Denafrips Ares technical measurements

Discussion in 'Source Measurements' started by atomicbob, Jul 23, 2017.

  1. Stuff Jones

    Stuff Jones Friend

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    Last edited: Sep 16, 2019
  2. Baten

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  3. Ksaurav402

    Ksaurav402 Friend

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    Does it mean Drop will cancel this and refund the money? as it is not a cheap DAC and I assume Denafrips won't provide any warranty. Also many who bought might not have been aware that it was not approved by manufacturer.
     
  4. Stuff Jones

    Stuff Jones Friend

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    How is this not getting more attention? Drop hasn't even responded to a serious accusation from Denafrips. I know people like Drop but if what Denafrips is alleging is true it is unacceptable, especially coming on the the heals of the Airist R2R bruhaha. The fact that Drop hasn't even addressed the allegations doesnt help their case.

    Maybe @CEE TEE can chime in.
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2019
  5. Stuff Jones

    Stuff Jones Friend

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    Still no official response to Denafrips allegations from Drop (@CEE TEE) here or on their website, nor any commentary from the many Drop collaborators and higher-ups here (e.g. @Hands and @purr1n).

    Drop trying to bring sanity to audio pricing is welcomed. Drop doing that that through unethical behavior with its suppliers would not be. Drop should explain its side of this story or risk losing at least one customer.
     
  6. Hands

    Hands Overzealous Auto Flusher - Measurbator

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    @Stuff Jones Uh, because I don't really know anything about this, nor is it high up on my list of things I care about at the moment. You probably overestimate the extent of my involvement with Drop.
     
  7. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I don't give a f**k. Why the f**k would I know? And how the f**k would @CEE TEE know? He's only doing the special Drop "x" collab projects at Drop. I have 10000 more things to worry about today. I don't work at Drop. I'm not plugged into the 100 buyers at Drop to know what's going on with 1 of 3972 products they are selling.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2019
  8. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Oh, and I'll turn things around: why doesn't Denadrips figure out for themselves the "unscrupulous" retailer who bought too much stock and couldn't sell their shit, so instead offloaded it to Drop?


    P.S. Companies like Focal who do rely on distributors and dealers most certainly do the above. They chase down retailers who break the rules and force them to comply. Otherwise no more Focal for them.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2019
  9. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Also brings Chord crapping on (what was then) Massdrop Mojos a while back to mind, calling them grey market items that would not receive help should anything go amiss.

    I'm with @Stuff Jones as far as wanting to figure out what the hell happened here, but the follow up earlier today (my end) nearly got a dislike for dragging random people into this. Maybe not for tagging CEETEE but I have no clue what his actual job description is, just that he's a ridiculously kind person.

    This does warrant an investigation. Or, you know, people just buy directly from Vinshine for LESS than Drop is asking, international shipping included. I get that this is sketchy as hell, but even with that being the case then just don't buy it. If anything similar happens bring it to the manufacturer's attention so they can call out bullshit (not necessary in this case since Denafrips has already responded).
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2019
  10. mscott58

    mscott58 Friend

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    Not sure how challenging an investigation would be as Denafrips appears to only have ONE distributor!

    From their site: WORLDWIDE SOLE DISTRIBUTOR = www.vinshineaudio.com

    Ah, but it does look like Vinshine has about 10 "partners" (although none in the US) so maybe that's where the bad actors are hiding?

    Could interesting to find out except for one small detail: quoting @purr1n IDGAF!
     
  11. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    Furthermore, if a vendor thought they could offload X number of units to MD at a discount off retail and still make healthy enough profit over wholesale means there might be some meaty margins locked in to Denafrips pricing agreements.

    It could be that COGS on a Denafrips is closer to $200 than $500 or $800.

    Remember, boutique market = manufacturer cost x2 = wholesale x2 = distributor x2 = retail brick-and-morter

    and that's conservative. try looking at luxury good markup coefficients and see why things like magico, YBA, get the reputation they (don't) deserve. They're $4000 speakers, cost, at $100k retail. FAT margins for anybody that touches them.
     
  12. atomicbob

    atomicbob dScope Yoda

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    This is all very interesting discussion about the Denafrips Ares distribution channels but how is it related to Technical Measurements?
     
  13. GoldenOne

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    So i've got an Ares 2 in for review from a friend at the moment and whilst testing some stuff I found that in NOS mode, the impulse response is....well...unusual. (all images made from recordings of Ares 2 balanced output at 768khz ADC recording sample rate)

    [​IMG]

    This is 44.1khz, and it seems it's not a slew related thing as it changes depending on sample rate as shown here:

    44.1khz:
    [​IMG]

    192khz:
    [​IMG]

    This would seemingly imply that it isn't actually NOS, but is just doing linear interpolation between samples?
    Does anyone else have an ADC which can do a decent sample rate and a denafrips DAC to check if this is the same for their unit?

    EDIT: Just put a 44.1khz sample rate 1khz sine through, this doesn't look particularly "NOS" to me.
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: May 8, 2021
  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I suspect that many DACs which can select between NOS and OS will do linear interpolation on the account that there's still an analog LPF needed to kill sampling rate beats. The characteristics (slope, passband, etc.) of such an analog filter will be very different between NOS and OS. I guess it can be done, but that would require switching between two different analog filters, of which the circuits I am not sure I have seen laid out on PCBs.
     
  15. GoldenOne

    GoldenOne Friend

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    Yep.
    I can't see anything on the pcb that would function as a LPF. But also the fact that the transition rate between samples changes depending on sample rate suggests it is indeed a digital domain thing (otherwise it would mean there would be a different lpf circuit for various sample rates in NOS mode which would be silly)

    Im sure its probably not an 'issue' or anything.
    But it just irks me when manufacturers lie about their products. The ares 2 still sounds fine. But it does not look like it is actually NOS as they claim.

    Why make this claim if it isn't true?
     
  16. GoldenOne

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    Just put a 15khz sine through it to check further. Yep, looks like it is literally just linearly interpolating from sample to sample.
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
  17. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    omg.jpg
     
  18. GoldenOne

    GoldenOne Friend

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    Couple interesting tidbits found today after putting the Ares 2 on the APx555:

    The IR seems to show a stepping pattern at 32x the 44.1khz input SR.
    [​IMG]

    HOWEVER, the impulse response derived using AP's transfer function measurement shows what looks to be a normal sinc impulse response.

    Repeating these tests on the holo may or even the ADI-2 with the 'NOS' filter on shows a nos-like IR on both.

    So it seems denafrips 'NOS' definitely isn't NOS and there's some kind of adaptive DSP going on.
    Not necessarily bad but kinda annoying to mislabel it as 'NOS'
     

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