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Denafrips ARES II USB R2R DAC Review

Danddd

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Are you confused with your own thread of posts? If you can hear 20hz, how do you know if it's 1db lower than the signal? 5db higher? There's no way the human ear can discern these differences. In fact, even 0.5db of loudness is perceived as a "better" sound. So either get a calibrated microphone or stop posting your golden ears anecdotal evidence.
The thing is, you can feel bass too. https://www.audioholics.com/room-acoustics/bass-the-physical-sensation-of-sound
 

Eddy H.

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Has anyone actually listened to Ares 2 with the Topping Pre 90? Read a review where the reviewer said it'd be a great match. But both Topping and Denafrip said No...don't do it.
I'm doing just that and it sounds great.
 

DaveOttley

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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!
 

Jimbob54

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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!
Send one in to be measured.
 

DaveOttley

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Send one in to be measured.
I'm actually considering it. The thing is, I can't give it up. Maybe I can find a way to part with the Pontus for a bit first. I look forward to Amir's review because I respected his Genelec reviews, a product which I have owned for over a decade. It got me to buy the Apollo PowerAmp, which is great. Let me think about it...
 

Killingbeans

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Frequency response I am sure is a component of that. According to Amir, tonality is the most important aspect of subjective quality. I believe that. But I don't have time nor interest to research the *why* of what is happening.

If it's just something as simple as frequency response, there's tons of cheap ways of adjusting it to taste. If your souce is a Windows PC, there's Equalizer APO as a $0 option. No need to throw cash at an esoteric R2R DAC, just saying ;)
 

pinpoint_oxford

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I'm actually considering it. The thing is, I can't give it up. Maybe I can find a way to part with the Pontus for a bit first. I look forward to Amir's review because I respected his Genelec reviews, a product which I have owned for over a decade. It got me to buy the Apollo PowerAmp, which is great. Let me think about it...
I have an Ares II and have debated selling it to upgrade to a Pontus partially for the I2S input. I would be very interested to see if it performs any better than the Ares II. So far I've been very pleased with the Ares II and the sound from it.
 

Killingbeans

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pinpoint_oxford

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I'm not sure I want to extrapolate the results here to all devices that use I2S. This was just limited to one set of devices.
 

Jimbob54

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There's one big conclusion there though.. (was my Singxer sent in BTW).

"What's the point?".
Exactly that. If you get amazing performance via USB /optical etc why bother with something more obscure?

(the answer is, of course, because manufacturers and the ever obliging hype media want to sell you something new)
 

Killingbeans

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I'm not sure I want to extrapolate the results here to all devices that use I2S. This was just limited to one set of devices.

I'm in a blunt mood, so sorry in advance: If a DAC needs the "help" form an I2S input to perform adequately, it's a bad design to begin with.

It's a solution to a non existent problem.
 

roderickvd

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Anyone had a chance to look at the brand and type of clock? Are they dual 45.1584 / 49.152 MHz oscillators or some programmable one like the Si514/570?

I can’t find detailed enough pictures to check and don’t own one, but am considering one.

I’m asking because the resistor ladder looks a lot like the ones used in Soekris products, and the latter has a single Si clock, continuously adjusting to the input clock.
 

Veri

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Anyone had a chance to look at the brand and type of clock? Are they dual 45.1584 / 49.152 MHz oscillators or some programmable one like the Si514/570?
Denafrips licenses the XING core USB, possible customized a bit but you can look at standalone Xing AF200 for an example. (you can tell because the driver works with both). This one at least uses dual clock set-up. Not sure how it is fed to the ladder DAC / FPGA, though.
Some discussion starts here https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...aes-ebu-the-solution.13893/page-2#post-566859
 

roderickvd

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Thanks. I also asked Vinshine Audio, who confirmed that there are dual oscillators, though not which ones. If it’s either the Accusilicon, Crystek or Taiyi like in the AF200 then they are specced well enough. I’ve never heard of Taiyi before. I don’t know how well they perform or even live up to their spec.

For posterity: Vinshine also confirmed that the Ares now works on Mac out of the box without disabling DSD1024 and beyond (they are probably disabled by default now, but I didn’t bother to ask because I don’t care about those modes).
 
Last edited:

nick-fl

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I had a very different experience with the dac :( Plugged it in, it sounded OK. So I checked it on my oscilloscope (Owon XDX3062A 12bit 60Mhz) and it's a complete nightmare. I even thought that something was off with my oscilloscope, but RME dac tested perfectly as did other 3 dacs.

It appears that QC is close to non-existent.

This is with USB and 1K sine wave:
20220311_125814.jpg


This image is with USB completely disconnected:
20220311_125853.jpg


Needless to say, it's going back to Denafrips.
 
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