been running the terminator (not plus) for 3 years now. It's a great dac. One time, a couple years in, I was getting weird hiss-crackle from my Pearl Acoustic speakers. I turned the terminator off and on again and haven't had any issues since. It worried me a little as I thought it may be the start of degraded performance curve, but haven't heard any further problems.
These Denafrips DACs need some days of break in if brand new. Also, would be very interesting what your take on the three different oversampling modes is.
Making an objective comparison of two brands of dac chips is pretty much impossible. At least inside an audio system. And I think it is also pointless for a couple reasons. The first being that it is impossible for you to compare only the chips. Those chips are not interchangeable, so you can’t use two identical DACs with only the chips replaced. You can only compare two different DACs, which have different inputs and output stages, different parts, layout, power supplies, etc. And the same principle applies when comparing delta sigma against a R2R DAC. You end up comparing different products, not R2R vs delta sigma. Still an interesting experiment though, just not for the same reasons
Denafrips makes good gear, owned Terminator Plus. I'm pretty sure you would love the swiss brand Merason DAC R2R (would also fit your philosophy). TotalDAC is a complete different game, way up the Highend chain and cant be compared with those brands (biased, owned it some years ago) 😊 thanks a lot for your time & efforts!!
I appreciate this mature, thoughtful presentation. Ideally, one can have both a high quality R2R and a chip-based DAC to select from, given the target recording, partnering equipment, listening preferences and goals, etc. Both technologies will likely have their adherents and I doubt the technologies will converge to where they both sound identical.
Thing is with all Hi-Fi its "The Kings New Clothes". I repair both Hi-Fi and music performance equipment and the Hi-Fi side is something of a joke. Much is purely ideology not actually better but it makes the buyer feel so much better having spent thousands on something that may actually be no better than something at a tenth of the price. I used to write for Hi-Fi World and have seen it all! Including the madness of changing to fancy switches because it makes the thing sound better when the switch feeds directly into a selector IC so has no effect on the audio path at all. There is madness in this world.
Agree, I don’t think any hobby has as much snake oil as the hifi hobby. I thought the magazines were a lot to blame for that, but I see now that RU-vid influencers and guys that are more on hifi forums instead of listening to music are probably more to blame.
Thank you for the excellent review. just reciieved my Pontus 15th , linked to a denafrips Haden and Thallo and a matrix eleement S it is simply sublime.
Have heard wonderful things about both of those Dacs, audio is such a subjective endeavor, the possibilities and matchings are seemingly endless. Thanks for sharing.
I have a Gustard R26 (hooked up to a Sugden). I trialled it compared to my Mojo 2 (which is a delta sigma dac). Took me a long time to understand why I preferred the R2R DAC. Reason it's so difficult to put your finger on it, is because of individual instrument timbre. You can't A/B them quickly, timbre is something that takes a while to sit with, but when it's not there you notice it. Reason I didn't get a Denafrips was due to their returns policy, ie they will not accept returns under any circumstance. I got my R26 from Amazon where we know it's easy to return stuff, at £2k for a DAC, I require the ability to return it. Oh also from what I remember Denafrips doesn't offer true NOS either.
@@YamilLlanos The Mojo 2 is a custom implementation of a delta sigma dac. The FPGA affords Chord the abilty to implement a series of custom noise filters. An FPGA DAC doesn't exist.
I'm glad you're not going to review any Schiit DACs. My original Schiit Gungnir is excellent and I really don't want to go down the rabbit hole again. 😉 But, I will watch your upcoming DAC evaluation.
@@PearlAcousticsPersonally I would never use the Pontus with RCA output because you miss out some important sound qualities. I think anyone can confirm you are bypassing half of the circuit board and not take benefit of the balanced design. But maybe you used XLR, I don´t know 😊
Great video. Nice looking implementation. Small point of clarification re the two clocks. One supplies timing for sample rates that are a multiple of 44.1 and the other is for 48k sample rate family. The circuit will have jitter. If they have a low phase noise clock it is relatively less jitter. The lower the jitter, the more natural it will sound. Early CDPs that we found irritating digital sound had more jitter. An R2R DAC with great power and low jitter will sound analogue and relaxing with great realism.
I might be over thinking this but how well can we compare different dacs when the output is going to be fed through whatever DAC we have at home (not to mention whatever ADC you feed the mic output or the analogue output of the DACs through to get it back to a digital file) I'm just not sure how much character will make it through the process.
Hi, you raise a very good point here, which I will cover in the next video. Of course it will never be the same as plugging a Dac into your system but we should be able to detect differences.
Hi Thanks for your comment. I can understand some disappointment in this topic. I do not have any of the details, so don’t feel qualified to comment. but I hope both parties will. do well, moving forward. I think that many HiFi manufacturers will start to circumnavigate their distributors in the future. Of course, it’s how this change is handled that matters most. We live in a rapidly changing world.
@@PearlAcoustics I will edit that out and I do note that at least one other comment mentioned Alvin. It is irrelevant to the question of R2R You auditioned multiple preamps You would be best served by looking at Holo and Gustard R2R as well The Multi-bit implementation is also worth investigating Schiit and Chord would be good examples I have a Holo Cyan 2 that has the least features but incredible sound for the money and the reviews are in agreement that it is more than worthy The R2Rs have a warmer presentation which may be why you are drawn to them
You need to listen to Mojo Audio's R2R DACs. No upscaling, no error correction, no low pass filter. The philosophy is to get it right without needing those features. It has 3 buttons for 3 inputs - that is it. What I bought cost around $12K - well worth it.
@@PearlAcoustics I'll try replying again - RU-vid doesn't understand the term I used - which is completely normal. Try searching for review mojo audio mystique evo pro 21. There is a review on enjoy the music. I managed to buy the very last pro model.
