HoloAudio Owners & Discussion Thread

[ICUToo]

I have a few things to say, Indie Hi-Fi:

1. I had the week on mainly admin duties, and was worried I wouldn't get the DAC this week, hence my message- next week will be super-busy so I won't have much playtime and I was getting desperate .

I got the first TNT Couriers tracking email yesterday afternoon, but (given my recent experience of "tracking services" which have been totally useless) I ignored it, apart from knowing it was booked out of Brisbane. This morning it said "With a driver"- I raised my hopes guardedly- last time I saw this (not TNT) it meant "out with a driver going to the next depot", so I ignored it.

The bloody thing turned up here 2 hours ago- SUPERB work from TNT, my new favourite couriers.

2. Double boxed and well-plastic-wrapped and expanded-foam-protected, the packaging was very effective. Didn't stand up to my Benchmade, though.

3. I turned off my amp and subs last night to minimise power use. I knew they took an hour to really come on song, but hey, I REALLY didn't expect the May today. So I couldn't judge the new DAC really well straight up.

4. From the moment of turn-on, it was better than my old outboard DAC.

5. In half an hour, it was up there with the best DACs I've heard- intelligibility, gross soundstage, treble realism with a real metallic sizzle and decay of cymbals etc, amazing bass (how TF do DACs have different bass performance?) and it's getting better as the minutes pass.

6. Then I remembered I hadn't turned the subs back on!!!

Thanks so much- fabulous DAC, I am enjoying it very much

Edited October 29, 2021 by ICUToo
spelling

[Indie Hi-Fi]

On 29/10/2021 at 2:49 PM, ICUToo said:

SUPERB work from TNT, my new favourite couriers

It really is the wild west atm with shipping. Fedex held up a cadre of shipments by over a week recently for no reason. But yes TNT doing really good things atm. Bris to Syd and Melb next day is really good. 

On 29/10/2021 at 2:49 PM, ICUToo said:

Then I remembered I hadn't turned the subs back on!!!

Liek leaving the oven on and going oiut - "i swear there's something i'm missing". 

On 29/10/2021 at 2:49 PM, ICUToo said:

Thanks so much- fabulous DAC, I am enjoying it very much

Great to hear! 

[ICUToo]

13 hours ago, Indie Hi-Fi said:

Liek leaving the oven on and going oiut - "i swear there's something i'm missing". 

I didn't even notice that they were missing at first! That's what I found bizarre- different bass response when bass measurements out of DACs are all more-or-less perfect!?!?!?!

[BioBrian]

I think it can be explained by the extraordinary channel separation.

 

Especially as you noticed it in fully stereo mode.

[Indie Hi-Fi]

Just an fyi that i have a Holo May KTE in stock at present. Ready to go. 

[BioBrian]

Wondering about this feature, which my May appears to have forgone. I'm using the coax out from an Oppo 83 SE player. Anyone having more joy, or enjoying the purity of not having it?

 

Also you can see the CD track-time information is displayed when using spdif inputs!!!. This is done by extracting additional data from SPDIF. This a part of CD red book standard but nobody notices this and often forgets this cool feature or doesn’t know how to extract the data!. This will lead a fashion for other DAC developer to support this feature… customers will surely love this feature albeit subtle.

[davewantsmoore]

1 hour ago, BioBrian said:

This a part of CD red book standard but nobody notices this and often forgets this cool feature or doesn’t know how to extract the data!

Well, there you go... had no idea this was a thing.  TIL.

 

EDIT... wow, there's 192 bits, which can be even used to do "song name", etc. (or anything).

Edited November 1, 2021 by davewantsmoore

[Mickstuh]

1 hour ago, BioBrian said:

Wondering about this feature, which my May appears to have forgone. I'm using the coax out from an Oppo 83 SE player. Anyone having more joy, or enjoying the purity of not having it?

 

Also you can see the CD track-time information is displayed when using spdif inputs!!!. This is done by extracting additional data from SPDIF. This a part of CD red book standard but nobody notices this and often forgets this cool feature or doesn’t know how to extract the data!. This will lead a fashion for other DAC developer to support this feature… customers will surely love this feature albeit subtle.

I'm running a CD transport into my Holo May – and in answer to your question, yes, the May reads and display the CD track time info. Does it on coaxial and toslink.  

[BioBrian]

3 minutes ago, Mickstuh said:

I'm running a CD transport into my Holo May – and in answer to your question, yes, the May reads and display the CD track time info. Does it on coaxial and toslink.  

 

Thanks - which "transport" are you using?

 

I also have an Oppo 205, but haven't been able to try it yet. (Doing my burn-in under close supervision in a separate building).

 

I really like that it displays the Lock or Unlock, and also the sampling rate under all conditions  (that I've tried).

[Mickstuh]

2 minutes ago, BioBrian said:

 

Thanks - which "transport" are you using?

 

I also have an Oppo 205, but haven't been able to try it yet. (Doing my burn-in under close supervision in a separate building).

