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Cen. Grand DSDAC 1.0 (vs Pontus II)

Hi guys, 

I made an enquiry with a distributer here in the UK, with a view to ordering the Pontus II. However, he's thrown me a curveball by recommending the Cen. Grand DSDAC 1.0 - another Chinese brand, making FPGA based DACs with PCM to DSD up sampling (from what I can make out). There isn't a lot out there on the interweb - reviews, sound character, presentation etc, much of anything really. 

The distributor claims, or suggests that to him the Cen. Grand is "better" than the Pontus II; I've asked him to qualify and elaborate on this, but in the meantime,  thought I'd ask here to see if anyone has direct experience of this brand/DAC. Just for reference/context, the Cen. Grand DSDAC 1.0 is the Standard version at £2500 (the distributer has offered me 10% discount, so £2250).

Thanks in advance 👍

128x128painter24

Showing 3 responses by ja_kub_sz

ja_kub_sz's avatar
ja_kub_sz
254 posts
 

Just a loosely related add on... Presently listening to both the T+A DAC 200 and Cen.Grand DSD DAC 1.0 (CenD1) and liking the CenD1 more. Bigger sound stage front to back and side to side, detailed and extremely smooth. I like the feeling of the space between notes having their own body and air, and the CenD1 does that, a quality that only my M-10x does (obvious not as well), but that's a different story. So having also tried the Denafrips Terminator, I would again give the absolute nod to the CenD1, I've always enjoyed my Sony headphone amps FPGA DSD conversion and I'm very much sold on what Cen.Grand is doing.

ja_kub_sz's avatar
ja_kub_sz
254 posts
 

@painter24 the "left channel drop" happened to me once while switching the DSD up conversion rate. I dropped the DSD rate down, then stepped it back up to 1024 and the left channel came back, but concerning none the less since you mentioned it and this problem worsened for you.

Has your new unit perform better?

Customs did a comple number on my unit, like I was shocked at how they went through everything and kinda just threw stuff back in. The dealer offered me a new unit, but he called it from the get go and asked me to look to see if the unit was "retaped on the bottom" which it was and had the obligatory customs corner punch mark underneath.

ja_kub_sz's avatar
ja_kub_sz
254 posts
 

@painter24 appreciate the feedback. I'll mention this all to my dealer, they've been super attentive throughout the process.

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