HOLO Audio Spring DAC - R2R DSD512

[Luis Cesar Saiz]

Hello there !!.  I'm mostly a vinyl player, but I want to return to my CD collection and listen to Qobuz too (streaming from PC or Phone) .
 

I'm going to purchase the Spring 3 level 3 and I have a ton of CDs that I want to play them with my current CD player (A Panasonic UB9000 4K/BluRay player). Which method is "best" to use it as a transport.
- Coax output to coax input on SP3 
- HDMI (audio out) to i2s on SP3 (since the Spring can accommodate different pin-out ... but not sure if it works as is as simple as I put it here... :D )
- Buy a Coax to USB converter or a streamer that accept coax input...

My CD collection is ripped onto a USB hard disk connected to the Pana, so I will do some comparisons... :D

On a proper and modern CD Transport, any of you has experience on Jay's Audio CDT2 or Project's CD Box RS2 T or PS Audio,  both i2s, I haven't seen any transport with USB out... or any other transport recommendation. (I have no longer my Mark Levinson 39 so... )

Best
Luis

[Luis Cesar Saiz]

Spring 3 KTE is "in da house" :D since a few weeks ago. Burn-in period with a Tellurium Burning CD and wav files extracted from this CD, around 60 hours of burning (with 15 hours aprox in 3 different sessions of listening to music).

 

Relaxed and enjoyable presentation... some doubts arise though... no sure if it is because of lack of burn-in or because it is its sound... and need a May KTE... 

Anyway always my feet start to dance with every song played via usb or CD., which is a very good thing.
 

[Luis Cesar Saiz]

 

Hello there, as mentioned before, I bought a new Spring3 KTE a few weeks ago. The burn-in goes as total 100hours with 75hours the Tellurium Burning CD and 25hours of listening done in several different days (5 hours each session aprox).

My comments here are mainly from CD as source, (but I did not hear anything different from USB and my MAC either playing Tidal or HQP files)

 

I want to be brief… if that’s possible :D

 

I listen to 60’s blues rock, 70’s blues rock, hard rock and proto metal bands, (AC/DC, Aerosmith, Dylan, Hendrix, Doors, Beatles, Stones,Zeppelin, Purple, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd…) 80’s hard rock & heavy metal, some 90’s rock/metal bands…some 70’s-80s funk, some 80-90’s electronica, some Jazz (classic and modern), some hip-hop, and some classical (mainly opera and big orchestrations). And for recent bands a lot of Stoner, Doom, heavy psychedelic, heavy blues, Prog,..

 

The sound of the Spring 3 is very rich, fun and engaging, without zero fatigue (and I mean after 5-6 hours of continuous listening is zero fatigue !!), Bass extension is correct and do not tend to be overwhelmed like other DACs (in my book this is good), mid bass is rich and beautiful, midrange algo beautiful, maybe too thick warm, I’d say Neutral Warm ++ :D, not neutral warm that many people say it is… anyway sweet tonality and mid highs and highs are fine.

 

BUT BUT BUT !!!  :D

There is like a fastidious recessed top end, shy I’d say, especially noticeable with drum cymbals, it is like someone put a door of -6db/-12db on some frequencies, and cymbals sounds very low in level, and somewhat disconnected from the rest of the drum kit.  (I play drums ….)

Also noticeable but less is the room reverb or room ambience… there is less less here too.

 

I noticed too, that sometimes if the music recorded signal is very loud, the cymbals are correctly present , for example Metallica Black Album, and Metallica albums are known for being recorded too loud and with a lot of compression.

 

Mostly the “thing” I have to claim to Holo Audio is the cymbals interpretation and some highs

People who bought the Spring 3 KTE. Have you experimented the same? Do you think is going to improve this with more burn in time? 

And if someone experience both MAY KTE and SPRING 3KTE I’d like to see your comments here. Worth jumping onto a MAY KTE?

 

Sometimes if the record or track has a very busy rich bass, the rich midrange is going to be too much rich and sometimes get congested or busy. Mostly this happens on modern records. Take OM album God is Good as an example. Anyway This effect is less noticeable in general terms.

 

I don’t know if the maths and audio algorithms are in a FPGA programmable chip and Holo Audio can revisit this and put a new map of conversion on some frequencies… hopefully addressable via a firmware … 

Generally speaking I’d say put some +6/+9/+12 db more into the highs and 1-2 less db into mid bass. 

