HOLO Audio Spring DAC - R2R DSD512

[Bimmer100]

That's what I was referring to about DSD looking sketchy. I meant Jeff's view of its longevity or whatever.

 

I also didn't know that May wasn't the month of May and that this was just a recently past response, but that actually 'May' is the name of a new DAC he's building. My guess is that May DAC is higher end?

 

Thanks for the 2 responses, guys. I'd be happy to hear DSD 512 was available on a cheaper model from Jeff, though yes, I know the iFi DAC exists for the truely price conscious.

 

 

I'm still asking Jeff about DSD512.

 

if you guys keep helping me out with suggestions, i'll relay everything over to Jeff. But the sounds of it, he will indeed implement oversampling to dsd512 in the MAY dac. and those who get the spring dac will be able to upgrade to MAY dac for a good price. At least this is what he is saying. I don't know if it's going to be upgrade, or if it's just a discount.

But either way, Kitsune would be happy to offer the MAY to those who buy the spring at a discounted price. If Jeff is saying it's so, i'm sure he will honor it. I will find out more details.

 

But currently I've got just a handful Springs left and discounted now with the solid silver Otype trafo.

 

ONE question I would like to know.... who is going to RMAF that would be having a booth to have place for the Spring Dac? If someone can convince me to send them a review dac unit and has a proper amp to pair with it...I will consider sending one to them for the show. Obviously keep in in like new condition and be responsible for it blah blah. Not to concerned as most of us Audio guys are borderline OCD with their own gear.

Basically i'd be shipping my personal Spring Dac to the guy who want to bring it to RMAF. and I could offer a perk for the guy who wants to do that. I think many others should have the opportunity to hear this amazing dac. I don't want to blow smoke anyones direction, but I do believe this dac will impress many of you guys.

 

You just need to hear it! preferably paired with an excellent AMP.

 

and MAY won't be released til sometime next year. The ONE thing i'm able to share with you on MAY is that there is no limit to the cost of the BOM. it will be considered very high end gear that will be able to keep up with the best of them. As if the spring didn't already do fairly well considering it's price point!

[Ben-M]

I'm still asking Jeff about DSD512.

Thanks, I hope it's a real possibility for the Spring DAC vs. something he'd like to do but can't manage due to constraints.

 

MAY won't be released til sometime next year. The ONE thing i'm able to share with you on MAY is that there is no limit to the cost of the BOM. it will be considered very high end gear that will be able to keep up with the best of them. As if the spring didn't already do fairly well considering it's price point!

Ok, so there still a bit I'd a wait for the May DAC. That will fit in with my timeline of when I expect to be able to fit a new DAC in my chain.

 

The second part of that sentence isn't a plus, though. There are more than enough esoteric DACs out there and none of them are something I'd be willing to swing. If it's ~$4k USD or less, that's possible, but going over that immediately takes it out of contention for my next purchase. Diminishing returns have long set in by then, after that I'll just be happy with one of the many other DACs in that price range or I'll spend a lot more money and buy something more useful or more memorable.

 

I can see wanting to make a statement DAC or to get your name out there, but I don't think the final returns would be high. Given how crowded the esoteric range already is with brands that have already proven themselves as sure bets for sonic returns AND for holding resale value, I hope that Jeff aims for the market that's more accessible and that can gain some traction for his company.

 

/end blurb

[Bimmer100]

Well, that's the thing. I'm pretty sure Jeff's aim is to deliver a top grade product within the reach of most people in this hobby. So when I said no limit, I apologize as what I should of said is that it will be quite expensive, but I don't think it will go over 4K. I truly would be shocked. Let me discuss with Jeff some of your points, and a few others. As I know he has said that the BOM will be much more expensive, but at the same time he also has said to me that it's not going to be terribly much more than the Spring in price. And I believe those who already Own the spring will be offered some sort of discount for second customer. I may misunderstand the details of this, and I need to confirm the details of this with Jeff. But I know KitsuneHifi will be offering a bit of return customers discount on the MAY once it's released.

 

I totally agree there are too many dac's on the market that are INSANELY overpriced and I can only dream of owning them. I believe i'm in the same ballpark range of budget as you. And 4K is still on the ridiculous side of my max budget.

 

I'm going to see if Jeff has a target range of price in mind. This will truly help everyone understand where it will fall. Whether realistic or just another dream dac only for the select few who have deep pockets.

 

-------------

 

on a side note, I received a great email from Jeff that I would like to share. This shows a little about how much effort went into the spring dac. It's linearity is near flawless and it's THD is so very low for a NOS dac.

