Ares R2R Loaner

@bxh The best way to get it into the country is if someone drives it over (either from someone who lives right near the border, or from a shipping depot). Otherwise import fees will kill you unless it's brought in undeclared or "disabled" and listed as parts for repair. Shipping outwards should be fine though.

 

A quick heads-up ...

I'm delayed a couple of days shipping the Ares to @Elnrik ... it'll go out tomorrow (instead of Monday, past, as planned).

Apologies ... unavoidable life-factors.

 

No worries

 

DENAFRIPS Ares is now on it's way to @Elnrik

 

Package received! Thanks.

 

Ready to send along to @mscott58. PM sent.

 

PM received and responded to. Thanks @Elnrik!

 

Received the Ares from @Elnrik today. Cheers

 

Ares sent to @Vansen earlier today. Cheers

 

@Elnrik & @mscott58, may is ask for your review of Ares, objectively?
May PM me if it's more suited.

 

Do we have an Aries thread to post impressions in? I don't see one.

 

Perhaps you could create one ? I'm not sure if there is a thread for Ares.

 

If you just want to go generic, there's a Denafrips thread here. It's not specific to the Ares, but it would seem more appropriate than posting impressions in the technical measurements thread. I also don't imagine it would be a problem for you to post impressions right here in the loaner thread.

 

Sounds good. I'll write up my thoughts and stick them here.

 

@Vansen, you might well be the last person who get to listen to the Ares. I've decided to withdraw the loaner program.

Many thanks for the participation, happy listening!

 

A big thank you to @alvin1118 for supplying the Aries to us. Ok, I'll do the normal preface by saying this is the first time I've spent significant time with an R2R DAC, my first review I've written on SBAF, and the first item I've ever tried on the loaner program... so be gentle. I'm going to give my honest opinion, and let the chips fall where they may.

I guess I'll cut straight to the chase. Did I like it? No. I didn't. The Aries didn't synergize with my system well at all. (Jotunheim and Eikon).

I kept the setup simple, feeding the Aries with USB directly from a PC. Music playback duties were handled by both J River media center and Google Play Music. I didn't have the opportunity to try spdif or anything like the Eitr, which I suspect might have made a difference.

I found the detail to be lacking. I told another Friend that there is more plankton in my tap water than in that DAC. Listening to Rebecca Pidgeon's Spanish Harlem, near the beginning of the song you can hear the bass player lift and reseat the instrument on the floor, and before the drum line starts you can hear the drummer pick up his sticks. I can hear this clearly on the Jot's built in DAC. I couldn't hear that on the Aries without cranking the volume above normal listening levels. That might seem like I'm nitpicking, but these are fundamental elements of the song that should be obvious on any sound system. That it couldn't resolve it is a bad sign to me. Worse than bad, perhaps, because a DAC should be relied upon to present to the listener with the detail that is in the recording, not mask it.

Mid tone seems ok overall. The bass seems slightly elevated. Treble seems soft. I can overlook any perceived sins here as being flavor, or character, of that particular kit - just like how OTL will sound different than SS. I would like to think that one's preferences dictate if those tonal characteristics are good or bad.

For me, it doesn't work. I get the sense that the sound was tuned on the Aries using a SS amp and a stock HD800, and they tried to correct the lack of bass and the treble peaks. It doesn't translate well to other headphones.

On other fronts, I found the LEDs to be too hard to see to be useful. The phase button was interesting to play with, but in the end I thought it was merely novel, not very useful in daily use.

TL;DR - I think this DAC masks detail, which is a major sin to me. It sounds soft. There might be setups where it complements the rest of the chain, but it definitely didn't do so in mine. Would I buy this? No. Not when the built in DAC in the Jotunheim is abundantly more resolving.

 

A couple notes... I read @Hands review of the Pontus after posting my review. My impressions were sent to @mscott58 (he asked for them) in our private messages used to arrange shipping, weeks ahead of Hands' review.

The USB cable was replaced, and a different PC used when I started noticing the sonic characteristics and detail muffle. I thought it could have been a bad cable, so I tried eliminating that as a possibility. I've never had ground loop issues from power in that room.

The unit was left on over a weekend playing music to warm up before I heard a single note played from it.

I don't think I had a bad unit.

Very sorry @alvin1118 . Truly.