Ok guys, the Ares was delivered to me today. First of all, I wish to thank Alvin of Vinshine Audio for his outstanding customer service! A great man and a great company to deal with!
I had some 2 hours today to do a quick A/B comparison between the Ares and the Chord Mojo. That was until the Mojo was handed over to the new owner. Disclaimer: the Ares was tested cold, I couldn't give it a proper initial burning in because I had to leave home and meet the buyer of my Mojo. According to reports on this forum, Ares needs some 150-300h to be fully burned in, so this short review is just for the purpose of expressing my initial impressions.
The setup: iMac (Roon core) - SOTM sMS-200 streamer (Roon endpoint) powered by 12v Sbooster BOTW P&P Eco linear PSU - Chord C-USB cable - DAC (Ares and Mojo) - Tellurium Q Ultra Black RCA interconnect - Naim Supernait powered by Naim HiCap DR - Tellurium Q Ultra Black speaker cables - Dynaudio Focus 260 speakers.
My SMS-200 streamer recognized the Ares immediately, no problems whatsoever with drivers. From the first second of turning on the Ares it is evident that bass is superior on the Ares when compared to Mojo. It is very deep and very well controlled, thumbs up to Denafrips for this. The soundstage is slightly deeper on the Ares, however Mojo exhibits a taller and perhaps a tiny bit wider soundstage. With the Ares the vocals appear to be lower in space and very upfront, sort of "in your face", quite different to what the Mojo does with vocals. On the other hand, the occasional harshness I could here with the Mojo is now all gone. The Ares also appears to have a blacker background than the Mojo, and individual instruments are easier to pinpoint in space. The layering is very very good. The magic of the Ares evidently lies in the midrange, it is very rich, fluid and seductive if I may say. Due to being cold and not burned in, the Ares exhibited a level of "graininess", but I expect this to disappear fully in a few days.
So these are my initial impressions, and could be very much irrelevant since the Ares was cold, and being a R2R DAC, it needs a week or two to really start singing. But judging from the first 2 hours, it a damn fine device for the money, and I am a very happy owner.
