DENAFRIPS DAC ---- Owner Impressions, Feedback, General Discussion, Questions and more....

danasam---I was just to our mutual friend's house back east here--he also having a "Termy".  Best sound from his system yet.  Such telling detail...one of the things I like --or perhaps aim for-- in my system is being able to hear each instrument/voice AS an individual and then hearing at the same time the combination of the parts.  Sort of like seeing the  trees AND the  forest!!.  And that is there with the Terminator. Also there is wonderful dynamics, and accuracy with soul.  Sound stage is particularly deep and layered.  Holographic.

Dixter.

trelja---yes.  I was tall guy, silver (NOT grey) beard/hair, left early to get home to MD.

Dixter

A post to the A-gon companion thread to this one --mentioned just above-- by david ten says that the full "Denafrips line will be on active display at AXPONA.  drrnc2

Here is a little video that gives a brief description of what you can see/hear at AXPONA re: Denafrips, in room 1524:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwC6pNOWy5o&feature=youtu.be

I too ( the attendee from MD) attended the very enjoyable session at Vinh's  this past weekend, and first want to thank Vinh for his gracious hosting of this get together and effectively managing the setup and flow of the afternoon.  And for me it was also (in agreement with trelja above) a most congenial and collegial group and we surprised me with our high level of agreement/analysis on the afternoon's activity and outcomes.

Vinh set things up so that the process was experimentally "blind" to the  rest of us.  We did not know which models we were hearing/comparing and we , not Vinh, were the ones that chose the units to be used in the pairings (and that was done in a random fashion with us drawing numbered beans from a bowl and not knowing which bean represented which Denafrips model).  And for the most part we didn't reveal our impressions to each other until the end of the "test" sessions. We were of course, at some level of consciousness, aware of the in vivo reactions of each other as the session progressed.   

At the end of the "testing" , through discussion we each revealed our personal focus as to what makes a component/system sound "good", and despite the usual differences in these factors, we pretty much agreed on the degree to which the Denafrips models contributed to our preferences.  Bube (Vinh) and Joe (trelja) have described that above.  As Joe stated, it was a very unusual occurrence that several 'audiophiles' unanimously agreed on the afternoon's results!!

The Denafrips models have much to offer our community and I hope many of you will have the opportunity to drop by the Gingko room (Rm 1524) at AXPONA to hear them.  I will have the privilege of being there to help Vinh present.

Rich 

milpai & georgehifi---interesting comments. I have found pretty much the opposite--the better the DAC (or perhaps any link in the chain) the better the marginal recording sounds. I am now listening to the Denafrips Venus, and compared to my previous DAC, the MHDT Stockholm 2, I find more detail, much better sound stage, more dynamics, a slight loss of warmth. My general sense is that the more your system can "get out of the way", that is, the less noise your components add to the stream, the better the recording sounds. Overall, I think that playback gear is catching up to digital recording and allowing a more representative image of whats on the disc. Just my $.02

Rich

Denafrips Ares up for sale on usam..  Price is OK.  $525.

Rich