Absolutely Preposterous Denafrips DAC Reviews

[egellings]

Once upon a time, I was on a forum where a speaker and electronics designer.. insisted that one of his preamp sounded better upside down... ... Seriously.

I have witnessed a person who was capable of hearing the differences brought in by a clock .. in another person system ... Yep!! Said clock did rearrange the electrons so that they would move coherently ... It made a "vast" difference in his system too...

The infamous Tice Clock?

 

[egellings]

I wonder if he had stood on his head and left the preamp right side up, if he'd have heard the same difference.

 

[amper42]

Stacking components and the order of that stacking can make an enormous difference to the way they perform. You can have the best DAC in the world and it gets a hideous hum when placed too close to your power amplifer.

Preamplifiers on top of power amplifiers are a no go. Any form of low level device near a high current device is a no no.

Some CD players, DACs and DVD/Blue ray can interfere with phono/preamp stages. Radiated transfromer PSU noise etc.

The placement of preamplifers alongside power amplifiers needs to be determined where transformers are concerned to minimise noise. All this is well known and I've dealt with it since the 1970s, especially back in the day with tape recording where the placement of the deck with respect to every other piece of gear was extremely important.

When testing a device, it should be always placed in the same location, away from anything that may affect or compromise its performance.

This stack works well with an RME ADI-2 on a short riser above the Buckeye NC502MP.
The 2 inch opening above the Buckeye allows a decent airflow across the amp top vents while still supporting a compact design. The stand is actually the outer case I cannibalized from an old Soundcarftsmen S800 amp.

 

[Dallas2122]

You guys knocking Denafrips don’t know how they sound their new Terminstor 12 th anniversary I have heard and it is excellent sounding ,there is No dac out there under $5k that sonically compete on its level , 9 out of10 of these guys knocking it has dacs far less in build quality as well as sonics .
The HoloSprings msy KTE has the best measurements ,but sonically
Both are excellent and comes down to taste .
I have a Bricasti M1-SE dac, streamer which has many filters
And yes it is just over $10 k with discounts bought class leading .
Bricasti has been used in mastering studios for almost 20 years now
And highly respected in the higher end audio including their amplifiers and preamps to complement the digital . The dac,streamer has a excellent
Preamplifier if you choose to use direct to amplifier.

 

[kemmler3D]

You guys knocking Denafrips don’t know how they sound

On the contrary, we know exactly how they sound - the same as any other DAC over $150 or so. That's sort of the point of a DAC... to change bits into continuous voltages without doing anything besides that. There isn't a "sound" involved in that process unless something is going wrong.

 

[Dallas2122]

Anyone to say low budget dacs can compete with much more expensive dacs
Are just beginners who cannot afford any better ,and never heard high end quality ,the Audiophile beginners, been there myself 25 years ago.

 

[Steven Holt]

Anyone to say low budget dacs can compete with much more expensive dacs
Are just beginners who cannot afford any better ,and never heard high end quality ,the Audiophile beginners, been there myself 25 years ago.

That's quite a statement. Talk is cheap, so back it up : send in your DAC to Amir for testing, and let's see what's what.

 

[Dallas2122]

Not a chance I would send in a $$ expensive piece of anything
There is plenty of reviews and documentation out there, our multi state audio club listen to pretty much everything out there in the main stream .
Your ears are the best testing equipment out there .
solid state amps for example measure better then a vacuum tube amplifier
But sonically many vacuum tube products sound more natural.

 

[kemmler3D]

Your ears are the best testing equipment out there .

Lol, based on decades of no research and no data, we have reached the stunning conclusion that ears > gears, pack it up guys.

Thinking something sounds more natural, more this, more that is fine, but if you have nothing to back it up except your opinion, people at ASR are simply not interested.

Don't take this the wrong way. You may hear something that is not reflected in the measurements. Anything is possible. However, if we don't have measurements to look at, it's very hard to know what you might be hearing or form a useful opinion about it.

 

[fpitas]

Anyone to say low budget dacs can compete with much more expensive dacs
Are just beginners who cannot afford any better ,and never heard high end quality ,the Audiophile beginners, been there myself 25 years ago.

