I looked for the full line of DENAFRIPS reviews, but was disappointed to find only the Ares II reviewed, a unit I have not tried. I started my DENAFRIPS journey by purchasing a Pontus II for my PC-based headphone setup. My then-reference was the Lynx Hilo "mastering" interface intended primarily for studio and recording work. This interface bundles a headphone amplifier and a preamplifier, as well as several digital and analog in/outs. The Pontus was a DAC. I mean a D-A-C baby! None of that other stuff, and so comparisons became hard right off the bat. I needed to use digital volume control just to make things listenable. At the time I had stock power cables everywhere, stock printer USB cables, no noise control, no listening room. I was astonished to find that despite all the handicaps I strongly preferred the sound of the Pontus II over the HILO! From my research this is due to the R2R architecture and DENAFRIPS attention to detail and use of high-end components without much of an upcharge (an extreme rarity in the audio industry). From here I progressed deeper into the den of snake oil, purchasing a loom of audioquest cables at increasing price tiers. I began tryinig silver cabling from USB to interconnects. I bough a dedicated DENAFRIPS preamplifier (the Athena) and upgraded to the top-of-the-liine DENAFRIPS Terminator Plus. At EACH step of the way I h-e-a-r-d a difference! I ended up purchasing a DENAFRIPS Artemis headphone amp which BLEW AWAY the Rupert Neve RNHP I had! I sold that in a flash. It KILLED the HILO's onboard amp as well. It is beefy enough for my Senn HD800s. I now use my Pontus II in my headphones setup on my PC and the Terminator Plus in the full DENAFRIPS stack for my mains. I went with the DENAFRIPS APOLLO as the power amp. You should review that here, it is beefy.
I write all of this to say that I *shudder* to think of the day that I have to remove either of my DENAFRIPS DACs from my system! I don't even want to compare it to dCs because I am so pleased with the DENAFRIPS sound that I have moved on to custom speaker cabinet design. I would like you to review the higher end units and let me know what you think, because there is NO WAY that a cheap $90 DAC or a $500 DAC could compare sonically to the higher-end DENAFRIPS products, which are a fraction of the cost of their peers, namely a dCs stack in this case.
If I could make a recommendation to anyone reading this it would be: "Buy the best DENAFRIPS DAC you can and do it as quickly as you can. I see global prices rising and I believe the best price you are ever going to see is the one available now. If you don't like the Denafrips then go ahead and either spend way more and be happy or way less. If it's less then maybe you don't need a musical HIFI, maybe you are more technical?? I look forward to hearing what others have to say!