I am very new to R2R. One day, one of my friends told me to try his new Ares DAC. At first I did not care much. After a while, another friend told me that Denafrips's Terminator was very good. Therefore, I ordered the Pontus II since I trust these 2 friends. Then, my tube preamp was having hum sound so that I ordered an Athena.
My source is a HiFi Rose 150b streamer. I have 2 power AMPs, Willsenton R8 and McIntosh MC452. The speakers are ATC 11. Actually, my 150b has a built-in DAC with a MQA decoder, but I wanted to try other DAC, just something different than the 150b.
Actually, Pontus and Athena were not very impressive when I just received them. The sound was okay. After I was breaking them in for 5 days, the sound was getting better and better. I wish Alvin would have offered the seeking service that would pre break-in the HiFi equipment for customers. It is a very common service for cable vendors.
While I am liking the sound more and more, I added 2 Kojo Crystal-E ground box to my Pontus II. Hell yes, I really like the sound now.
Credit: Billy N. @ CA USA
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