Denafrips Venus II vs other similarly priced dacs

[gmgraves]

On 12/17/2020 at 10:12 PM, davide256 said:

The Qutest is the best of the three, the other two aren't close. George thinks the Pontus is better than the  Hugo2 which some like better than Qutest, even though it differs only by the headphone amplifier section and I/O jacks. So if the OP can afford the Venus sounds like he has already chosen better than any of these.

 

 

I had both a Qutest and a Hugo 2 here side by side. One of the biggest surprises of my audio hobby was that even though except for the Hugo 2’s headphone amp, the DAC portion of the two units are IDENTICAL. The Qutest did not sound anywhere near as good as the Hugo 2! I do not know how to explain that, unless the difference was down to power supply differences.