 

I really like that it displays the Lock or Unlock, and also the sampling rate under all conditions  (that I've tried).

An Esoteric P-700. Oldie but a goodie.

Havent seen my display Lock, but it has said Unlock. And Locking, when it's doing so. Is 'Unlock' an instruction to the user to change the setting to turn the PLL off? 

[BioBrian]

No, nothing to do with PLL, it just seems to be the obvious: Hello, I detect you.

 

Unlock is "I've lost you", as in, when I unplug the USB cable. Plug it in again, and the display says "DSD1024X".

 

Start playing a track through the USB input, and it changes to (in almost every one of my tracks) 96K, or in other cases, 44.1K, 352.8K, or whatever.

 

But I haven't seen track timing info.

[Mickstuh]

I'll add to the chorus in praise of the May. It sounds beautiful, which is to say its conversion of a digital signal into analog gives you, yes, an analog sound that fully unpacks all that wonderful digital information. More than anything, music flows like music does. A piano sounds like a piano.  And the glories of totally tech sounds, like say Kraftwerk, are absolutely grand. Leading edges are as sharp as they should be and no sharper, likewise reverberant trails hanging in space do so seemingly without limit.

For context, it replaced a Topping D90MQA (with the AKM4499 chip). I was perfectly happy with the Topping. There was nothing I thought it did wrong. There were a few occasions while awaiting the May's arrival that I seriously wondered why I was spending the money, because things sounded so good already. But no regrets now – I look at this as an endgame DAC. That's why I went the KTE version. 

And to me, it sounded right straight out of the box. Mine's still got less than 100 hours on it. 

[BioBrian]

3 minutes ago, Mickstuh said:

It sounds beautiful

 

3 minutes ago, Mickstuh said:

music flows like music does

 

5 minutes ago, Mickstuh said:

But no regrets now – I look at this as an endgame DAC. That's why I went the KTE version. 

 

I'm not going to wax lyrical now, under the influence of a hideous tooth ache and a couple of necessary humanising glasses of red, but I have to say I totally agree.

[acg]

On 01/11/2021 at 9:32 PM, BioBrian said:

I'm not going to wax lyrical now

 

Aw c'mon Brian.  I've got one of these too now, from the pre-order, and have been enjoying it a lot.  Surprisingly, it is the only dac thus far that has been able to directly drive my amplifiers not only to a reasonable volume but also well enough sonically given the half-dozen parallel line level filters and 5kR input impedance of the amps.  Says a lot about the quality of the output stage on this dac that the preamp is not necessarily required in my system, but ultimately I still do need a little more voltage output from the May as I think it starts to falter a little when no digital attenuation is used (i.e. gets too close to its maximum 4V output).  It was always going to be used with the preamp so nothing lost, but it certainly is an impressive unit.

 

Am looking forward to playing more with it and even trying to find a SACD transport to hook in through I2S.

 

PS:  Hope your tooth ache has come good.

 

[BioBrian]

1 hour ago, acg said:

I've got one of these too now

 

Oh that's very good news - my doubts and guilt levels just shrank by 20 dB at least .

 

I have the opposite situation here in the burn-in environment, using Cyrus amps, which have a gain of 39 dB. Every source (except TV optical, especially those accursed ads) has for years required a volume setting of -33 dB, but playing my 352.8 k tracks now requires -42 dB, a 9 dB difference. And it could be more, because this hi-res is just SO clear, without distortion, that the actual measured level may even be higher.

 

Interesting to note that the May tells me the optical input from the TV is 48 k: I love having this information showing.

 

Burn-in: after a week of non-stop USB music, mostly 24/96 kHz, it's had a further 3 days on a steady diet of a 352.8 kHz album, and I'm not sure, but giving it more to chew on seemed to accelerate the burn-in process. Maybe that's rubbish, but these 3 days later (maybe it's the antibiotics cleaning out my ears?) it just sounds astonishing. I'd previously taken this album very close to the dreaded "I never want to hear this again" state, but now every time I allow a few minutes to check, its clarity just amazes. The fiddle player's variety and nuance of tone, and same with the other 3 instruments, almost lets me visualize what they had for breakfast.

 

Lately I've been doing hard penance preparing my Rack Of All Racks, at a rate higher than I can reasonably sustain, in sheer desperation to get May into her pride of place sucking goodies from my Server and feeding the Luxmans and my 4-way speakers up in the Barn.

 

With that, the Fedex holdup that Hugo mentioned, a local courier stuff-up (the website told me "delivered" when it wasn't, and I ended up having to drive to the other side of town to collect it from the depot myself, despite a nation-wide transport strike), and a glitch that Hugo and Jeff Zhu fixed for me with a firmware update, it's been more than a little stressful, so I'm getting really confident about this being a very good decision, a major contribution to the completing of my setup.

 

Thinking the tooth-ache episode can recede gracefully now, thanks!

[acg]

@BioBrian, good to hear.   I've not played around to much at all with it just using a rpi4 with Roon powered from the usb out of my workstation... very low tech but it does sound good. 

