First, I have a Musician Pegasus that is a very close relative of your Pontus ll, and when I bought a DDC that allowed me to feed it with its God-given i2S input — game changer. Even using a bargain-basement 6” HDMI cable like this (and yeah, you wanna use a short an HDMI cable as possible for audio) the improvement was immediate and significant.
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=13578
I’d buy this DDC cause it’s basically a Denafrips Iris (that I own) clone and much cheaper…
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275587756830
Once you get this taken care of, you should explore AZ Silver Reference interconnects. They Da Bomb! They don’t sound like silver. They don’t sound like copper. They just SOUND. Here are some used examples, but if you can find some used Silver Ref l or ll you’ll be very well served. Just my experience FWIW.
https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649934003-acoustic-zen-technologies-silver-reference-absolute/images/4226752/