R2R DAC owners and lovers

[TubeDriver]

1 hour ago, iansen said:

 

Hi Solstice380,

 

In his review of the Yggdrasil in The Absolute Sound, Robert Harley states:

 

"...Moffatt selected an unusual DAC—a 20-bit R/2R ladder device from Analog Devices (the AD5791)...."

 

It may be that I am getting confused with my terminology, but from this I came to the assumption that the Yggdrassil is a R2R ladder DAC.

 

 

You are right in that the Yggy uses a R2R DAC, however it is not a non-filtering DAC like the Holo Spring.

[TubeDriver]

I own a Holo Spring LVL 1 DAC which I very much enjoy. It is a true R2R NOS DAC (although it has the ability to OS too).  I have owned chip based NOS DACs (ie 1543) but the Holo is MUCH better.   That said, I have heard chip NOS DACs that are VERY good.   I don’t think it matters whether it is discrete or chip based, both ways can achieve top notch sonics. I have owned Schitt Bifrost and did a DAC shootout at my place between my Holo Spring and the Gungnir last weekend.  The Gungnir sounded very good but more like a typically hi-fi DAC.  Bass was tighter and things were very focused and controlled.  The Holo Spring was more energetic and alive sounding IMHO.  I preferred my Holo Spring but I could see some people preferring the Gungnir.

 

I did a shootout a couple months ago between my Holo Spring and an Aqua La Scala and in that comparison the La Scala sounded best.  But it is considerably more expensive than the Holo Spring and this was in a friend’s system that was setup for the La Scala.

 

The Holo Spring is just an amazing sounding DAC that is a steal at the price.  It easily beats my previous DAC (PS Audio PWD II).

[TubeDriver]

2 hours ago, biosailor said:

 

Aqua has a kess costly R2R DAC, the La Voce S2. This one is in the ballpark of the Holo Spring. The La Voce S2 uses the old Burr Brown PCM1704 chip. Since recently, there‘s an upgrade to the S3 board available that replaces the Burr Brown chip with an in-house designed Länder chip. Have a look at http://www.aquahifi.com/la_voce_S3_update.html

The new S3 is still more expensive than the Holo. I‘ll have my S2 upgraded for sure. I just love those Aqua DACs!

 

That will be interesting to hear.  The Aqua DACs are terrific sounding.  But at $1499 shipped to my door, the Holo Spring is really an amazing piece of gear.  I recently upgraded the USB input module from an older U8 XMOS to the newer XU208 XMOS module ($129 from the USA Holo distributer Kitsune) and noticed subtle/slight improvements in transparancy, detail and high freq/spatial cues.  I was very impressed with the circuit board and general layout of the Holo Spring while I had the cover off for the upgrade.  The ability to handle native DSD (up to 512) and PCM (up to 768kHZ) in a NOS R2R DAC is just icing on the cake!