DENAFRIPS TERMINATOR & ARIES II D/A PROCESSORS
In his September 2020 Gramophone Dreams, Herb Reichert reported on two D/A processors from Chinese manufacturer Denafrips1: their flagship Terminator, which costs $4498, and their least expensive model, the Ares II ($768). Like the Holo Audio May (Level 3 version, $4998), which Herb reviewed in August 20202 and which I wrote about in September, the De-nafrips converters employ R-2R D/A conversion schemes. Both offer two oversampling modes—OS Slow and OS Sharp—as well as a NOS (Non-OverSampling) mode.
HR was impressed by the Terminator, writing, “Like the Holo Audio May DAC, the Denafrips Terminator seemed like an endgame, last-DACI’ll- need-to-own product. It satisfied all my music-listening desires.” He also liked what he heard from the affordable Ares II. “It felt and sounded like a Terminator that shrunk in the laundry,” he wrote, adding, “it retained all of the Terminator’s features and a majority portion of the flagship’s engaging character, but the sounds it projected
