Short and sweet, the DENAFRIPS Terminator is a very
significant development for me, a game changer. If it is within your budget I highly recommend it for
your consideration regardless of the top-end of your budget. Here is where I am
coming from. I love music. My passion over a number of decades has been
pursuing the hi-fi that can let me hear what musicians want to convey and
involve me in their performances. My main rig is vinyl - Acoustical Systems Axiom
Arm and Palladian Cartridge, Micro Seki 5000/5500 Turntable & HS-80 Flywheel,
Acoustical Systems Omnigon Phono Preamp, custom 8W Class A battery monoblocks,
Pioneer Exclusive TAD 2404 Studio Monitors & EnigmaAcoustics Sopranino
Electrostatic Supertweeters. It has been a labour of love and undergone years
of refinement and now to my ears delivers the musical information I need for me
to become immersed in particularly well composed, performed and recorded vinyl.
I have two other rigs, both CD sourced. The first
features Rey Audio Kinoshita KM1V Monitors driven by custom 8W Class A battery
monoblocks fed by a modified Lightspeed Attenuator with a custom power supply featuring
a hand-wound silver wire transformer. Each monoblock, despite its modest 8w Class
A continuous rating has two 12v batteries that provide significant instant
current.
I listen to CDs for their convenience and the wealth
of music that I cannot get on vinyl. But I have found my listening experience lacking,
until recently. All is referential and I believe that my current personal
standard of reproduction is based on the best that I have sampled to date and that
is my vinyl system. If I had never heard this good vinyl playback I guess I
would not have been so frustrated with digital. But things are changing for me.
With the Terminator, my digital home reproduction has finally
gone from something that just allows me to hear my favourite digitally recorded
music to something that makes me stop, focus and listen. The Terminator involves
me in the music and every now and then I get that magical moment when the
emotion of a track overcomes me. And how does it do that? Information! Information
has great significance for my listening experience. What does more accurate information
actually mean to me? We euphemistically say that we “see” or “hear”. Do we? My sight
is like a digital camera – I have sensors, my eyes transmit the stimuli they
have picked up, to my brain which then tries to make sense of the stimuli using
a database of previous experiences, and then comes to a conclusion and tells me
what I am seeing. This was demonstrated to me by instances where I was not
wearing my distance glasses. Once I was walking along a track in low morning
light and I saw something on the ground at a reasonable distance such that I
could not “see” exactly what that something was. It was darkish and long and
lying on the track up ahead of me. This was a potentially hazardous situation
so the brain started working quickly. From the raw incomplete data it had it
concluded that it was either a snake or a dead tree branch. I observed that as
I walked closer and closer the sensory-computing system was looping – the eye
sensors were picking up more data and the brain was recomputing it and
comparing it to its database and concluding “inconclusive” and the process
happened again and again until finally it had enough data and concluded it was
a dried tree branch blown onto the path by the wind. And I observed another
aspect of this process “filling in the blanks”. I had lost my glasses and had
to drive to a location. I wondered how I could do that and found that since I
had driven that road so many times in the past, what I could not actually see
the brain was part filling in from memory. But this was a strain, a lot of
work. My ear system works similarly transmitting sound stimuli it has picked up
to my brain to make sense of it from its database of experiences. So the more
information my hi-fi information produces and the more accurate that
information is, the more easily and quickly I “hear” the music and the more
believable and enjoyable becomes my listening experience.
