Denafrips Terminator vs. Venus

Wondering same thing. Mike Powell Audio is the US Distributor and I reached out to him but he hasn’t had a Venus yet. Is the Venus fairly new? Sounds like the Pontus is very close to the Terminator as far as sound quality goes according to Mike. I see Mike's personal Terminator has some bypass caps he’s done from the stock unit, so wondering if he’s messed with the Pontus. Mike follows these threads so I’m sure he’ll chime in.

@bultaco
Not knowing the rest of your system I’m not sure you need to jump to a $4K DAC to improve your Oppo BDP 95 as you can do it for a lot less. If you’re interested in the Denafrips line, my guess is the Pontus or Ares will be a substantial improvement. I have an Oppo UDP 205 and my Cambridge 851c is a better machine for red book playback. 

I run my Bluesound Vault 2 through my Cambridge and am interested in the Denafrips units as well as an upgrade, just not sure with my modest system the Terminator makes sense because of the cost. For me the Pontus, maybe the Venus makes more sense. Definitely drawn to the price of the Pontus. The DAC in my Cambridge destroys the DAC in the Vault so might jump to the Venus as the Cambridge is no slouch.

The 205 is a really good all around deck, but my Cambridge is more resolving and open. The 205 is on the warmer side and I do like it on poorly recorded music. Who knows why a person throwing a Terminator on an Oppo why they didn’t like it; maybe an inadequate digital cable, power cables, or the particular Oppo was showing through the Denafrips it was the weak link in the chain.  Nope, I’ll keep my 205 as it’ll move to a home theatre setup.

If you’re looking for a 205 only for red book playback there’s a lot better out there. To be fair I did replace both fuses in my Cambridge which really cleaned it up which I’ll admit sounds silly. Might do an OppoMod power supply upgrade so I can roll in different fuses. Believe the fuses in the stock 205 are fixed or soldered in.

I’m using my Bluesound Vault 2 with the DAC in the Cambridge more than just playing CD’s through the Cambridge; in fact I haven’t loaded a CD in the Cambridge for months. Maybe look at a streamer with a hard drive and buy a nice DAC and just use the Oppo for movies which it’s probably really good at.

Interesting. Aren’t Denafrips already priced far below others that run through a dealership distribution? I know Mike Powell is only working off 10 points as they’re a direct buy like Schiit Audio and others. One does have to ask are they really cutting out the middle man to lower cost for the consumer or just being extra greedy? I’d love to hear one in my own system so too bad they only offer an in store credit which I get it. Would like to see a video from Powell focusing on just the Denafrips side by side so we can see the physical and his take and the sonic differences between all of them. They definitely need more videos of the units online other than one sitting on a rack from a distance playing music only.