innuos pulse compared to denafrips gaia 12th

Before purchasing any Denafrips product,  my advice is to consider their customer service.  My experience is that it's terrible to non existent.  I have a brand new Hermes 12th DDC that's sitting on a shelf because it won't play 192khz files.  They will not service the unit, even though it came from them defective.  They want me to downgrade the firmware myself,  which is a cumbersome process,  requiring the use of an unsigned Windows driver,  and if done incorrectly will brick the unit.  They flat out refuse to provide a RMA to send it to their service center to have it done,  so it's out of my system and unusable; $1200 wasted.  I will never purchase a Denafrips product again!!!

Yes, I have talked extensively to Audioman58 (who sold me the unit) TEK Audio Specialties (who cannot do anything without an RMA from Denafrips) and Denafrips technical support. The problem with the driver to install the firmware downgrade is that it is an "unsigned driver", which means that you have to run your computer in "test mode" to get the driver to run. I am not concerned with bricking my computer, I'm more concerned with bricking the unit, making it worthless. Denafrips absolutely refuses to give me an RMA, and keeps telling me to downgrade the firmware from v1.9 to v1.8. I'm located in the U.S., btw.

This issue started in January, prior to the tariff issues. Audioman58 says "I'm not a tech guy." Unit would not have to be shipped back to Asia; if they would give me an RMA, I could ship it to TEK Audio Specialties in Texas. Tech support person at Denafrips factory, Vera, is just completely intractable.