Any thoughts on Denafrips Terminator Plus

@divetiti Thanks that is helpful. I like the DAC3B a lot especially with the complimentary Benchmark HPA4 preamp. It is better than the DAC3 HGC (without an external preamp), which I sold. I used that one direct to amp. I am using the OEM power cables from Benchmark and I also bought the Benchmark XLR’s.

A few days ago I was listening to my new Bryston BHA-1 headphone amp with my modified Sony SCD-1 SACD player. The Sony is a 20 year old machine that still sounds great to me. The sound of the Sony was warm and engaging and different from the DAC3B. So I decided I want something along that sonic line in a stand alone DAC. The Terminator is being described like my experience with the Sony so that is where my interest took off.

I still like the DAC3B sound a lot. I listen to the DAC3B about 8 hours a day in my office and the Bryston + SCD-1 combo for about 1 or 2 CD’s while I crash in bed. Both are great.

I went from Benchmark DAC2 to Terminator. I still have the Benchmark so I'll put it back in to see if any useful observations emerge.

In my system, it took about a month to acclimate to the Terminator.  At some point in that process it seemed to exhibit that old "loudness" button sound for low volume. That is, bass and percussion seemed fully "there" before vocals, which gave a sense of instruments moving forward or in front of the singer.  But I realized that if I brought the voice up to "there" then everything sounded glorious without excessive bass or percussion. It's almost like an instrument that you need to fully engage, and then it's revelatory and involving. But this is "in my system" and there's so many variables, especially speaker response.

As for the DDC's, the Iris seems awfully close to the components in the existing USB input of the Terminator, and the Gaia has lots of stuff I don't need, so I'm hoping the upcoming Hermes hits the sweet spot of maximizing to USB to I2s path.

I am trying to understand the point of the DDC units from Denafrips. It seems to me that the benefit, with respect to the Terminator line, seems to be to allow the use the I2S input.  the I2S input is stated to be the best input on those units. Is this the correct?

If you had a different brand DAC that did not have I2S would these DDC units from Denafrips have any benefit? Assuming the DAC has a very good USB input. 

Some extra info from Alvin:

The GAIA is the flagship DDC with OCXO crystal oscillator. It's engineered with multistages of superb linear power supply. If you've decided to go for the Terminator-Plus, the GAIA may be of luxury as if you use the clock-out from the Terminator-Plus to connect it to the DDC Clock-In, the internal clock is bypassed. Hence, rendered the OCXO in the GAIA redundant. A customer tried the IRIS with the Terminator-Plus, he is loving the combo:

If you're connecting via USB to your DAC, then I would not expect you'd see much benefit. They might reduce noise a little, but your DAC is going to have complete control of the clock since USB passes data asynchronously (at least any virtually all relatively modern DACs).

I think the benefit of the DCC (particuarly the Gaia) would be to take advantage of it's very accurate clock, so you'd need to use a connection that passed the clock along with the data (SPDIF, AES3, I2S).