My guess is you have a faulty unit. Contact Alvin and ask a new one. None of us here have had similar issues! I can see now why you prefer a cambridge dacmagic .
Vinshine wouldn't refund my Kinki even though it had major transformer hum from day 1 that could be heard several meters away from the amp, they said it is not faulty. The UK dealer did persuade them to swap it for the Denafrips amp, but I would have preferred a full refund. The Kinki had various other issues. Like I said Quality Control is an issue with these Chinese products.
It was definitely a concern I had. I pulled the trigger anyway. And, well, honestly, if I liked the performance more, I would just deal with it. But I don't think it lives up to its hype, and on top of that it has other issues. And for $800 in 2021... let's just say I still get far more joy from my Sumiko and Nagaoka cartridges. And the DACMagic, which has always been reliable, and sounds fantastic.
Very similar to what I'm experiencing. Have exchanged emails with Alvin. He asked that I disable the "Audio Clock Trim" on my Node 2i. I did but no joy!
Have owned my Pontus II since the end of June. Trouble-free until just recently. I leave it on and playing 24/7.
yeah that sounds super odd and you may be one of the first to report here with skip issues on a pontus ii - have you tried a full power down and up again? hopefully denafrips comes up with a formal stance on it and a fix via firmware update.
got mine end of april and been having it on 24/7 with no issues to date so keeping my fingers crossed!
GoldenSound did a YouTube review of the Ares 2. One thing he mentioned was that latency varied. Latency depended on when you plugged in the source. Sometimes the latency would be low. Sometimes the latency would be high. It all depended on a bit of randomness on when the source was plugged in or when the DAC was turned on. Perhaps the glitches depend on what the latency is? On whether you get lucky with when you plug everything in and turn everything on to achieve the optimal latency that allows the buffers to properly buffer. Maybe if the buffers get too short you get a glitch. And whether the buffers are too short depends on luck and timing of when you turn the gear on or plug things in.
I ended up selling my ARES II. However, the buyer recently emailed me to say that he's getting random static every now and then. He has it connected via USB and is using the XLR outs. I didn't use either of these connections during the time I owned it, or experience any static, so I'm a bit lost as to what I can advise him. The best I could do was send him links to the USB firmware info on the Denafrips site and advised him to email them explaining his issue. I didn't utilize any of the USB related info from their site, so I hope this can solve his issue. Meanwhile, I'm thoroughly enjoying a new Dacmagic 100 ! No settings or filters, faultless playback, ample connections ......... and it sounds wonderful.
The DACMagic is a massive improvement over the Ares II to my ears. I've said this before, but I think it's worth repeating--I spend 90% of my time listening to vinyl, and in my estimate it sounds 10 times closer to analog than Ares II. I do AB comparisons regularly because I am waiting for that epiphany that explains to me why so many people think the Ares II is the so awesome, but it hasn't come. It's never even felt like a close comparison.
Many thanks so far on giving me advise on my questions. Also interesting to hear that there is at some point also skipping issues with the Pontus II. Would be interesting if this depends on the used transport or not.
So Alvin had me hook up a cd player to my Pontus II to see if the problem was isolated to the Node 2i. There was no skipping with the Pontus II being fed by the cd player via coax. Unplugged the Node 2i from everything and powered it down and reconnected everything. No skipping currently. Have the Audio Clock Trim disabled. Fingers crossed!
I never experienced any issues whatsoever with my Ares II but did end up selling it because what I really wanted was a Border Patrol with 2 SPDIF inputs which wasn't available at the time when shopping for a new DAC. Once it became available, I picked one up. I am currently running my setup with just the analog outs from my streamer and CD player and in all reality, the SQ is perfectly acceptable like this and I really don't see a need for an external DAC.
hopefully that fixed it. I opened up the bluos app recently and it prompt me to update firmware for the node which I ignored - that may be a possible cause too if you have updated it recently. I also have audio clock trim disabled since I got the pontus ii and have not heard any skips or have any general issues so far months into ownership.
I’m still getting skips on both CXC and Node 2i with my Venus II. I will try physically powering it down to see if there’s any mileage in the theory a few posts up…
Update: No skipping of any kind any longer. Alvin has continued to email me checking on things and offering guidance. It is very possible that a cable became loose somehow (inserting a USB stick in the back of the Node 2i) that may have contributed? I'm happy and hearing beautiful music again.
Still going strong with no further issues. Alvin has continued to stay in touch and ask for updates. Seems like a quality guy. Happy listening everyone!
thats awesome and seems to be back in line that doesnt seem like pontus owners have a common root problem
My short update is: after powering the Venus II down for a few minutes and then powering up, cd micro-skips seem to have gone - or, if they're there, I haven't noticed them so much. However, still want to see Denafrips do a 'once-and-for-all' FW fix to ensure that the buffer is big enough always to avoid this. Now sort of considering replacing the CXC with a Jay's Audio Labs CDT2 mk3 if I get a new job (I have one, I just don't want to shell out more hifi money until I've got a better one )
Just posted this in the hardware section and someone reminded me that there's a denafrips thread, so figured I'd try here. Just got a used Denafrips Pontus II I'm very excited about but having a hard time getting it to run. My prior set up was a small NUC with an Intel i5 processor and 16 gb of ram running Windows 7 into an Eastern Electric Tube DAC Supreme. I use jriver MC26. It worked wonderfully, but wanted to try out an R2R DAC, so got the Pontus. First thing I had to do was update my operating system on the NUC to Windows 10 because the Thesycon driver that the Pontus uses is not compatible with Windows 7. System install seemed to go fine, used the recommended settings for jriver, but cannot get anything to play using the ASIO driver. Constant buffering and freezing of any type of files, even when I set a high buffering rate. I thought it might have been an issue with the Windows 10 install, so did a clean install last night, hooked up my old EE DAC this morning and it played fine through jriver. Switched back in the Pontus, reinstalled the Thesycon drivers and same problem - freezing, crashing, etc. Unusable! Just now I went into the jriver settings and switched the audio device output to Denafrips WASAPI, though the install manual tells me to use the ASIO driver. It seems to work much better with WASAPI with the occasional hang, but looks like I can't play any DSD files. I'm not much of a computer tech. Any ideas of what the conflict or problem might be? Anyone else run into issues with Windows 10 and the Denafrips drivers? Any help would be much appreciated!
JRiver will play DSDs. In the setup you need to select DoP (Data over PCM). Control + O to open the settings menu. Select Audio on the left side. In the middle of the options on the right you should see an option for Bitstreaming. Set it to DSD. See if that gets it to work.
Yeah, I followed those instructions to a tee on intial set up. That got me to using the ASIO which was completely unustable. The WASAPI fairs better, but still is giving me issues. Must be an issue with my Windows installation and/or my hardware. I'm doing a clean Windows 10 install from microsoft's website instead of the start up stick I made and see if that helps. Maybe I need a new computer. Irony is, this little NUC is the only windows PC I own. All the other computers in the house are Macs that are being used for work/school. I may need to ditch the NUC. I was looking at the new Imacs with the M1 chip.
