Hello, Alvin.
Here is my feeling listening to this wonderful and talented DAC Denafrips Ares II, on my modest audio system.
Please again receive all my gratitude for the quality of our exchanges and the perfect service.
Warmest regards, Jean-Louis.
The DAC Denafrips Ares II should have 2 weeks of use now. It is powered with a Pangea AC14SE power cable, is placed on 4 feet of Pangea sorbothane and the modulation cable between the DAC and the Elekit TU-8200DX amp is a Van Den Hul "the first Ultimate", which has the particularity of containing no metal but only carbon fibers. The USB input of the DAC is not used in my listening. A USB Matrix X-SPDIF 2 interface with a good linear power supply does the job, connected in SPDIF using the same Van Den Hul cable as the connection to the amp.
I have owned many DACs since the 1990s. Some have been able to approach the musical reproduction of a very good LP turntable equipped with an excellent voice coil cell, those in particular equipped with old fashioned tubes, at the expense of a good analysis.
But for most, even good listening results in an inexplicable feeling that the music does not involve us as emotionally as it does with a good LP. Steve Guttenberg explains this very well in his videos on Youtube. And more often than not, the sound result is an excessive transparency, a reproduction of timbres and voices that are a bit dry, lacking flesh, weight, to really believe in what we hear.
The DAC Denafrips Ares II is, of all the DACs I have owned, the one that comes closest to analog listening. It mixes with a lot of talent, a right balance, natural voices, without whistling or hardness and an excellent analysis. This is a rare fact!
I don't know if these remarkable musical results are obtained by R2R technology, but probably, the quality of the components and a meticulous realization, followed by many listening tests, explains this success.
It installs this naturalness in a wide and deep holographic image. It fits perfectly into my small audio system and allows me to listen to my favorite audio files with a lot of emotion, and makes it captivating, touching.
I am very happy with this acquisition which, fortunately, remains financially accessible for a person like me, retired and not too rich ;)
I warmly congratulate Denafrips for the pertinence of its technical choices, the realization and the manufacturing of this product and for the musical pleasure that one gets in the end, at home, at ećouter listening to the voices, the timbres, the rhythms and forgetting for a moment, all our dear audio devices.
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