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

Denafrips Terminator DAC FEATURED.......

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews2/denafrips/4.html

I understand your concern ghasley, but, based on that logic, the positive reviews for the Lavorgna-exalted totaldac and also Lampizator, Pass Labs, Metrum, Aqua, Allnic, Gryphon, Less Loss, SOtM, COS, and many others are all invalid.

While all of these manufacturers must be paying advertising fees to six moons since their products are all reviewed there, very few of them receive Blue Moon awards as the Terminator did. That must have cost Denafrips a fortune!

Stereophile, and thus its daughter publication Audiostream, have long been known to give preference to their advertising partners for review selection and even giving their paying partners second chance reviews when things go badly the first time. I think the Schiit Yggdrasil review shows what happens to manufacturers that buck the tide with John Atkinson.

Makes one wonder what Stereophile/Audiostream toes were stepped on to merit the drive-by hatchet job that Lavorgna did on the Border Patrol and Denafrips DACs in that sorry excuse for a DAC comparison.

Dave

trelja,

While I share your frustration regarding the lack of promotion and active presence in the US marketplace from Denafrips themselves, your post reads as if you have an axe to grind beyond what you wrote here. Sour grapes as it were.

Today, quite a few non-US manufacturers have little to no "on soil" representation. Not a desireable thing for us here IMO, but a reality nonetheless. Alvin at Vinshine Audio does a very fine job covering the bases on customer support for Denafrips products across the globe.

As for the differences in sound quality between the Ares and the Terminator, there are numerous testimonials from owners on the Facebook Denafrips Owners Group forum, some of whom have moved up the line from the Ares to the Pontus, some from Pontus to Venus, some from Venus to Terminator, and some from Ares to Terminator that describe very large improvements in sound quality as they moved up, particularly the latter group. Your opinion counts equally, but is an outlier among the field.

I have a close friend that attended Axpona 2018 and spent time in the Gingko/Denafrips suite. He was initially gracious in sharing his opinion with me but it is clear that he found the sound largely underwhelming due to the chosen speakers perhaps. Upon hearing the Terminator in my system, he was in disbelief that the same DAC was in play in both systems. The sound quality from the Terminator was that much better here to his ears.

No doubt that Denafrips and Alvin need to do a much better job with hands-on participation at these shows and also with their promotional efforts in general, but what your wrote above is overly heavy-handed IMO.

Dave

Thank you trelja for the nice response. I cannot argue that there is not some risk involved in purchasing from a young company located in China. Anything can happen and groundless speculation is really pointless. I would have never dreamed that Thiel and Classe, both well-respected North American manufacturers with a strong US dealer network for decades, would cease to exist by 2018 back when I bought their top products in the 90’s. Oppo just folded despite a rabidly faithful customer base.

I think the Terminator is a game changer in my system. At under $5k the value is ridiculously high. I have not heard the Mytek Manhattan but understand that it is a fine DAC. Personal preference makes the audio world go round!

It’s all good, trelja. :)

Dave