 

I had a customer ask me about r2r dacs and how many of them are not great due to their design and the resistors not being able to produce 16 bit let alone higher. Jeff responded to the and explains how his architecture is unique and even patented. More complex than then some of the infamous totaldac that cost over 30k!!! Anyhow, thought I would share this info. I found it quite a good read.

 

QUOTE BELOW FROM JEFF ZHU (HOLO AUDIO SPRING DESIGNER)

 

"About the resistor tolerance, his word is partly right, but not accurate. The msb of 16bits value only represent 32768, not 65536, all 16bits is 65535, but the msb is only 32768. There are techniques to reduce this requirement. For example, segment+r2r, using segment into the first few bits, then r2r for the rest of them. Rockna is segment+r2r, TotalDAC is all R2R. And you can see, Rockna's THD spec. is much better than Total. Total uses foil resistor, but they used the simplest architecture. That results an unsatisfied test performance. To my opinion, it's some kind of wasting foil resistors. Soekris also uses segment+r2r. MSB's old model is all r2r, but I don't know about their new models.

 

Anyway, There are ways to improve the performance, the segment+r2r is one way. Trimming is another way. There is an additional r2r ladder in Spring, it compensate the main r2r ladder. It works like trimming, but trimming is to change the resistor value. This additional r2r ladder are digital controled and is to compensate the resistor tolerance. For example, the msb of 16bits should have the value of 32768, but due to tolerance, it represent 32700 in real world. Then that additional r2r ladder will compensate 68 into it. Then it became 32700+68=32768.

 

Actually there are other ways to improve performance, I just told you two stories. There are more stories behind the design. It is really hard. I must count every via holes in layout, every pcb wire has it's impedance and must put attention on it. A via hole can be 50m Ohm, it is 1/20000 of 1K ohm, and you see, it covers 32768 which is the msb of 16bits. Also the switches has self-impedance which is about serval ohm to 30 ohms. If you find this issue. Maybe you will get crazy, it seem an impossible mission. But a good designer will overcome all these problems. It's our value.

 

All the resistor tolerance, switch impedance, line impedance, via hole impedance, finally reflect as linearity. There is a chart shows Spring's linearity, it's excellent. But I suggest you to look at THD performance. A bad linearity must result a bad THD performance. But a good linearity isn't mean to be a good THD performance. THD is dynamic performance, more critical than linearity which is a static performance.

 

If you look at the THD performance, you will find Spring maybe the best among those competitors. I'm applying a patent which contribute a lot of that performance. But I can't tell you how. It's confidential now.

 

 

Best Regards

Jeff Zhu"

 

-------------

 

So anyhow, the May dac will implement a lot of his hard work and knowledge in designing a great dac. I think highly of Jeff and quite excited for his company. Truly, I bought a dac from him when I first heard about this Spring and was so happy about it's performance I was curious about getting them to the USA and decided to start Kitsune Hifi to be a USA distributor for HOLO Audio, Singxer and a few other companies in the works. That's the short of it. My wife and I started Kitsune HiFi and we are just passionate about audio. Hopefully we will be accepted well by the community.

 

Thanks, I hope it's a real possibility for the Spring DAC vs. something he'd like to do but can't manage due to constraints.

 

 

Ok, so there still a bit I'd a wait for the May DAC. That will fit in with my timeline of when I expect to be able to fit a new DAC in my chain.

 

The second part of that sentence isn't a plus, though. There are more than enough esoteric DACs out there and none of them are something I'd be willing to swing. If it's ~$4k USD or less, that's possible, but going over that immediately takes it out of contention for my next purchase. Diminishing returns have long set in by then, after that I'll just be happy with one of the many other DACs in that price range or I'll spend a lot more money and buy something more useful or more memorable.

 

I can see wanting to make a statement DAC or to get your name out there, but I don't think the final returns would be high. Given how crowded the esoteric range already is with brands that have already proven themselves as sure bets for sonic returns AND for holding resale value, I hope that Jeff aims for the market that's more accessible and that can gain some traction for his company.

 

/end blurb

[firedog]

You really need to get some of these DACs out for review.

 

Get some reviews stating that the DAC punches well above it's price point and you will get lots of orders. Many people want a better DAC but are put off by the Mega prices so common today.

[ted_b]

You really need to get some of these DACs out for review.

 

Get some reviews stating that the DAC punches well above it's price point and you will get lots of orders. Many people want a better DAC but are put off by the Mega prices so common today.

 

I have offered. We are trying to work it out.

[mraulino]

I have offered. We are trying to work it out.

