New Holo Audio Spring2 DSD1024 DAC

[Veri]

What would be best performing?

 

Holo Spring 2 with its DSD upsampling, or iFi iDSD PRO with its DSD upsampling.

Both are multibit afaik? Same price range in KTE edition, too.

[Veri]

3 hours ago, matthias said:

 

AFAIK, Spring2 uses AK4137 for DSD upsampling in OS mode.

iDSD Pro does use some sort of hardware DSD upsampling with PCM intermediate step.

Both are far from ideal.

I would use the Spring2 in NOS mode only with software upsampling.

AFAIK, @austinpop did not like the DSD upsampling in his review of the iDSD Pro.

 

Matt

 

I looked into everything and for the price, the Spring seems like the better deal. iDSD Pro seems kind of overpriced to me in comparison.

 

Thanks

[Veri]

I was wondering about which to go for, Spring 2 or upcoming May DAC. Some information about May:

 

May will be upcoming flagship product. Around 4500usd. More advanced power supply circuit, the very best components. Similar dac module but with some improvements. It will also have a preamp as well as a headamp that is based on our very popular Azure amplifier with 8amp modules and 400transistors. There are many other things but I can’t release this info at this time. It’s many months out still. It is targeted to the loud speaker owner who wants to save space on the rack and have all these features. Just needs to pair with an amp and speakers while the spring2 is a pure dac component and as far as the dac module it will be similar sound quality. The bar is already set extremely high for the spring2 so one should not expect a leap in sound quality going up to the May. It’s small, yet notable and measurable as well. Our very best effort will go into the May. But is not targeted to everyone. It will be a niche market for it.

 

(Hope I was allowed to share ) personally I will go Spring 2. 4500 usd is way out of budget.

[Veri]

29 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I wonder what Stereophile did with the Jtest measurement, because I don't get similar results from my Spring1...

 

Maybe they run it in NOS mode at 44.1k rate, which could explain... My measurement is 44.1k J-test24 file, upsampled by HQPlayer to 352.8k and Spring1 set to NOS mode.

 

 

Not too shabby!

[Veri]

13 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

So the only place to get the non-Kitsune version of the DAC is from....... Kitsune?

In the US? Yes. In Europe there's magna hifi, in hong kong there is Wildism audio.

 

If you want to spare costs you could buy from taobao Chinese marketplace..

[Veri]

1 hour ago, 4est said:

I'd have to agree about the silver transformer. It just never made sense as to why one would plate a 50/60 Hz power transformer winding with silver. It would seem to me that they would have been better off replacing the toriodal one with an R-core (or ?) that has true separation of the primary and secondary to reduce capacitive coupling of noise. What do I know though...

 

But it's made of silver!...