DAC finalist please help

Musician Pegasus r2r DAC is more than comparable in sound and build quality to Denifrips Pontus II. Listened and compared them both and saved over $1K by going with the Pegasus. Internals are nearly identical.

They are not even close to being "identical" internally. Readers should search for images and compare. To use the most obvious example, the Pontus employs two toroidal transformers, as opposed to one for the Pegasus.

I have no opinion on the quality of the Pegasus, but it is not closely comparable, in terms of components, to the Pontus.

of the dacs mentioned so far which i have tried i would break into the following groupings - for your benefit in system matching for tonality

smoothest/most analog/warmest mids-midbass: mhdt, audio mirror, a-n - bear in mind these dacs can have tonality tuned with tube choice as well

slightly brighter: denafrips, schiit mb (gumby and yggy)

brightest/leanest/’fastest’: rme adi2, mytek bb

others to consider which are exceptionally natural sounding and great sq for $ -- metrum and ayre codex (fitting in 1st group), ava valve dacs (second group)

i won’t say which is my favorite, it so depends on rest of system and synergies desired - but here is what i have kept vs gone (have 3 systems across couple homes so lots of duplicate gear)

kept:

audiomirror tubador 3 se
sonnet morpheus
metrum jade and amethyst
mhdt orchid stockholm paradisea istanbul w mods
chord m scaler and hugo tt2 mojo
van alstine fet topp/hybrid dac
jolida black ice glass fx (upgraded)
dena pontus
auris d1d
ayre codex

sold:

chord 2qute qutest
neko d100-2
schiit bifrost mb gumby yggy
border patrol se-i
psa directstream
topping d90
rme adi 2
dena ares 2, term
metrum octave
mytek brooklyn
benchmark dac2
w4s dac 2-2
smsl vmv d1

many of the dacs sold are good, just didn't work for me tonally, or didn’t seem better to me than less expensive ’relatives’ or alternatives for a similar sound signature

a few others out there i will try over time, like a holo, a lampizator... not in a hurry, as the ones i have all clear the bar for being very listenable with the tonality and resolution i seek to enjoy streaming and files served

Tubes used in the DAC are 5977 subminiature tubes. They are mounted on a special tube adaptor, which is plugged into a regular 9 pin tube socket. You can just unplug the adaptor and use regular 9pin tubes, which can be any of the following tubes: 6N1P, 6DJ8, ECC88, 6922 and 6H23P. After experimenting with many tubes we found that 5977 is the best sounding tube for this application. Second best sounding tube is 6N1P. After all it’s a matter of taste. All the 9pin tubes mentioned above have almost twice the gain of 5977, therefore you will have twice higher output level from the DAC - around 2V. Expected tube life for 5977 subminiature tubes is  >5000 hrs.