Denafrips Terminator Plus Measurements

EDIT: More upto date and in-depth measurements have been done with a unit in-hand here: https://goldensound.audio/2021/10/07/denafrips-terminator-plus-with-gaia-measurements/

Denafrips Terminator Plus: https://www.vinshineaudio.com/product-page/denafrips-terminator-plus-r2r-dac



Thank you very much to Diego Estan from the SoundStage! network who conducted these measurements.
A link to their write-up of the terminator plus and their own measurements will be posted once it is up.
SoundStage! contacted me after seeing my Ares 2 video which demonstrated that it was not a NOS dac, and after repeating the tests on the terminator plus they had with them, found that it exhibited the same behaviour.

I sent Diego my APx project file, and he ran the terminator plus through it once in 'NOS' and once in Sharp OS.

I've not heard this DAC myself (though would very much like to), and so will not make any comment on the measurements or performance and how it relates to sound, because...well...I've not heard it, and so it'd be silly to do so.

All measurements shown are taken in Sharp OS mode via BNC SPDIF unless otherwise specified.

FULL REPORTS:

Reports available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Lvy6m79jos2vK-kiipRGUW8aSd0nMpX7?usp=sharing

Reports contain the following measurements:

- 1khz Sine View
- 15khz Sine View
- -90.31dBfs Sine View
- Phase Response
- Filter Ultrasonic Attenuation
- 20hz-90khz RMS Noise Level
- Device Output Level (Vrms)
- 20hz-20khz Noise RMS Level
- Idle Noise FFT
- 1khz FFT (0dBfs and -3dBfs)
- 50hz FFT (0dBfs and -3dBfs)
- Effective Number of Bits (0dBfs and -3dBfs)
- THD+N (0dBfs and -3dBfs)
- THD+N / Frequency
- Dynamic Range (AES17)
- SNR
- IMD (SMPTE)
- 50hz/7khz IMD SMPTE FFT
- IMD SMPTE vs Output Level
- Linearity
- Linearity (No Bandpass)
- SINAD/Output Level
- Crosstalk / Frequency
- DC Offset when Active
- DC Offset when Idle
- 44.1khz Jitter
- 48khz Jitter
- 90khz Bandwidth test
- 32 Tone FFT
- 1.2Mhz Bandwidth Noise FFT
- 1.2Mhz Bandwidth 1khz FFT (0dBfs and -3dBfs)


Dynamic Range (AES17): 125.009dB

SNR: 123.1dB (lower than dynamic range due to dual-ladder design)

DC Offset: 299uV Active, 367uV idle



1khz 0dBfs:
THD+N: -96.4dB / -95.4dB




1khz -3dBfs:
THD+N: -103.3dB / -98.4dB




Linearity:



As with the ares 2, the no-bandpass linearity measurement looks incredibly similar to with a bandpass filter, and does not veer upwards due to noise:


SINAD/THD+N vs output level:





IMD ( SMPTE ) vs Output Level:

 

Crosstalk:



-90.31dBfs Sine (Recorded with 192khz ADC sample rate):



Filter Ultrasonic attenuation:



Impulse Response:

Blue: Sharp
Purple: Slow
Orange: 'NOS' inferred from transfer function


As with the ares 2, the IR for NOS mode inferred from transfer function differs from the one seen when doing an actual IR test.

Actual NOS IR (2.5mhz recording rate):
(this does not appear to be a NOS dac and is intead seemingly doing linear interpolation)



Idle Noise Spectrum upto 1.2Mhz:



Multitone:
(Note: Multitone test in the reports is erroneous due to the delay that this DAC has. This measurement was manually re-run and the result is shown below)


44.1khz Jitter:



48khz Jitter:

 

Reserved 2

 

Reserved 3

 

So I have a terminator plus in-hand now, as well as the Gaia and have posted some more thorough measurements here:
https://goldensound.audio/2021/10/07/denafrips-terminator-plus-with-gaia-measurements/

I've been spending some time with the Terminator Plus and it's been quite interesting. Thought I'd post some early impressions.

This is quite a 'different' DAC because whilst a lot of the outright technical aspects and/or subjective qualities like resolution, macrodynamics, staging etc are very good, it's also somewhat apparent that there is pretty heavy DSP going on.

To get it out of the way: It sounds great, it's a fantastic DAC, but it's also one where many of the differences are not down to the hardware itself.

The most obvious thing that I've found is how layering seems to sort of 'open up' as the track gets busier. Things don't always stay in one place.
A vocalist can be singing 3 feet from you, and then as the organ, drums and trumpets start playing, she gets a bit further away. Not just 'airier' or more separate but actually moves back.

It's a sort of 'adaptive' sound which works really well and is interesting and honestly great fun for a lot of tracks. But then in some situations doesn't quite work.

I'm going to have to pick some tracks to get some apt examples but yeah, it's been quite interesting so far and honestly if I was able to I'd keep this just cause it's going to be quite a different experience to other DACs. But these differences also somewhat prevent you from making direct comparisons to other dacs because how good certain qualities are depends on what's actually going on in the track.

This DSP also shows its head when measuring. I had some similar experiences with the Ares 2 but to a wayyyy lesser extent. The T+ was actually somewhat frustrating to measure. Not because it measures poorly, in fact most areas it measures very well. But just because quite a few test signals (including complex multitones which implies music too) were being altered and made it very tricky to get longer FFT's to finish without errors.

It's also unfortunately not actually NOS, and the oversampling is seemingly 384khz, not 1.536mhz as Denafrips claims on the product page.
Full vid will be coming at somepoint.

It's a great DAC, but quite different.