DENAFRIPS 'ARES' R2R discrete ladder DAC - close up view

[Baten]

I'd say Ares but only because I'm not interested in MQA whatsoever

 

[Gabehcuod]

Most "Chi-Fi" has local dealers in Australia which makes some of the stuff out of there, a no brainer.

 

[sajunky]

Hi I'm looking to buy a new dac. Never heard an R2R dac before, how does it sound compared to the delta-sigma like Topping D90 for example? I am interest in the Ares II but I only stream on Tidal (mqa) so the topping D90 MQA got my attention but I have heard good things about the Ares II also. If I could get both D90 MQA and Ares II for the same price which would be a "better" choice?
1.I only stream on Tidal MQA
2.Mostly listen to funk,soul,Jazz,RnB,Pop and some classical etc. (no rock/hard rock and those stuffs)
3.I use balanced XLR output and Topping A90 at the moment.
Thanks in advance!!

1. Denafrips do reproduce CD stream with excellent quality, it doesn't need MQA. The same with other brands like Audio GD, Holo Audio and some brands that cost a fortune. Even my $42 Nobsound 8xTDA1387 DAC/HPA combo doesn't need MQA. Not exactly a level of quality that can compete against the above, but I use it when traveling and I can listen for hours with Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC without any fatigue.

2. Advantage of R2R conversion over DS is that it reproduce natural instruments preserving a natural tone, timbre and texture. From all those three DS converters only preserve tone. Having D90 and being happy from, you may be not aware of these terms, there are well known to musicians. It is explained there: https://www.musical-u.com/learn/whats-the-difference-between-tone-timbre-and-texture/
In a simple language, you are missing reverbations on a decay, typically demonstrated on piano notes, plunks on a quitar string or how long you hear a gong. With a complex sound my Topping D30 produce false harmonics. Even on a clean tones D30 turned to an unpleasant sound after only 10 minutes. However when listening to the electronic production in a style of Calvin Harris, this effect doesn't come up despite of a fact it is a massive sound. Problem is that it is not music of my choice.

For a music of your preference I strongly recommend audition for at least two weeks. Recognition of R2R sound do not come immediately. In the first moment you may notice only that on the D90 treble were stressed, carrying digital flare and now there are smooth and natural. The other things and a true enjoyment comes later.

3. XLR connection is beneficial, not essential, but you have it on Ares. Oh, Forgotten...

You will have to sell A90. It is a poor design with dual SMPS violating design rules of preventing EMI and ground loops. This fault makes RCA inputs useless for many. But the biggest problem is because of using nested loopback architecture, similar to THX 789. It produce sterile dark sound, there is no music in the background. It will work the best with D90 as such information is already lost! For the Ares consider Asgard 3, it is the cheapest Class A amplifier I know giving good results, then Audio GD A-2 (nearly a half price of A90).

If you sell both D90-MQA/A90 with a loss, you will still have enough of money for Audio GD R-28 which comes with excellent headphone amplifier.

 

[Baten]

You will have to sell A90. It is a poor design with dual SMPS violating design rules of preventing EMI and ground loops. This fault makes RCA inputs useless for many. But the biggest problem is because of using nested loopback architecture, similar to THX 789. It produce sterile dark sound, there is no music in the background. It will work the best with D90 as such information is already lost! For the Ares consider Asgard 3, it is the cheapest Class A amplifier I know giving good results, then Audio GD A-2 (nearly a half price of A90).

If you sell both D90-MQA/A90 with a loss, you will still have enough of money for Audio GD R-28 which comes with excellent headphone amplifier.

Can't agree with this part really. Some will prefer the Asgard, sure, but others will prefer sound of the THX 789 or A90. It's a little unfair to claim it as a universal truth that the Asgard will be better for all. It's still down to preference.

 

[sajunky]

Can't agree with this part really. Some will prefer the Asgard, sure, but others will prefer sound of the THX 789 or A90. It's a little unfair to claim it as a universal truth that the Asgard will be better for all. It's still down to preference.

Some will prefer 789 over A90 and in reverse. However none of these amps has a place for pairing with Ares considering musical preference of the OP. You seem have forgotten this part as you talk about universal truth, I didn't.