This is cliché but true, with the Terminator every and
I mean every CD is revealing treasures I have not heard before and allowing me
to understand the music better. And this is to such a degree that I can better appreciate
and get more involved in the music. I can hear so so much more in many regards
and this is over the total frequency spectrum. I can hear more of the leading
edges of guitar plucks. I can hear so much more of the tone and the inner
detail of instruments. I can follow individual instruments better in the mix giving
me a better understanding of the piece being played. The flow, rhythm, variation
of pace and sound pressure are much better rendered bringing pieces alive. I
thought I knew “Chester & Lester” by Chet Atkins and Les Paul but there is
now so much more being reproduced to enthrall me. There is so much more inner
detail and texture of instruments and voices and there is more air around them.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés “Revisité” is now soaked in ambience
and the detail of the instruments and voices is now really something to hear. The
Terminator’s reproduction of the midrange is particularly beautiful. Put on
something like the excellently recorded “The Colonel & The Governor” by
Tommy Emmanuel and Martin Taylor and you can melt with their guitar tones. There is no embellishment here, just the richness
of the natural tone. Dynamics and bass are excellent. Steely Dan’s “Two Against
Nature” is now wonderfully taut and dynamic, giving the music the foundation
that this brilliant duo envisaged.
With a fine digital source the Terminator performs exceptionally
well. The Jay Audio CDT-3 MK2 transport makes the Terminator sing beautifully. The
Terminator allowed me to hear the significant improvement that the CDT-3 MK2 is
over the already very good MK1. The Terminator scaled up wonderfully. I use the
i2s HDMI connection between the two which allows the bypassing of the S/PIDF in
the Terminator. The cable is modest 1m Belden HDMI HDE001MB.
I hope to try an Audioquest Diamond HDMI cable and hear if it makes a
difference.
Let me take one aspect of the Terminator’s excellent
performance to try and give you an example of what this DAC can do for me. I
came home last night and put on “Accomplice One”, the latest CD by one of the
greatest, Tommy Emmanuel. I was wasted after a particularly tough working day
and normally with this frame of mind and depleted energy level I would find very
fast and highly energetic tunes like track 4 and 5 with their frenetic string
playing bordering on irritating. But not with the Terminator fed by the CDT-3
MK2. The rhythms were so well delineated and “pulsing”, and the string tones so
beautifully harmonically fleshed out, that I was drawn in and engrossed.
Or take one of my all-time favourite CDs,
Emilie-Claire Barlow’s “Like a Lover”. Ms Barlow’s voice is recorded close and
“hot” making it very revealing but also bright sounding. And the bright
recording of her voice in parts is telling of components that are not accurate
and can make her voice sound harsh. Oh my, through the Terminator on a track
like “The Things We Did Last Summer” the recording drips with detail, emotion
and seduction. I felt like I was intimately and illegally close to this
wonderful artist – the changes in tempo, intonation, modulation, sound pressure
etc of her voice are beautifully revealed in outstanding detail and tone. And
then there is the excellent texture and dynamics of the accompanying plucked
upright bass.
My second CD system features Stax SR-009 headphones driven
by a Stax SRM-007tII amp, upgraded with Mundorf silver-in-oil caps. For the
first time, thanks to the Terminator and CDT-3 pairing, I have started to hear
what the Stax SR-009 is capable of, even driven by the Stax SRM-007tII which arguably
does not have sufficient current to drive the 009 to their full potential.
Current in this regard should not be confused with volume - I do not play my
SRM-007tII much past 10 o’clock. I am for the first time appreciating listening
to the 009 without feeling that they are being massively held back. I am
awaiting a DIY T2 amp to replace the 007tII and look forward to this system
scaling up.
I was so taken with the Terminator driven by the Jay’s
Audio CDT-3 MK2 that I have bought two sets of both, one for each system, and
sold my previous digital gear which included an Esoteric K-03x. The Terminator
blew away the Esoteric’s DAC and the CDT-3 MK1 blew away the Esoteric’s
transport. The Terminator is finely built, an ergonomically excellent
functional design, comes with a 3 year warranty, and most importantly sounds excellent.
And for me it is a bargain at its price. I wholeheartedly recommend it and the
excellent Jay’s Audio CDT-3 MK2 for your consideration. And last but not least,
the worldwide distributor, Alvin of Vinshine Audio provides service second to
none. Thanks for reading. If you like photos this review also appears on head-fi, Dedicated Source Components.