 

Hope you manage to do it, and looking forward to reading your review!

[Bimmer100]

FYI, Jeff has emailed me to confirm that the spring dac will have the firmware updated to officially support DSD512 natively over HDMI i2S. He also is working on a usb module that may be "extra option" to support native dsd up to dsd512 as well. But otherwise, the factory models will now have dsd512 through hdmi i2s! that's great news imho!

 

Jeff has signed off and happy with the performance. So I'll update when I know more information.

 

and my wife and I are talking about the possibility of bringing one to the RMAF, but really no idea if we will have a place to put it on display. it's all so last minute.

 

one of our customers wrote a review, and albeit a bit excited imho... but it's something!

[eltee00]

FYI, Jeff has emailed me to confirm that the spring dac will have the firmware updated to officially support DSD512 natively over HDMI i2S. He also is working on a usb module that may be "extra option" to support native dsd up to dsd512 as well. But otherwise, the factory models will now have dsd512 through hdmi i2s! that's great news imho!

 

Jeff has signed off and happy with the performance. So I'll update when I know more information.

 

and my wife and I are talking about the possibility of bringing one to the RMAF, but really no idea if we will have a place to put it on display. it's all so last minute.

 

one of our customers wrote a review, and albeit a bit excited imho... but it's something!

 

Are there any sources out there that can output DSD512 via HDMI I2S?

[Distinctive]

Are there any sources out there that can output DSD512 via HDMI I2S?

My Rockna WaveDream Net can do this.

[Bimmer100]

Are there any sources out there that can output DSD512 via HDMI I2S?

 

 

you're right, not many sources do this. That's why I believe Jeff Zhu is making a low cost usb device that will do just that, but will be optional. He is working hard on this now.

 

Also, I've been talking with LH Labs about testing support with their new Source, nothing is confirmed but I believe we will figure a way to get the spring dac to be tested with it and see if dsd512 can be sent over HDMI i2s.

[orgel]

and my wife and I are talking about the possibility of bringing one to the RMAF, but really no idea if we will have a place to put it on display. it's all so last minute.

 

Hope you can make it to RMAF and find a place to set one up. I'd really like to hear the Spring in action.

 

--David

[PhilR]

Are there any sources out there that can output DSD512 via HDMI I2S?

 

Upcoming Mivera Superstream with the right options is supposed to do this..

[PhilR]

Does the Spring DAC offer volume control/remote?

[Bimmer100]

Does the Spring DAC offer volume control/remote?

No!

its a true 24 bit DAC and does not have extra bits for volume control or wasted bits for volume control. So you will need a quality preamp.

No remote either, as most all there is is nos/os modes and inputs

screen brightness, and most people fiddle for a day and never change again.

 

 

But but I understand the urge to have control over it. The May DAC will have a remote control! But still likely won't have volume for the same reason.

[Distinctive]

Will the May dac have a lossless volume control or does it degrade by stealing 1 MSB bit from 24 bit every 6dB attenuation?

[Bimmer100]

Will the May dac have a lossless volume control or does it degrade by stealing 1 MSB bit from 24 bit every 6dB attenuation?

 

May will be like spring. A true dac, no volume control!

[Forehaven]

Really interesting DAC. I look forward to seeing some reviews too.

[Distinctive]

Really interesting DAC. I look forward to seeing some reviews too.

If I am not much mistaken some of the reputed magazines demand a formal Distributor chain and a certain sales volume, but 6moons, mono&stereo and Darko should be good candidates?

[57gold]

May will be like spring. A true dac, no volume control!

 

Too bad...who needs a preamp in an all digital music world?

 

Extra circuitry, tubes or transistors, cables...

 

DAC with no quality volume control equals an audio geek product in 2016 and a half, IMO.

 

Save the chat on the astounding amount of work needed to take a @2V signal and variable output a less than @2V signal to an amplifier...audio jewelry Kool-Aid drinkers! Yes, I know, some folks like the euphonics introduced by tubes...

[Bimmer100]

Too bad...who needs a preamp in an all digital music world?

 

Extra circuitry, tubes or transistors, cables...

 

DAC with no quality volume control equals an audio geek product in 2016 and a half, IMO.

 

Save the chat on the astounding amount of work needed to take a @2V signal and variable output a less than @2V signal to an amplifier...audio jewelry Kool-Aid drinkers! Yes, I know, some folks like the euphonics introduced by tubes...

 

 

Well, Delta Sigma dac's are mostly 32bit as they actually need the extra bits for volume control. But when you have a discrete 24bit resistor network, they are crucial. The spring's architecture is pure and very complex.

