[joseG86]

Finally finished my Pontus II review. Venus II as-well!
I'm in love..



Chibs

Keep making HQ content like this please

 

[shafat777]

Finally finished my Pontus II review. Venus II as-well!
I'm in love..



Chibs

Excellent review. Very in depth and informational. Keep up the great work good sir !!!

 

[Chibs]

Yes... And I need to do some more listening with my speakers. That's just it... I'm a bit of a newbie to actually owning good gear. My volume of reference is small. I read, I watch videos... I like yours... And when people talk of differences... They speak... Or I perceive... As BIG differences. When in reality, it's a difference, but small/subtle. So I learn to correct my point of reference...

However, when it comes to Pontus/R2R... It is literally huge difference. Just as you said. Except, barely anything. Even if huge means clear, that's cool. But I am not hearing it. With my friends speakers, the difference was clear, noticeable. I'm not saying huge. And whether that difference is worth the cost is a whole other discussion... I'm just saying, with my supporting gear I should certainly hear a difference.

Oh... well I just irritated the wife, but no, not really. No difference on my 707s near field.

You had a bluesound.. did you have them together? Did you A/B them? What was the difference?

I think it depends on which headphones / speakers but that would be something interesting to look into.
Differences in my loud speaker setup were quite noticeable to the point where I loved one and disliked an other. That's pretty huge imo!
I can plug my Stellia's into a potato and they'll sound great but notice differences between DAC / amplification in tougher to drive Cans.

Were you referring to my Bluesound node or Powernode? I did a video on both if you're interested.
Chibs

 

[Chibs]

Excellent review. Very in depth and informational. Keep up the great work good sir !!!

Keep making HQ content like this please

Thank you so much guys!! Had a lot of fun planing and filming that vid
Chibs

 

[joseG86]

Thank you so much guys!! Had a lot of fun planing and filming that vid
Chibs

Alvin sent an email to all the subs of Denafrip's mailing list lol, way to go!

Cheers!

 

[alvin1118]

@Chibs , thanks for the high quality review, it's awesome!

 

[Chibs]

@Chibs , thanks for the high quality review, it's awesome!

Thanks Alvin!
Looking forward to trying out more of your stuff down the road. So happy with my Venus II!

 

[msing539]

Just confirming, on the Pontus, there's no way to have USB and I2S inputs outputting at the same time, right? You'd have to select the respective input?

 

[sajunky]

Just confirming, on the Pontus, there's no way to have USB and I2S inputs outputting at the same time, right? You'd have to select the respective input?

One DAC, one rule. No mixing of a signal from two different sources. On PC it can be done when using system mixer.

But you probably meant connecting both DAC (analogue) outputs simultaneously. It was a matter of a prior discussion. On other DACs you can, but on Pontus it leads to sound degradation.

 

[msing539]

One DAC, one rule. No mixing of a signal from two different sources. On PC it can be done when using system mixer.

But you probably meant connecting both DAC (analogue) outputs simultaneously. It was a matter of a prior discussion. On other DACs you can, but on Pontus it leads to sound degradation.

Thank you, I sort of figured but wanted to confirm.

 

[roderickvd]

Has anyone modded the clocks on the Ares or Pontus? @sajunky maybe?

I believe the clocks to be from SCTF, at least from the pictures I saw of the Pontus. Can't find much on the phase noise of the SCTF clocks, except for their TXCO (which does look a lot like the one in the Venus): -113 dBc @ 100 Hz, -135 dBc @ 1 kHz and -148 dBc @ 10 kHz. Pretty good but not state of the art; about 15 dBc off from what Crystek could offer at those frequencies.

A Pontus with upgraded XO's (not TCXO's) could be really awesome, audibly maybe even better than the Venus. The two extra bits are nice and so are the 0.005% resistors, but at this point I believe that improvements to the XO's will be much more audible than improvements to linearity (which is what those ladder upgrades will do).

 

[sajunky]

Has anyone modded the clocks on the Ares or Pontus? @sajunky maybe?

I believe the clocks to be from SCTF, at least from the pictures I saw of the Pontus. Can't find much on the phase noise of the SCTF clocks, except for their TXCO (which does look a lot like the one in the Venus): -113 dBc @ 100 Hz, -135 dBc @ 1 kHz and -148 dBc @ 10 kHz. Pretty good but not state of the art; about 15 dBc off from what Crystek could offer at those frequencies.

