Upgrade to AMR DP-777 SE or look elsewhere

@in_shore 

thanks for your amazing  comments, sharing a lot of valuable first hand experience. 

Yes, the second hand value of Directstream is very low, but  official prices are always ridiculous in this business and I thought it was something normal. 

@dlcockrum ,

after reading @in_shore comments I took a look at the Denafrips page. Needless to say, the Terminator looks terrific:  isolation, thick metal, very nice modular board, linear power supply, full of pictures showing what's inside.  All the basic checks passed.  It  does not look like the typical garage audiophile product.   

However,.... sorry, I don't trust any Chinese thing without western support and warranty.  The info they provide about themselves in the site is vaporware, not address or names to send the police if the thing burns the house.  

Last time I checked, Atlanta was considered to be located in the west. :)

I am not aware of any manufacturer (US made or otherwise) that offers fire protection, but several do offer DACs with comparable or even better performance vs the Terminator for $10k and up that you can choose from.

Dave

Cortes I’m certainly no authority on dacs, I find the influence of dacs like speaker choices , just personal taste . 

The Denafrips Terminator paired with the PS Audio Direct stream memory player really surprised me , I wasn’t expecting the Terminator to better the PS Audio dac . My buddy was just curious if the pin layout of the l2s connections were compatible with each other and secondly just to hear the Denafrips in a system with speakers .
I immediately liked the terminator , it easily compared well with the PS Audio and surpassed it with far better instrument separation laying out the sound stage much differently and to my liking .

There was an annoyance with the PS Audio components with screen freeze ups not often but on occasion along with the fact the Denafrips was less money .

$6000.00 US for the PS Audio , Denafrips $4500.00 USD delivered to your doorstep including top rated support and a pretty good warranty, 

I did get cold feet over Denafrips not having any North American representation also using it with the PS Audio player for unknown reasons the Terminator would reverse channels upon first start up , I would have to go through the modes to reset it each time I wanted to listen to music .
As for this Chinese design and built component , I give them high marks and finally try your best for in home trials from dealers or manufacturers dacs are a personal taste.



 

Cortese:

You wrote:
“the usb module of the DP-777 SE is seriously outdated.”

Respectfully, that is bunk. The AMR DP-777se is much more advanced than most dacs out there even today, I bought my 777 in 2011 and I still have it because it sounds flat out awesome, I used to own the best stand alone usb->spdif converter extant (the Sonicweld Diverter, latest version) and it was only the AMR with its custom USB solution that matched the Sonicweld, at least to the point that I decided to sell the Diverter.

I often compare my digital to my extremely high resolution analog systems (tape and two turntable systems)and yes, the analog is better but the AMR is never embarrassed and my AMR CD-77.1 with a double crown 1541 dac chip installed is flat out the finest digital I’ve ever heard regardless of sampling rate and this includes listening to the best DCS has to offer and the MSB diamond dac, I’ve not yet heard the MSB Select dac,
primarily becuase I know their house sound and while it can be very good, I’ve been there done that.