Jeff Zhu comments,

 

"I can’t say it’s 1 or 2 DACs inside. Physically, it is 1 DAC module, but it works in 2 different modes. Each mode uses different part of the module and also shared some parts. Spring is a 24bit DAC, bit23 is msb (most significant bit) and bit0 is lsb (least significant bit). Yes, you are right, more bits can be used for digital volume control. But Spring is a pure DAC without digital volume. Actually digital volume is no match for a good resistor attenuator. That’s why we need a dedicated pre-amp, rather than use digital volume in a DAC. I used digital volume in Sabretooth, for cost reason. PCM1704 is a very good chip. I used that in T.REX II for years. Spring is a successor of T.REX II. The chip became the bottle neck, so I have to build my own module. Actually few discrete R2R module can exceed the specification of the pcm1704k. Most of them, THD is only about -80db to -90db. But despite of technical spec. all discrete R2R can produce a very natural sound. "

 

Another random fact to share, Jeff commented about a question I had for him about voltage regulation... I'm a bit of a nut when it comes to designing power supplies that are ULTRA low noise (microvolt range) and super fast transient response and high psrr... he responded...

 

"The voltage regulator is very critical for R2R DAC. It's provides a voltage reference and that is the base for all technical specs. The regulator in Sping is a special designed one. 0.2uV noise and the dynamic response is extremely fast. It’s the basis of Spring to be able to provide a good specifications and performance. Best Regards Jeff Zhu"

 

-----------------

So yes, back to your comment...We are indeed in a digital world with 4 dollar delta sigma 32bit dac all over the place, including our phones, mp3 players, tv's, etc. But this is a pure design of discrete resistors. Not just the typical R2R design with segmenting. But a patented design where Segmenting and trimming is done together along with other patented technologies that make this dac unique when compared to other discrete R2R dac's on the market. And completely different that 1bit delta sigma IC's. This Spring dac basically has two resistor networks for PCM and two for DSD. This help's it achieve the absolute most accurate sound possible and able to surpass the performance of many of the IC's with laser trimmed resistors to achieve the required precision. Resistors used with the more significant bits must be proportionally more accurate than those used with the less significant bits.

 

Jeff comments on the issue of accuracy of resistor network dacs and how it's a problem/limitations with many of the designs on the market today. He created the spring from scratch with these issues in mind. Please take a moment to read his response to one of our customers questions about how/if spring dac can accurately product more bits with high precision.

 

Customers Question to Jeff...

""Regarding resistor tolerance, if you look at 0.01% resistors, the idea is that percentage is only 1 out of 10,000, but 16-bit has 1 of 65,536 possible voltage levels. 14-bit is something like 16,383, and 13-bit is something like 8191. If you think about the way multibit/R2R works, with the next resistor being half the previous value for the next bit, eventually you run into a scenario where you can't accurately guarantee resistor values because of how small the values are and thus can't guarantee bit accuracy. That's why the multibit/R2R DAC chips tend to use something like laser-trimmed resistors vs discrete resistors, because you can more easily guarantee accurate performance to 16, 17, or even 19 or 20 bits. Or so some claim...

On the other hand, I know there are various architectures that supposedly make up for this. The Soekris engineer says sign magnitude supposedly helps overcome this limitation. Or, in the case of Metrum's Pavane and Menuet, I know they split the 24-bit signal into 2 12-bit chunks via FPGA and have the more accurate portion of the DAC module convert the 12-bit chunks, then use analog attenuation to bring down the low-level signals, and finally combine it in the end for good linearity and good accuracy (in the form of general linearity plot, INL, and DNL).

I believe the TotalDAC designer and Soekris engineer both said they don't entirely buy into this theory, and they argue if their DACs were only 14-bit accurate, they wouldn't have such good noise, THD, SNR, dynamic range, and similar measurement figures. Or, in one case, I believe the TotalDAC designer mentioned his design may only have poor bit-level accuracy issues at max level signals."

-endquote from customer"

 

 

Jeff Zhu's response (owner/designer HOLOAUDIO):

 

" About the resistor tolerance, his word is partly right, but not accurate. The msb of 16bits value only represent 32768, not 65536, all 16bits is 65535, but the msb is only 32768. There are techniques to reduce this requirement. For example, segment+r2r, using segment into the first few bits, then r2r for the rest of them. Rockna is segment+r2r, TotalDAC is all R2R. And you can see, Rockna's THD spec. is much better than Total. Total uses foil resistor, but they used the simplest architecture. That results an unsatisfied test performance. To my opinion, it's some kind of wasting foil resistors. Soekris also uses segment+r2r. MSB's old model is all r2r, but I don't know about their new models.

