Denafrips 12 anniversary

this company is learning the marketing b-s game fast, for a crew of quality obsessed chinese nerd engineers, showing expertise in how to suck $$ out of customer wallets with impunity

next will be 12.5a special edition with upgraded vishay i2s sockets

@curiousjim

i saw that, and laughed out loud... 

just to be clear, my problem with denafrips and their direct selling partners is the greed aspect... they already have direct sales, zero dealers in usa and europe, yet they are doing all the crass marketing gimmicks which smacks of harvesting their customer base on the higher end given their recently established market recognition -- this has nothing to do with the fact they are chinese, it has everything to do with how they are playing the game

i suggest to folks to get a pontus, stop there, that is value sweet spot in everything they sell, don't get sucked into higher products, ddc's to make the dacs sound right, all that nonsense

Last year I was sucked into buying the Pontus Before the 12/17/21 price hike.

I did. Guess what. No hike. They have the game down. I sold the damn thing

and broke even. No more Denafrips for this buyer.

while we share the sentiment, i also feel there is no need to throw a baby out with bathwater

i believe the pontus, for ~1500 bucks used, is an excellent dac, outstanding build quality, lovely spacious well embodied sound with just a subtle grain heard on only the most resolving systems... there is always something new coming out in the dac market, this gustard r2r thing, the musetec thing, whatever...

but despite my dislike for the commercial behavior of denafrips and their sales channel, let’s please not lose sight of the fact that the pontus will make a lot of people very happy in how it makes digital music sound very good

too bad this thread is taking a turn towards hate

everyone should check their assumptions at the door if you haven’t worked in china, dealt with chinese businesses, sourced from china, especially in more sophisticated, technology-based goods

what we are saying here is akin to western europeans saying americans are all dumb, fat, lacking any sophistication ... well that may be true, but only sometimes, and most importantly, it simply shows how gross generalizations just create heat and no light, it offers nothing constructive to the discussion

if one thinks china made is stuff is garbage then please throw away your iphone, ipad, computer, memory cards/hard drives, household lighting, appliances, wiring.... you get my drift

c’mon guys this is getting rather moronic

would you like an american made cellphone over a chinese or korean made one? well i am sure you do, but there aren’t any! that’s because the american high tech manufacturing industry can’t compete

chinese auto making/componentry/assembly is low on the learning curve, so of course you wouldn’t want a chinese car today, any more than you would’ve wanted a german car in 1950 or japanese car in 1970, but 40-50-60 years later, things completely change right?  it is called industrial development, industrial competence and experience

let’s get a grip...