Received my Denafrips Venus 15th

zaxx40

Please let us know where you go from here, I'd be interested in hearing about it

Well everyone I thought before i jumped in with an expensive streamer i would try a little experiment. My Venus 15th has the ability to output it’s clock signals. I know these clocks are not the top of the Denafrips  lineup but they must pretty good if they gave us the clock out option. 
 

Really having the itch to try I2S I decided to look at the Denafrips Streamers. They have there budget Arce and the Arcas. Apparently a more expensive version in also in design stages. The Arcas is supposed to sound better than the Arce from what I have read. 
 

I think the Arcas has similar clocks to my Venus 15th.  I wondered if the Arce could sound close to the Arcas if I used the Clocks out  of my Venus 15th 

Needless to say I ordered the Arce and received it today. I had ordered 75ohm bnc cables from Bluejean cables for the clock out and A short HDMI cable for the I2S connection. 
 

The Arce is a very solid little unit and looks great. 
 

i configured both the Arce and the Venus for the clocks and I2S connections. Enabled the Arce in Roon and knowing you have to be careful with the original I2S connection(testing to make sure configs are correct) i decided to try AESBU connection because I am impatient and wanted to see if a streamer could make a difference. 
 

Wow is the first listening impressions I experienced from the very first song. Clarity, air and sound stage improvements were huge. 
 

I will be trying the I2S connection on another day. For now I am going to enjoys my new sound. 
 

I have to wonder if the Arcas would make a greater improvement or is Arce going to be on par utilizing the Venus clocks?  Maybe an Arcas for my Venus ii is in my future. 😀
 

Maybe off topic but has anyone gone from any edition of a Pontus to any of the Venus models? Out of the whole line, those two seems so close that I'm not sure what the extra expenditure get us. I have experience with both of them but never at the same time or in the same system.

My understanding is the new Pontus 15th is the old Venus ii. All version 15th Dacs received a substantial upgrade with Denafrips selling direct to the end user now. 

From what I can gather the Arcas has a better clock, but if you are using the clock sync between the Arce and the Venus 15th then it is taking advantage of the better OCXO clock in you Venus so most likely there would be no advantage of the higher priced Arcas. It looks like everything else is equal? Also it appears that you use 2 BNC  clock cables for 45 and 49 khz clock sync.