Dear Mr. Ebaen, I am Paolo Verzegnassi from Trieste/Italy. Sorry to disturb but I would need your experience to try to banish all doubts about the difference between the Formula and Denafrips converters. I live in an area where there are no specialized shops or centers to listen to these products and Aqua don't give their products for a listening test at home.
1) You write that Denafrips seems to not be so transparent as the Formula. My question is: is the Denafrips capable to reproduce the ambiance, space between instruments, air, height of voices, dimensions of the room, anyway ? If you have to give a score to the two dacs for this aspect of the reproduction, which would it be?
2) Which of the two dacs has the most natural and believable sound (on the whole, therefore not too much bass, no harshness, cleanliness, instrumental timbre, sound colours)? The manner to evaluate this feature should be the satisfaction level after a listening test.
3) Which of them has the most explicit PraT?
4) If today you had to chose between Formula and Denafrips (or another), which would it be?
Thank you. Kind regards, Paolo Verzegnassi
I'll jump straight to 4) and tell you that I recently replaced the Formula with the Terminator. This now gives me a direct I²S connection via HDMI, between both the Soundaware D300Ref USB bridge and the Jay's Audio CDT2 MkII disc transport which does make a difference. Sonically, I'd rate the Denafrips as denser/weightier but that's relative to the Formula without xHD upgrade. I never heard the latest version. Functionally the Terminator has more input options and supports DSD which Aqua do not. As a reviewer, more options are useful. For myself and on sonics however, I'd consider either a final machine at the top of the DAC game. I've simply mixed things up for a change.
Srajan