 

I think  Holo is somewhat equalizing the sound looking for a rich tonality, emphasized rich mid bass, and somewhat recessed top end for a fun and enjoyable listening. 

 

A listening that I enjoy !!!!a lot!!! but with some caveats. 

[Luis Cesar Saiz]

12 hours ago, Miska said:

 

You can of course do that with HQPlayer's EQ.

 

 

All my Springs are L2, not KTE. But I have not noticed such. But first question is how are you running your Spring? PCM mode? DSD mode? At what rate, word length, etc?

 

I'm running mine with either of three filters; poly-sinc-short-mp-2s (good for the kind of music you are referring to), poly-sinc-ext2 or poly-sinc-gauss-long. At DSD256 or DSD512, using ASDM7ECv2 modulator.

 

Hi Miska, thank you for your answer. I did my critical listening via my CD player, via coax with a Kimber D-60 illuminati cable to the Spring3KTE. So PCM 44,1Khz/16bit. PLL activated in The Spring. 

I compared same tracks with my vinyl rig, and there were a huge difference with highs among other things (fully expressed in my analog rig, but I think it is not fair to do comparisons here because only the cartridge, a Lyra Etna SL, cost 3 times more than the Spring)
I went sometimes back and forth to compare some tracks to the USB input but I did not appreciate any significative difference. (The settings I used was the recommended by Goldensound in his review of Spring 3KTE). But again I did use de HQP a few times. I'll check your recommended settings to see if there is any difference here. 

Thanks
Again the most weird thing is if the sound level of the song is high in level, the Spring awakes his highs, like the Black album from Metallica I did mentioned,... dunno why...

Cheers

 

[Luis Cesar Saiz]

24 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Then you get the low sample rate NOS effect, you will have pretty notable treble roll-off that way. (and plenty of out-of-band images)

 

If you want to use the PCM side, remember to use at least 705.6k output rate, set DAC Bits to 20 and use a suitable noise-shaper, such as LNS15, NS9 or NS5. And set PCM gain compensation to -6 dB. Same filters as with SDM output case.

 

Woa!! I did not realize it was so huge then,....
I dunno if you have tried May KTE and if it affects the same way in the highs or are better portrayed. 
I'll get your recommendation and this weekend I'll play PCM via HQP with this rates 

 

Cheers

 

[Luis Cesar Saiz]

23 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Due to how sampling works, by definition you get -3 dB roll-off at Nyquist frequency on sample-and-hold process. This practically starts a decade earlier.

 

Thank you for the explanation, I'll try to compensate via EQ this -3db, especially in the frequency range where cymbals take more part, because the roll-off with cymbals is very noticeable. 

[Luis Cesar Saiz]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Instead of sticking to the low 44.1k sampling rate and trying to compensate with EQ. It is better to run the DAC at 705.6k or higher rate. Then you don't need to compensate with EQ (since the -3 dB moves to 352.8k) and in addition you get rid of most of the out-of-band images that happen due to the stair-stepped waveform.

 

Alternatively, run the DAC at DSD256 or higher.

OK, I'll do it 

[Luis Cesar Saiz]

Ok Ok, I fixed the issue, it was a room problem...😅

After trying several oversampling filters recommended by Miska, I found nothing could help the soft hi-hats cymbals etc. So I took my mic and measured the analog and digital sound using the same songs. And I found some weird excess in bass frequencies with the digital side, specially one at 54hz and a few others frequencies, not much (1 to 3 db at most), not boomy-roomy but enough to blurry things in mids and some highs 

Maybe the Spring 3 KTE is outputting much more energy in the mid to low end than my analog rig.

 

Fortunately I have a pair of bass traps, a Vicoustic cylinders bass traps that you can adapt to frequency, so I move up the inside cylinder to absorb the excess, and it worked, so now I have a very good balance and I can hear hi hats and cymbals properly.

 

Happy :D

 

Tip: next time I bought something remember to measure the room :D 

PD: Thanks Miska anyway for your help and explanations.

[Luis Cesar Saiz]

What does mean this screen when you open the MIDI properties on a Mac? (MacOS Catalina)

If I choose a sampling rate over 44,1Khz, like for example 1,536 since the Spring3 KTE does not have an oversampling chip, what it is happening here? 

The Spring screen shows 1,536 all the time... is the USB driver doing the oversampling via software?? Or is doing nothing??

 

Of course Not using HQP in this example, just being curious :D

Regards