Topping A90 is a particularly poor pairing with Ares for a reason I didn't mention, as I didn't expect raising a dispute. Ares output impedance is non-standard, above 1.4 kOhms on a balanced connection. RCA is out of question as A90 is defective. A90 has also non-standard impedance which is very low, I don't remember exact figure. It means that only a portion of the voltage is available for A90. This is not the worse things. Any low pass filter on the A90 input is moving down its cut-off frequency (due to a resistance of Ares output) that may fall in the audible range. A cut-off frequency also depends on the position of the pot. You get a figure, this pairing is not acceptable. And what about affecting linearity of the ladder by loading it with a very low impedance? It is designed to be loaded with 100 kOhms (47kOhms on RCA).

 

[]eep]

I think MQA is overrated based on comments of different designers. It's in fact lossy and is a great vehicle for drm. In the age of high bandwidth available for everyone it is probably not just about saving bandwidth. The correction of dac peculiarities is a nice feature for delta sigma dacs (I'm not sure about the pre-echo of OS) but R2R is better anyway. However...

I tried an unfolded mqa album and compared it to the redbook version and it sounded slightly better. I can't say if it's the same as if I was using oversampling but i think it goes beyond that. With the SMSL DP5 I have the possibility to send a fully unfolded MQA to the Ares, only I haven't found any files i can try (and I am not going to start streaming Tidal just to try, and I don't have the time/patience atm).

 

[Baten]

Some will prefer 789 over A90 and in reverse. However none of these amps has a place for pairing with Ares considering musical preference of the OP. You seem have forgotten this part as you talk about universal truth, I didn't.

Topping A90 is a particularly poor pairing with Ares for a reason I didn't mention, as I didn't expect raising a dispute. Ares output impedance is non-standard, above 1.4 kOhms on a balanced connection. RCA is out of question as A90 is defective. A90 has also non-standard impedance which is very low, I don't remember exact figure.

Yes, A90 has non-standard low input impedance; not sure about THX 789. However, one could also say the Ares II has a non-standard absurdly high output impedance for a modern DAC, due to omission of output (line) driver stage

 

[sajunky]

Yes, A90 has non-standard low input impedance; not sure about THX 789. However, one could also say the Ares II has a non-standard absurdly high output impedance for a modern DAC, due to omission of output (line) driver stage

True. I am careful. I always read specification. In a case of Ares (Pontus, Venus, and Terminator varieties) it is written very clear, so I can make plans for pairing. I cannot blame them for doing so. If it is the way they can deliver the best sound quality for the customers, I accept it. I think @jeep will come up with explanation which I agree to some level.

On the D90 side there is no reason for chosing extremely low input impedance other than a desire to put it on the top of measurement ranks. There is a law of physics that thermal noise is proportional to the impedance. In some cases they can increase SNR figures for more than 10dB. Do user needs 10dB more headroom? I doubt so, but it allows to jump over some competitors by merely lowering input impedance. They don't publish this fact on the spec sheet (at least it wasn't when I was checking), they want users to spend money and find out later. They also think that lowering impedance will allow them to not install ESD protection devices, so there is no ESD protection components on A90. They did the same on their low cost version L30, also 'forgotten' about DC protection and what happen? There are cases of ESD related amp failures and in few cases it ended up with blowing up expensive headphones and damaging human ears. It is a serious negligence case. Now Topping is facing requests for a recall of all (>1000) amps which were made up to November (or December), but US consumer organisations didn't come up.

 

[Baten]

True. I am careful. I always read specification. In a case of Ares (Pontus, Venus, and Terminator varieties) it is written very clear, so I can make plans for pairing. I cannot blame them for doing so. If it is the way they can deliver the best sound quality for the customers, I accept it. I think @jeep will come up with explanation which I agree to some level.