A Pontus with upgraded XO's (not TCXO's) could be really awesome, audibly maybe even better than the Venus. The two extra bits are nice and so are the 0.005% resistors, but at this point I believe that improvements to the XO's will be much more audible than improvements to linearity (which is what those ladder upgrades will do).

Our raised important clock questions. I agree with. If any doubt, it is worth to try.

No, I wasn't given opportunity even to look inside Ares, not to mention doing a surgery replacing clocks. In the comparative Denafrips review (a link posted recently) is said that Ares II has fem-to-second clocks, it is how Ares was tested.

It is conflicting with your finding, as SCTF is a generic Chineese brand, not particularly bad, but they do not make femtosecond clocks. It could change, users need to verify which clocks are inside. By example Audio GD previously had offered low jitter clocks as an option, now such option is only for R2R-11. All higher models R-1 2021 and up use low jitter Accusilicon clocks by default.

When you compare clock specs, the value at higher frequencies is less important, as PLL inside a DAC works effectively removing jitter at these frequencies. Besides, a difference between 160dB and 140dB is not an issue. You must look in specs for a low jitter at 10Hz and 100Hz.

Whether femtosecond clocks are better than TCXO, it depends on the DAC electronics. When a DAC use PLL for everything (like Denafrips), then a good brand TCXO sounds better than Crystek. OCXO is even better, but much more expensive.

 

[roderickvd]

No, I wasn't given opportunity even to look inside Ares, not to mention doing a surgery replacing clocks. In the comparative Denafrips review (a link posted recently) is said that Ares II has fem-to-second clocks, it is how Ares was tested.

I know… I haven’t opened up my Ares II yet but I saw the close-up photos of the Pontus that clearly says SCTF. Then the pictures of the Venus have TCXO’s, seemingly unlabeled, that look exactly like the SCTFs.

When you compare clock specs, the value at higher frequencies is less important, as PLL inside a DAC works effectively removing jitter at these frequencies. Besides, a difference between 160dB and 140dB is not an issue. You must look in specs for a low jitter at 10Hz and 100Hz.

Unfortunately no specs or measurements I could find at low frequencies. It is an untested hypothesis that the entire line in the phase noise graph would be pushed down (improved) and while I know this is not necessarily so (the slope may be steeper or flatter) I think it’s a safe assumption that Crystek, Accusilicon, NDK may be better than SCTF.

Whether femtosecond clocks are better than TXCO, it depends on the DAC electronics. When a DAC use PLL for everything (like Denafrips), then a good brand TXCO sounds better than Crystek. OXCO is even better, but much more expensive.

I’m not sure on this one but isn’t the PLL before the FIFO buffer and so before the clock? In that case temperature controlled or not would be things onto themselves, not related to the PLL.

Given the same engineering and production qualities of clocks, I would say that OCXO > XO > TCXO for audio purposes. TCXO improves long term stability but in audio we are only concerned with short term stability. Yet the temperature control loop will cause greater phase noise (due to steering on the short term) and pass EM noise as well because of the feedback loop.

But that’s a different matter really, would be a fun experiment to try both better XO’s as well as TCXO’s

 

[sajunky]

Unfortunately no specs or measurements I could find at low frequencies. It is an untested hypothesis that the entire line in the phase noise graph would be pushed down (improved) and while I know this is not necessarily so (the slope may be steeper or flatter) I think it’s a safe assumption that Crystek, Accusilicon, NDK may be better than SCTF.

Yes, and it is normal. When specs are not available, these are general purpose oscilators and a crystal cut may be done not for a minimal phase jitter. SCTF's are general purpose, reliable brand, sufficient for many applications, but not the best in such critical places as a DAC.

I mentioned (not very clear) that ultra-low phase jitter oscilators do not have the same slope of characteristic. TCXO type has more flat characteristic across frequencies. It is important, as they have better specs at low frequencies 10-100Hz (where it matters). Ultra low phase technology is kept secret, I expect there is a specialised microchip inside with a digital clock synthesiser tuned to a single crystal frequency. It would explain why there is a better performance at higher frequencies, easily crossing -160dB line. Some other brands like SiTime say openly that their ultra jitter models use clock synthesiser. There are all relatively not expensive. I agree that brands you mentioned above have the best reputation.

 

[Smoothstereo]

For past and current owners of the Pontus 2, any thing sonically you wish was better or felt that some areas were lacking compared to other dacs?