They don't even recognize the vast effect speaker cables and power cords have here. It's a sonic wasteland.

 

[Ra1zel]

These guys don't write scientific review articles, they are writers who write a nice story that attracts readers.

Welcome to XXI century journalism.

You can have the best DAC in the world and it gets a hideous hum when placed too close to your power amplifer.

Preamplifiers on top of power amplifiers are a no go. Any form of low level device near a high current device is a no no.

Some CD players, DACs and DVD/Blue ray can interfere with phono/preamp stages. Radiated transfromer PSU noise etc.

Well in EU such things should not happen with new equipment since it wouldn't pass the radiation regulations.

 

[BDWoody]

Anyone to say low budget dacs can compete with much more expensive dacs
Are just beginners who cannot afford any better ,and never heard high end quality ,the Audiophile beginners, been there myself 25 years ago.

Uh huh...

Some people never get beyond the 'tell me a good story' stage.

 

[AdamG]

There is plenty of reviews and documentation out there

Then by all means, if there are plenty or reviews and documentation out there, surely you can link to one or two of them that you believe will stand up to Science scrutiny?

Otherwise you’re just another guy who thinks he hears a difference and then convinces himself that it’s real and worth spending thousands on. We simply don’t care how you spend your money. That’s your business. But making bold unsupported claims about performance equality and superiority requires a tad more evidence than “Taking your word for it”.

You made the claim that there is plenty of reviews and documentation available, so providing a link or two can’t be that hard right?

We can wait!

 

[grwasserman]

Stacking components and the order of that stacking can make an enormous difference to the way they perform. You can have the best DAC in the world and it gets a hideous hum when placed too close to your power amplifer.

I couldn't tell if you were serious....
I have my preamp sitting on top of one of the power amps. I was running out of linear shelf space and the components were clearly intended to stack. I can crank the volume to full 0dB and no background noise of any sort. Kind of risky to do, but I couldn't resist after reading this comment. This was on the aux input I use for the DAC. I'm guessing the phono preamp would have some background hum or noise, but not much. Not an experiment I care to repeat (replacing the speakers' fuses is a pain).
My amps are not stacked primarily because of heat. It's all passive cooling and while they idle fairly cool they do get warmer when listening at higher levels. They are so old; heat stress isn't going to do them any good.

 

[antcollinet]

I couldn't tell if you were serious....
I have my preamp sitting on top of one of the power amps. I was running out of linear shelf space and the components were clearly intended to stack. I can crank the volume to full 0dB and no background noise of any sort. Kind of risky to do, but I couldn't resist after reading this comment. This was on the aux input I use for the DAC. I'm guessing the phono preamp would have some background hum or noise, but not much. Not an experiment I care to repeat (replacing the speakers' fuses is a pain).
My amps are not stacked primarily because of heat. It's all passive cooling and while they idle fairly cool they do get warmer when listening at higher levels. They are so old; heat stress isn't going to do them any good.

You missed the word "can"

The electrical fields from some high power components (amps) CAN couple into some other devices (such as DACS). This is especially possible for the magnetic field from the mains transformer to couple into low voltage analogue electronics.

It doesn't mean it will in all cases.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

Denafrips paid a fair bit of money to make this review show up in my news feed today:

Denafrips Ares II, Pontus II, Venus II, and Terminator Plus - Hi-Fi Advice

The review reads like it was auto-generated by AI full of audiophile buzzwords - it's nonsense from start to finish without a single measurement across four pages and endless blather about all the amazing differences switching from a $2,000 DAC to a $7,000 DAC can bring. But one part literally made me laugh out loud and elevated this to needing a share:



I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to read that design differences between two devices make a bigger difference than physically placing them one on top of the other. I simply will not believe it!

