Auralic Vega G2 or Denafrips Pontus II 12th + streamer?

@soix I pulled the trigger on the Zen 3 and it should arrive later this week. I should be gearing up to pick up a DAC shortly as well, but I'm still on the fence a bit.

Right now, I think I'm torn between either:

Denafrips Pontus II 12th + Denafrips Iris DDC

or

Lampizator Amber 3 (I could get one used in about the same price range as the denafrips combo).

I'm leaning toward the Denafrips though, I think.

@soix Thanks! That makes sense. I hesitate since regardless of the choice, they'll be getting amplified by SET amplification and going through both a tube pre-amplifier and the tube amp. I also will be listening to more lively music versus vinyl where I focus mostly on Jazz, so having a bit more detail might be a good idea to balance out the tube amplification.

Worst comes to worst, I can always sell whichever one I go with and get the other down the line. They both seem to have fairly good resale value and sell fairly quickly.

@olyaudio I forgot to follow up here!

I did end up going with the pontus/iris combo for the dac/ddc to pair with the Zen. They sound great, but definitely invest in a high quality HDMI and USB to use with them. The HDMI is best if kept very short (ideally less than 1m if possible. Mine is 0.5m). I got mine on sale from DH Labs. The cheap amazon cables I had did not sound great - in fact, connecting the DDC to the DAC with this cheap amazon HDMI actually made it sound worse, oddly enough. Like a veil was over the music. Replacing the cables eliminated this issue though.

Everything was fairly straight forward and easy to set up. The pontus was a little more annoying to set up, but they have a video walkthrough on youtube for it that was helpful. The pontus if buying new does NOT come with a power cord, so keep that in mind. I missed it when reading the listing details and was surprised when I received it. I had some spares laying around though.

The Zen is nice and the app is fairly simple to use, though I do have some annoyances with it. In order to navigate to qobuz to see my playlists, it's a fair amount of clicks, all of which have some slight delay, and the app likes to boot back out to the screen to select the device fairly often - which means clicking back on the device, then the music tab, then scrolling all the way down and clicking on qobuz, then scrolling down to get to playlists, etc. It's a minor thing, but it is a little irritating. I think once I get an ipad to use as a controller instead of trying to use it on my phone, it might be a bit less of an issue due to the larger screen.

Otherwise, easy to use, easy to drag and drop music files onto the device via shared network folder, etc. Spotify connection can be a little bit finicky if you use it or anyone else in your household does, but can connect multiple accounts to be able to use it for spotify as well, if you so desire.

Sound wise, I'm quite pleased. While it's not 1:1 vinyl equivalent, I wasn't expecting that at this price point. It's pretty close though, which is saying something. Significantly better than any of the more 'budget' solutions I've tried in the past.

Since I primarily listen to vinyl on my system, this works really nicely for me. If I ever choose to upgrade down the line, would likely just stick with these two brands and move up to their top of the line offerings most likely. I would consider demoing a Lampizator DAC at some point possibly, but the price points on those are a different ball game.

Anyway, long winded but hope that is helpful!

True. Ideally, close to analog sound. I prefer large soundstage, great midrange and vocals, tight bass.

I have seen suggestions to use something like a bluesound node as a streamer-only so the app experience is more robust, but I'm not sure if its outputs bypassing the built-in DAC are great. I tried looking on their website but it keeps glitching out on me when I try to look at specs - go figure. I see the Lumin U1 mini recommended a lot in other threads, so that may be an option on the used market. Looks like they can be had for about $1500 - not cheap, but not wild either.

I've been looking at these in particular:

1. Denafrips Pontus II (12th can be had new for a pretty fair price)
2. Lampizator Amber 3 (a bit pricey, but used it isn't too too bad)
3. MHDT Orchid (can't find too much info on this though)

@evank - what does the rest of your gear look like? Do you use tube amplification or SS? I was a little concerned with the Orchid given I'm going to be running it through tubes. I feel like it might get a little too warm sounding overall.

 If I had tubes downstream I’d go with the Pontus, but that’s just me.

@soix Yeah, this is how I'm leaning myself. Likely going SET for my amplification, so it might be a little TOO much of a good thing going with a tube DAC as well.

@soix I considered that, but the form factor of the mini and ability to just stack it on its PSU is very helpful for me. Don’t have a ton of space to fit this stuff in on an already pretty full rack, so saving half the horizontal shelf space is a major benefit. Would allow me to have the streamer and DAC on the same shelf next to each other or could squeeze it next to something else if necessary. I haven’t seen or found another streamer solution that is this small form that offers the level of robust UX as this does. There are some more DIY solutions, I suppose, with something like a Pi, but I don’t want to mess with that or use a computer like that as a source.

But, if I somehow stumbled on a used Zen at the same price point as the mini + PSU, I'd probably strongly consider it anyway.

Thanks for the tips!

I think I have decided on going the Zen Mini mk3 + PSU and Denafrips Pontus II combo. I don’t want to dump a ton of $ into streaming setup at this time since I primarily listen on vinyl, but I think this will be a very solid start. If I want to upgrade in the future, having the separates will make it easier to just swap something out like, say if I wanted to get a Lampizator DAC or something. Just not really wanting to make that kind of investment into it unless I’m spending around 1/2 my listening time with streaming.

I should be able to track down a used Zen mini + PSU for ~$1500 I’d think - just have to wait for a pair to pop up. There's usually a few pontus examples on market used at any one time so that’ll be fairly simple too unless the 12th anniversary one is worth just shelling out the few hundred extra it would cost vs a used pontus II (non 12th).