Denafrips - PONTUS II

Denafrips PONTUS II is a premium DAC that adopts many technologies from the Terminator DAC. This is done to achieve the highest quality of sound while keeping in mind the cost constraints. This no-compromise approach trickles to the exterior chassis, which is seamless having no visible bolts. DENAFRIPS have even upgraded the DSP board and enhanced several other aspects of PONTUS II.

The Denafrips PONTUS II is a true balanced, dual-mono R-2R network array DAC. What this means is each channel is equipped with an independent high-speed FPGA to control the decoding by means of 4 sets of 0.01% via the R-2R network. This design has a very small linear error, high decoding speed, low digital noise. This not only ensures that the audio signal has low distortion but also to ensure a very low background music noise. All digital inputs in the PONTUS II are FIFO buffered and re-clocked by the onboard FEMTO clocks. This excellent rejection of word-clock jitter makes Denafrips PONTUS II DAC less reliant on the source equipment clock quality.

The chassis for the Denafrips PONTUS II is made of sturdy aluminium plates, securely fastened with an internal bracket and no visible sign of bolt from the front panel and top cover. The all-aluminium enclosure doubles up as shielding and anti-resonance which is an important criteria for audiophiles. Denafrips further enhanced the device with a linear power supply design compared to the ARES II. This power supply is encapsulated in a thick metal alloy, equipped with dual o-core transformers, completely isolated super linear regulator, multistage power supply for digital and analogue sections, ensuring low noise, high availability power supply to the DAC.

PONTUS II’s front panel is designed for easy access to most of the functions the device has to offer. This includes input switching, phase invert, choosing between oversampling or non-oversampling mode, mute button and a mode button that doubles as a filter button, toggling between slow or sharp digital filters.

Denafrips PONTUS II has multiple input options to choose from. This includes - Coaxial 1 via RCA, Coaxial 2 via BNC 75 Ω, TOSLink x 1, AES EBU x 2, USB and I²S via HDMI LVDS. The PONTUS II has two analog output options - RCA at 2.0Vrms, 625 Ω and XLR at 4.0Vrms, 1250 Ω.