Article: Denafrips Terminator II Review and Comparison

[mourip]

I have a T2 and have found that setting it to NOS and upsampling everything to DSD128 in Roon gives a really nice increase in SQ. I would set it higher but my older "CAPS-like" server has a i3 processor which is now getting very hot with the increased calculating. I have a Hermes DDC on the way so I will report back on that. Currently I send USB to a Mutec USB and then AES out to the T2. My Mutec USB is clocked by a Mutec REF10. It will be interesting to see if the Hermes slaved to the T2 sounds better.

[mourip]

On 8/4/2021 at 1:01 AM, BrownMagic said:

We did a Doge 8 vs Terminator Plus w/ DDC vs Holo May KTE shoot out and the audience voted for the Holo May as the overall winner in this setup. YMMV. 

Also as per @GoldenOne's findings, the terminator upsamples content to 768k even in NOS mode. So for those of you who want to compare the Terminator with other dacs, you might want to use HQP to upsample the other dacs as well. 

 

 

Good data point. I do wonder if the impressions would have been different if the comparison had been made with the more current Terminator 2 and the new Hermes DDC. These units have clock out and clock in respectively.

 

I am interesting in the claim regarding NOS "upsampling". Can you provide a reference or link?

 

Thanks!

[mourip]

3 hours ago, GoldenOne said:

The reason I don't like denafrips calling the DACs NOS isn't because I think they 'should' have NOS, it's because I don't think any manufacturer should advertise features or behaviours that the device does not actually have.

 

I agree. I hope that the Denefrips engineer will cover that topic in his interview. I know that there are many paths to engineering good sound but the concept of NOS does seem pretty clear and should be used that way. Bottom line for me will always be how something sounds.

 

I bought a Terminator 2 about a month ago based upon reports of how it sounded. I also got a Hermes DDC about a week ago and am now trying all of the possible combinations and permutations of inputs and settings. I imaging that I am still in the break-in phase of both units. Almost right away I decided that I preferred the "NOS" setting on the T2. I am also experimenting with upsampling in Roon. I do like setting it to DSD but also to "Max PCM rate".

 

I am using the clock-out feature of the T2 back to the Hermes. I am also experimenting with both I2S and AES for the data connection to the T2. I thought that I would like the I2S more but am finding that I favor AES, although it is limited somewhat for data rate.

 

Based upon reading these past few posts I will try IS2 with "max data rate" oversampling set in Roon to see what 1.536mhz sounds like with the T2 set for NOS. One of these days I may try HQplay (if I can ever find a simple instructions for setting it up.)