Just wanted to add my experience to this thread. I purchased the Ares II in Septemeber of 2022. I had a very good experience running my streamer through it, but when I tried to run my cd player I noticed a fair amount of chirping/skipping. Just a few days ago I performed the firmware update and so far all skipping is gone and the DAC has never sounded better. The folk at Vinshine were enormously helpful throughout the entire process.