Denafrips Ares II - Why did you sell?

@alvin1118  is the new Denafrips Ares Anniversary edition worth upgrading for current Ares II owners? 

https://www.denafrips.com/ares-12th

I just sold an Aeres II last week.  I bought is as an experiment because of all the talk with the fairly inexpensive R2R dacs and how they sound more "tubey" than many chip dacs.  My current Dac is a Hegel HD30 which was almost 5x the cost of the Aeres and I'll be very honest in that the Aeres sounded almost as good but I didn't hear much change as to the sound from my Hegel so I decided to sell it and stay with the HD30.

I would say if I didn't already own the Hegel, The Ares II would have certainly been a temporary keeper.  I thought it sounded great and for less than $800 how can you go wrong.  I purchased it used and sold it in a few days for about a $50 loss which I think was well worth the exercise to learn if the R2R was something I should further investigate.  In the end I've decided to go the other direction and start auditioning  tube dacs.  Nothing wrong with the Hegel just always looking to improve my system.

Hehe. Maybe. Never rule that out. 

@ozziegurkan 

You should have tried a Denafrips Venus II.

I will be listing my Ares 2 soon. Purchased a Yggy LIM and love it’s SQ more. 

Indeed. Many of our customers bought the Ares II to have a taste of the DENAFRIPS sound prior to moving up to the next level up model.

I see an interesting trend recently - some customers bought the Terminator II/Plus after a few weeks of owning the Ares II. It means a lot to us 😃

I sold mine to buy a Pontus, then a Terminator 2 

they get progressively better as you move up the line ,the pontus just better in every area , The T-2 in a whole different league .

I love mine. I have several, some that i am protyping as well.

At its price, its just killer.

I will comment on the above post that it was not better than the BlueSound Node.  Having done multi-person comparisons the Bluesound < $99 schiit Modi 3 < several mid priced DACs < Allo Revolution (ok, that's a DIY kit, buyer beware!, but quite good) < Denefrips.  Both of my prototypes are slightly better, but only slightly (of course, they are dogs' breakfasts at the moment too).

But the bottom line is that i would not put those two in the same zip code the Denefrips is so much better.  of course, you need a really good system to hear all this.

Its trade-offs: warmth, possibly at the expense of some detail, but there's plenty of detail!  Just not "fake" detail courtesy of a rising high end, favored, i think, but old men with progressive HF hearing loss.

Soundstage size is not as good as the absolute best, but we are talking 10X the price and more.

Lots of people experiment and find that's half the fun. Lots of people also can't hear.

I wouldn’t buy a used Topping. Apos gives you 2 years warrantee with a prepaid USPS label for replacement if it breaks. Used you have to find an electronic waste facility.

Found a better dac! Musician Pegasus!😃

The Aries II (which I have) hold their value extremely well. I could at least sell mine for what I paid for it, if not more. Thus, I think it would be easy to sell it knowing that you will get your entire investment back, (and not take a 30-50% hit like most components), and move up to the Pontus, or another ‘even better’ DAC.

I think there are many who will like the idea of buying these used ‘locally’ vs new, albeit I don’t think the wait for a new one is all that bad.

@djspinner i think that's a good point. It's what I did. I bought the Ares II pre-owned and sold it again for the same price I bought it for, minus PayPal charge of course. 

Given the value that most popular used hifi products retain, I'm guessing that many people are buying new (or gently used) Ares II's and other DACs for trial purposes, knowing that if it's not their cup of tea, they can easily flip them without losing much.

If I were in the market for a new DAC, I might be inclined scoop up a selection of Denafrips, Schiit, Mytek, Topping, etc that I found on the used market, knowing that I can sell them easily and only be out shipping and paypal fees.

I started a thread a little while back on why I sold my Ares II.

I sold mine at the start of the year, as I felt it didn’t justify its cost, and SQ performance in my system, against the internal DAC of the Bluesound Node (2021 model).

In hindsight, I may have been a little hasty in selling. I won’t go into why here, but iirc a couple of posters pointed out possible flaws in my A/B methods.

Since then I’ve bought a new DAC from a tiny 2-man operation here in the UK making hand made DACs to order. As they do not advertise, use no marketing or sell to retail outlets, they are able to sell their products at great prices.

Do I regret letting my Denafrips go; yeah, kind of. But if I hadn’t I probably wouldn’t have purchased the DAC I have now, or modded my Node, which has been a great experience. Also, I used the proceeds from the sale to buy my REL sub. 

I think it’s one of the best dacs anywhere near its price point. I’ve had many dacs in the last 3 years and the Ares II can stand on its own again dacs up to $2k. 
 

I only sold mine because I had unexpected and hefty water damage repair bills to take care of, and I had to sell my second system. I will buy another Ares as soon as I’m able to. This dac cuts the right balance between analytical dacs like the RME and tube dacs like Audio Mirror Tubadour 3. I also found it to be better, of course based on my purely subject opinion, than Chord Qutest.