On the D90 side there is no reason for chosing extremely low input impedance other than a desire to put it on the top of measurement ranks. There is a law of physics that thermal noise is proportional to the impedance. In some cases they can increase SNR figures for more than 10dB. Do user needs 10dB more headroom? I doubt so, but it allows to jump over some competitors by merely lowering input impedance. They don't publish this fact on the spec sheet (at least it wasn't when I was checking), they want users to spend money and find out later. They also think that lowering impedance will allow them to not install ESD protection devices, so there is no ESD protection components on A90. They did the same on their low cost version L30, also 'forgotten' about DC protection and what happen? There are cases of ESD related amp failures and in few cases it ended up with blowing up expensive headphones and damaging human ears. It is a serious negligence case. Now Topping is facing requests for a recall of all (>1000) amps which were made up to November (or December), but US consumer organisations didn't come up.

This is super super off-topic but the A90 does not have the L30 ESD fault. There insn't a single case online, and its power scheme is much more elaborate. I call BS.

 

[sajunky]

This is super super off-topic but the A90 does not have the L30 ESD fault. There insn't a single case online, and its power scheme is much more elaborate. I call BS.

This is you complaining about off topping? .LOL.

In future you must be careful before calling what I wrote BS. In this case the only things that protects A90 users from ESD caused failure is the fact that RCA inputs are useless, so it is not used. XLR inputs are better designed giving ground connection first. It is the only reason there is still no similar cases with A90. ESD protection is missing the same as in L30. This is a fact you cannot deny. The rest is your speculation.

 

[Dassrull]

My Topping A90 and Denafrips Ares II sound absolutely fantastic together

 

[Baten]

My Topping A90 and Denafrips Ares II sound absolutely fantastic together

My Topping A90 and Audial Aya II DAC sound very good together, too..
Again Sajunky, I'm not seeing any proof that the A90 has any ESD flaw.
In any case. I don't think this is the right thread for it.

 

[sajunky]

My Topping A90 and Audial Aya II DAC sound very good together, too..
Again Sajunky, I'm not seeing any proof that the A90 has any ESD flaw.
In any case. I don't think this is the right thread for it.

clack! clack! clac!
Show me ESD protectors on the A90 PCB, please - then we can talk in a separate thread.
This is the end about A90 on my side.

 

[]eep]

I don't know if 600 Ohm would qualify as 'absurdly' high output impedance. It is (used to be?) standard in telecom where standards are derived from. 150 would be normal. Like input impedance of 47kOhm. As long as the difference is more than 10x there should be no problem. So in this worst case Ares A90 case its 30x, it's not yet 'livin' on the edge'.

[edit:] What was i thinking? I don't know how I came up with that multiplier... or the input inpedance of the A90... it is obviously NOT only about half. Maybe I confused it with the article I just read/studied [/edit]

I do agree that Chinese engineers/copycats can sometimes forget about consequences because they're lazy or inexperienced, or are more concerned about reaching their target than quality or customer satisfaction but I really doubt this is the case for Denafrips. Rather the contrary. With Topping I'm not sure but the products I bought in the past were rather well made although not top quality. Great consumer grade but not high-end.

With my quest on modification of the TDA1543 I found that 470 Ohm gave the best sound (some had 680) based on dynamics vs soundstage. I never had any problem with that value, enough output voltage. I remember when Cd-players were introduced they were screaming loud with 2V vs tuners, cassette players etc at 250mV. I think that wouldn't be very viable nowadays. Din standard input impedance is 100kOhm, so the common RCA is already low-ish in that regard.

 

[sajunky]

I don't know if 600 Ohm would qualify as 'absurdly' high output impedance. It is (used to be?) standard in telecom where standards are derived from. 150 would be normal. Like input impedance of 47kOhm. As long as the difference is more than 10x there should be no problem. So in this worst case Ares A90 case its 30x, it's not yet 'livin' on the edge'.

I wrote already that A90 has non-standard, very low input impedance. I don't remember exact figure, but it was shocking low (posted on Internet, most likely it was 2.4 kOhms). It was not written in any Topping specs sheet nor manual. They let you purchase first and find out later...

It is confirmed by the Topping designer that A90 will not work correctly with Denafrips.
The following quote is about SMSL M400 DAC which has the same type passive output as Denafrips and a similar output impedance.

- which wedding do you recommend?
- SMSL M400 MQA or Topping D90 MQA?
The much higher output impedance about 1.2kohm of M400 won't work correctly with A90.

Source: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-headphone-amplifier-review.13592/post-411347