The only thing I’d add is that I now feed my Musician Pegasus DAC (very close relative to the Pontus ll) with a Denafrips Iris DDC to take advantage of the i2S connection and the improvement over USB was substantial — no contest, and this is using a cheap 6” HDMI cable from Monoprice that I’ll eventually upgrade to something from DH Labs, etc. Just something else to keep in mind for future upgrades because it’s a very meaningful, and relatively cheap, upgrade to look forward to. FWIW.
Streamer upgrade?
So after following these discussions for the last year or so about the importance (or lack of depending on ones stance) of the steamer itself for sound quality Ive decided to take the plunge. I had previously been in the “ bits is bits “ camp , so I purchased a Pontus Two to use with my Aurender A100 which is they’re entry level offering with a built in Dac. Both of the local high end dealers tried to convince me that this would not amount to much of an improvement in SQ, well…… they were right in my estimation. So I took another member’s recommendation to contact TMR about a trade in on an Aurender N200 and just as his experience was great so was mine ,they really made it too good to pass up. So if anyone is interested I will report my findings when my new unit arrives, it’ll be a straight change out same Dac,same Dh labs cable and same system ,it should be a really easy comparison, too bad I couldn’t keep the old unit to test them side by side but it’ll still be easy enough.I’ll post my findings.