FYI    Just got this from Denafrips  

Good day to you.


All Denafrips products will undergo the mandatory 100hr burn-in in the factory.  
Due to the fact that DENAFRIPS components benefit from long burn-in, hence we will recommend burn-in for another 300+hrs to achieve optimum sound quality.

You'd expect the sound to open up, great details & resolution, and better flow of music.



Burn in is a big controversial topic in the audiophile community.

We believe that burn-in will be more effective with soundtrack playback. The speaker can be turned off while keeping the DAC continues to burn in with music.
There is no hard rule to follow, but it is recommended continuous burn-in if it is connected with a streamer/computer playback, whilst for CDT it is advisable to burn-in as you used it.


Do give it some time to break in to sound at its best



Many thanks.



Yours sincerely,

Vincent Ong

My experience with my Terminator 2 and Gaia is that breakin is absolutely a thing. Even after updating the firmware in my T2 it took a couple of days of continuous play to sound its best.

I agree that running music through the DAC pretty much 24/7 is the way to go, at least for the first few weeks if not longer. I'm also not sure if the options for the Pontus are the same as for my Terminator but definitely explore OS vs NOS (over sampling vs no oversampling) and the with oversampling the different filter options. For me I get the best sound with NOS and I upsample 16/44 to 176 in either Foobar2000 or my Jay's CD transport. But that is very much JMO/FWIW/YMMV. I have files up to DSD256, which sounds amazing, but to me the best part of the Denafrips experience is how good it makes humble 16/44 sound. I no longer crave hi rez like I did with my previous digital.

The latest changes are in the sound stage. Currently the sound stage is much deeper than it has ever been in my system. To give an example it sounds like you are in a large hall and you are setting 1/3 to 1/2 back from the stage.

There is also a lot of variation  between different recordings. In addition my La Scala's have mellowed some and it seems to be much easier to listen for periods of time.

It is surprising that a non tube component can change so much with usage, maybe the R2R design is part of the reason.

I am in the 100 hour range so probably still have more changes to come

new change is that sound stage is now not as deep but stil better than before.

Also have been playing with the setting in Audirvana Studio. All of my digital file are 16/44.1, so initially I up scaled to DSD512 and it was great. Today changed that to NO Up Scaling, sound was still very good and also my speakers sounded more like La Scala's.

I then I changed the Audirvana settings to Dac maximums which is 32/1411.2.  This keeps the La Scala sound, slightly deeper sound stage.

I think I will keep this for a while.  I all the above the differences are not dramatic but are noticeable I think one thing that is characteristic of the Pontus is a clarity and ease of lsitening.

Denafrips DAC's are Ear Honey.