Also something I continue to find utterly baffling, and is just conclusive evidence that these nutbags have no idea what they're talking about: Flat ethernet cables. They're clearly visible in several shots. Standard ethernet cables are twisted pair, which makes them highly resistant to noise. If you flatten them, you lose that noise rejection (I'm not an electrical engineer but perhaps someone can verify - if you straighten a twisted pair, wouldn't you actually have worse exposure to noise relative to a single wire, since you're now running two conductors on the same circuit in parallel?)

Anyway, try not to have conniptions reading this, but wow. Just insufferable nonsense from beginning to end.

Aah, thank you.
I didn't know what Denafrips was, thanx to you, I now do.
You are not getting paid for your advertising on ASR, are you?

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Just another regular subjective review among millions of others. You could swap the exact same word salad for just any product reviewed.

Same shit over and over that has been during for decades...

Problem is, there are people who want to believe in this shite. They want to live in a world where magical thinking prevails. They absolutely want to live in what Carl Sagan called "the demon haunted world."

So they hate people like Amir who demystify the entire process. These self-styled audiophile seekers after perfection want the entire process to be a mystical journey and an ardous spiritual quest on which they must spare no expense rather than a rational exercise where quality can be ascertained by finding out how well something measures on a few parameters, what features (inputs/outputs, remote, etc) it offers, what its form factor and cosmetics look like, and what its price is. And the idea that something can be as good as it gets and cost less than $200 and be affordable by anyone who can figure that out, just blows their circuits and not in a very good way.

So, yes, there will remain a market for crap like the Chord Dave and the Dennafrips stuff because some people refuse to take measurable perfection for an answer.

 

[fpitas]

Also something I continue to find utterly baffling, and is just conclusive evidence that these nutbags have no idea what they're talking about: Flat ethernet cables. They're clearly visible in several shots. Standard ethernet cables are twisted pair, which makes them highly resistant to noise. If you flatten them, you lose that noise rejection (I'm not an electrical engineer but perhaps someone can verify - if you straighten a twisted pair, wouldn't you actually have worse exposure to noise relative to a single wire, since you're now running two conductors on the same circuit in parallel?)

Yes, twisted is the best approach. But even with a flat "ribbon", if that's all you have to work with, you still get some rejection in the far field.

Why one would untwist a cable though...don't know.

 

[egellings]

Problem is, there are people who want to believe in this shite. They want to live in a world where magical thinking prevails. They absolutely want to live in what Carl Sagan called "the demon haunted world."

So they hate people like Amir who demystify the entire process. These self-styled audiophile seekers after perfection want the entire process to be a mystical journey and an ardous spiritual quest on which they must spare no expense rather than a rational exercise where quality can be ascertained by finding out how well something measures on a few parameters, what features (inputs/outputs, remote, etc) it offers, what its form factor and cosmetics look like, and what its price is. And the idea that something can be as good as it gets and cost less than $200 and be affordable by anyone who can figure that out, just blows their circuits and not in a very good way.

So, yes, there will remain a market for crap like the Chord Dave and the Dennafrips stuff because some people refuse to take measurable perfection for an answer.

Maybe the people who buy that equipment find its sound to be euphonic, numbers be damned. Another example of that would be so-called "tube sound". That has its adherents as well. My opinion is, if you like the sound, that's what counts, although you do owe it to yourself to listen to transparent equipment first, to be sure that the stuff you are considering is really what you want. Not everyone one takes "one step nearer the reference" to be an edict and may prefer inaccurate sound reproduction.

 

[SuicideSquid]

Aah, thank you.
I didn't know what Denafrips was, thanx to you, I now do.
You are not getting paid for your advertising on ASR, are you?

I do not understand.

Maybe the people who buy that equipment find its sound to be euphonic, numbers be damned. Another example of that would be so-called "tube sound". That has its adherents as well. My opinion is, if you like the sound, that's what counts, although you do owe it to yourself to listen to transparent equipment first, to be sure that the stuff you are considering is really what you want. Not everyone one takes "one step nearer the reference" to be an edict and may prefer inaccurate sound reproduction.

I'm fine with this approach with two caveats: Don't make up nonsense to justify that this equipment sounds "better" just because you prefer it, and don't spend a down payment on a house to get mediocre performance when you can get the same for $500.