Anyway, There are ways to improve the performance, the segment+r2r is one way. Trimming is another way. There is an additional r2r ladder in Spring, it compensate the main r2r ladder. It works like trimming, but trimming is to change the resistor value. This additional r2r ladder are digital controled and is to compensate the resistor tolerance. For example, the msb of 16bits should have the value of 32768, but due to tolerance, it represent 32700 in real world. Then that additional r2r ladder will compensate 68 into it. Then it became 32700+68=32768.

Actually there are other ways to improve performance, I just told you two stories. There are more stories behind the design. It is really hard. I must count every via holes in layout, every pcb wire has it's impedance and must put attention on it. A via hole can be 50m Ohm, it is 1/20000 of 1K ohm, and you see, it covers 32768 which is the msb of 16bits. Also the switches has self-impedance which is about serval ohm to 30 ohms. If you find this issue. Maybe you will get crazy, it seem an impossible mission. But a good designer will overcome all these problems. It's our value.

All the resistor tolerance, switch impedance, line impedance, via hole impedance, finally reflect as linearity. There is a chart shows Spring's linearity, it's excellent. But I suggest you to look at THD performance. A bad linearity must result a bad THD performance. But a good linearity isn't mean to be a good THD performance. THD is dynamic performance, more critical than linearity which is a static performance.

If you look at the THD performance, you will find Spring maybe the best among those competitors. I'm applying a patent which contribute a lot of that performance. But I can't tell you how. It's confidential now.

Best Regards

Jeff Zhu"

 

 

and I found that to be a great read and learned quite a bit.

 

Sorry i've posted this before, but it's also in regards to preserving a very pure sound this dac produces. A digital volume control is just not an option with a design like this. But works great for delta sigma IC's. The architecture between such dac's are miles apart. If you want a good R2R dac like the spring, consider to pair it with an excellent pre-amp. Maybe... I'll talk with Jeff and discuss the possibility of designing the May DAC to have a pre-amp built in. But this will increase the cost even more.

 

 

It's just different is all, so a preamp is needed. Sorry it's not the type of Dac for you if you want AIO solution. I'm super happy with the Audio-GD Master11. I own this dac/amp/preamp.. it's hard to beat for the price. and it's r2r too! just pcm1704uk

[Bimmer100]

HoloAudio has a 3year parts and labor warranty that covers return shipping after the product has been inspected and verified for a warranty claim. Pretty good and I'm holo audio USA and can do some service work, firmware updates etc. so can save a bit on shipping depending on what the warranty repairs are.

 

I get this question a lot, so needed to post.

[ted_b]

So, some of you are aware I have one of Tim's first Spring dacs here in the US, for review. I am not going to give anything away, but am very pleased so far...ESPECIALLY to announce that through the help of Jesus and Andrew (at Sonore), Juergen and his Linux github, and Tim and Jeff's custom handling of my request to get this dac available for native DSD in Linux..today I updated my uRendu and now have full native Linux support to DSD512 (and DoP to 256). And I also have the evaluation Windows driver that also does up to DSD512 natively. Things are moving quickly. The certified Windows driver should be available sometime after RMAF (fingers crossed). But did I say Linux native DSD to DSD512 and PCM to 24/768?

 

Stay tuned.

[Pixelplay]

So, some of you are aware I have one of Tim's first Spring dacs here in the US, for review. I am not going to give anything away, but am very pleased so far...ESPECIALLY to announce that through the help of Jesus and Andrew (at Sonore), Juergen and his Linux github, and Tim and Jeff's custom handling of my request to get this dac available for native DSD in Linux..today I updated my uRendu and now have full native Linux support to DSD512 (and DoP to 256). And I also have the evaluation Windows driver that also does up to DSD512 natively. Things are moving quickly. The certified Windows driver should be available sometime after RMAF (fingers crossed). But did I say Linux native DSD to DSD512 and PCM to 24/768?

 

Stay tuned.

 

 

THATS HUGE NEWS!

 

I was just discussing this with a fellow member this morning and wondering what the solution would entail and then this.

 

Do you have an ETA on your review?

[hifitubes]

I may have to pick one up for my 2nd system, and compare to my Vega's topology.

 

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

[Pixelplay]

I have just ordered a version 3 from Tim to be delivered to Australia. Custom wound 240v silver transformer etc. Tim's support has been phenomenal. Hopefully more people will share their experience with the dac as there are very few reviews available atm.