enkianthus vs hermes

I've owned both. The Enkianthus is far better than the Hermes. I spent quite a bit of time hopping up the Hermes, and could never get the fine detail and relaxed, analog like sound the Enkianthus produced. The DAC in the Enkianthus is an actual upsampler, whereas the Hermes (as least the one I had) is not. A friend of mine had a similar experience as well. He also went from an Enkianthus to a Hermes. He ended up selling the Hermes and going back to the Enkianthus.

Funny you should say that, Hi Fi Farm, as I have owned all three of these products. The latter (Northstar) I obtained at CES 2003 (The S.H.O.W) from Bob at Speakerart, who was showing with the former distributor for Northstar. Bob's a hell of a nice guy, by the way. I would agree with part of what Hi Fi Farm says. If you use the Northstar DAC with the Northstar transport, AND have TG Audio custom build you the silver RJ45 I2S cable ($250), then and only then do you have performance that equals the Enkianthus DAC with a really good transport, and possibly betters it. Why? The Northstar transport upsamples to 24/192 in the transport. Using the I2S connection, there is no jitter or signal loss. Since upsampling is done in the DAC, no jitter is created by the input receiver in the DAC, and the DAC just decodes a pure, upsampled signal from the transport. Ingenious, and it works, and it IS a bargain. The RJ45 cable provided is garbage, and you have to get the TG cable to really make this combo sing. Any other configuration using these components will not result in the overachieving performance I mentioned. I have sold these items to a friend locally who loves them. The only reason I sold them was that I broke down my second system. Some other things about the Northstar transport...it uses two large torroidal power supplies, and the Phillips CDM Pro 2 transport mechanism, which is their best. They are also built very well, and are very compact and attractive. My primary digital gear is DCS Purcell / Elgar Plus with 1394. Yes, it is much better than any of these, and should be for the money. At it's price point, the Northstar combo used the way I mention may be the best deal in digital land. You can read a review of the Northstar components at www.tnt-audio.com