 

Haha...the rack... I've just spent four weekends making some steel boxes to house my preamp,  a very OTT phonostage and a new battery supply for the turntable drive but I just handed it all over to the professionals to sandblast and powdercoat...soooo much easier. 

 

Will have to sort out a decent audio server/streamer at some stage. 

[wanta911]

On 01/11/2021 at 5:18 PM, BioBrian said:

I'm using the coax out from an Oppo 83 SE player. 

 

......and I thought I was the only one left that still had one of these - the major difference being that mine has been sitting in a cupboard for for probably 7+ years. Maybe I should dust it off, hook it up to my Spring 3 and spin a couple of those silver round things for a bit of nostalgia 

 

I have some fond memories of the old BDP-83 SE with it's 4 x ES9016 DACs per channel, it was a big thing at the time for serious 2 channel playback.

[Extreme_Boky]

There's like 30-40% price increase on May, compared to what I paid back in February - however I bought mine from Jo at Widism Audio HK because there were no local sellers. The current Aussie pricing seems to be quite steep. I know there was an increase in cost due to parts shortage, but that much of an increase? 

[rocky500]

Just now, Extreme_Boky said:

There's like 30-40% price increase on May, compared to what I paid back in February - however I bought mine from Jo at Widism Audio HK because there were no local sellers. The current Aussie pricing seems to be quite steep. I know there was an increase in cost due to parts shortage, but that much of an increase? 

Please let me know if your interested in selling yours anytime soon.

 

[Extreme_Boky]

Ha! Sorry! It sounds absolutely amazing with my Aleph J clone and Dynaudios.... It is one of those things that I will probably keep for a very long time.

 

The WinOS driver I am using is v5.00. I see that you posted the very latest USB driver V5.27.0.... has anyone installed it and is using it??? 

[Ehrmantraut]

27 minutes ago, Extreme_Boky said:

There's like 30-40% price increase on May, compared to what I paid back in February - however I bought mine from Jo at Widism Audio HK because there were no local sellers. The current Aussie pricing seems to be quite steep. I know there was an increase in cost due to parts shortage, but that much of an increase? 

As you will know Kitsune in the US and Wildism in HK put up their list prices too. There is a worldwide shortage of semiconductors and other C-19 factors that are pushing up all retail. If you bought the KTE May from Kitsune, the imported cost without shipping but with import duty/GST would A$8741. That’s very close to retail here and you have all the warranty/demo/consulting/tech support on your doorstep. Retailers have to make a margin too.

[Extreme_Boky]

 

Hmmm... probably you are right. It's just that when I ordered from Jo, it was like I was talking to him face to face (minimal time difference) - he was replying to my emails within a minute of receiving them. A very pleasant experience. The 30-40% I quoted relates to what I paid including the shipping costs. And the shipping took less than 5 working days! I also asked for a new remote control because the one that was shipped to me originally was not 100% working - Jo sent it no questions asked. It was most likely the best purchasing experience I ever had. 

 

Now, I do not know what Jo charges these days... I also do know that retailers have to make money. I just mentioned one example of a retailer who provided excellent price, support and warranty service that was unparalleled. It is worth mentioning here. 

[Indie Hi-Fi]

On 06/11/2021 at 3:38 PM, Extreme_Boky said:

There's like 30-40% price increase on May, compared to what I paid back in February - however I bought mine from Jo at Widism Audio HK because there were no local sellers. The current Aussie pricing seems to be quite steep. I know there was an increase in cost due to parts shortage, but that much of an increase? 

Pricing is set by the manufacturer and as @BlueOceanBoy says my pricing is parity with Kitsune. Component costs have gone up a bit but as it's such a lean distribution model (very close to manufacturer direct) they remain very high value for money. Not that i need to tell you! But just for others' reference.  

 

[ICUToo]

On 05/11/2021 at 9:02 PM, acg said:

Will have to sort out a decent audio server/streamer at some stage. 

What are you thinking, everyone, about a great option here?
I currently use a Mac Mini, but I think it's time to upgrade.

Since I love the sound of upsampling to 1.5MHz (wow, still can't believe I do this everyday!), I'd love to keep high-oversampling options if I can.

What are the contenders these days?

[Ehrmantraut]

1 hour ago, ICUToo said:

What are you thinking, everyone, about a great option here?
I currently use a Mac Mini, but I think it's time to upgrade.

Since I love the sound of upsampling to 1.5MHz (wow, still can't believe I do this everyday!), I'd love to keep high-oversampling options if I can.

What are the contenders these days?

The usual suspects are divided into two categories as I see it. The more audio and app focussed, so Lumin and Auralic. Then the more CPU orientated, Antipodes and Innuos. I have considerable experience with all of these manufacturers and am happy to provide more detail if you pm me. You can get Roon or other software DSP to upsample or use more sophisticated hardware like Chord M Scaler, Auralic Sirius etc. Depends what your needs are.