GoldenOne Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 I'm not entirely sure how the may's USB is done in terms of what powers what, but I can say that its the only dac i've got where I cannot hear a difference between using direct to PC vs my SMS200 Ultra. Even the chord dave (which has galvanic isolation on the power lines) did show a slight difference. Seems the may's USB is exceptionally well done, but as Diavolo said, ymmv. Play about a bit and see what you feel works best for your setup Diavolo 1 https://youtube.com/goldensound Roon -> HQPlayer -> SMS200 Ultra/SPS500 -> Holo Audio May (Wildism Edition) -> Holo Audio Serene (Wildism Edition) -> Benchmark AHB2 -> Hifiman Susvara Link to comment
Diavolo Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 On 1/13/2021 at 2:25 PM, barrows said: I understand, as you are primarily concerned with OS to PCM, which is less demanding. My needs are for OS everything to DSD 256 with the EC modulators. I chose a i9-9900K for this, with its higher base clock rate, and because with the advent of the 10 series the prices came down on the 9900K. I am not concerned about having a silent machine, so no need for passive cooling for me, I have a fan based cooling system on my new machine build as the server is another part of the home and I use a Sonore Signature Rendu SEoptical as NAA. My Bricasti M3 loves DSD 256 input. Just an update, you are correct. Attempting DSD1024 or DSD512 with Asdm7ec filter is not stable with regular drop outs. I am able to get my cpu to operate 10 cores at 3.8ghz constantly and allowed it every power and performance option I could, but it's just too difficult. DSD256 is also not without occasional drops as only 2 CPU cores tackle the modulator and occasionally hit 99%. Two other cores deal with the filters. So six cores are basically doing very little and unless Jussi can extend the modulator to use more cores I'm limited to Asdm7 and Polysincext2 at DSD128-256. I have seen him post there's limitations to doing that. Again though, I mainly listen in NOS mode entirely with Roon passing NOS bit perfect through the May's ASIO driver directly or through Roon to HQP at PCM 1.536MHZ mostly depending on my mood, but I wouldn't mind hearing the hardest setting DSD to see if it's better. Link to comment
Popular Post Diavolo Posted January 25, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 25, 2021 41 minutes ago, Diavolo said: I used to own the Intone or Intona (forget name) galvanic isolator and noticed no difference, but I did help an audiophile who had a loud 60hz ground loop between his computer and his dac (as odd as that is) and it 100% eliminated it entirely in lieu of lifting the ground which a cheater plug which by its very name... is cheating death 😁 (Tempting fate at the very least). Of course this guy thinks my galvanic isolator made a profound musical improvement beyond the 60hz noise because he's more nuts than me 🤪. I'm half as crazy. As an aside, he also decorated his speakers (including the drivers)and all his gear (inside and out) with hundreds of magic dots (I'm not kidding). I wish I saved that picture, I almost died of laughter 😁. His setup looked like a polkadot mess. There's no vaccine for confirmation bias. 😁 The May KTE DAC doesn't need any help in the USB dept imho/ymmv. Found it. 😁 LMAO fds, Flextreme and Diavolo 3 Link to comment
Lightwave Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 Got my Holo Audio May DAC yesterday. It’s getting more than 16 hours of burn-in time so far. Should I let it burn-in continuously for the recommended 500 hours or switch it off from time to time? The May runs hotter than I expected so I’m a bit nervous if it should be burned in continuously. Diavolo 1 Link to comment
Diavolo Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 39 minutes ago, Lightwave said: Got my Holo Audio May DAC yesterday. It’s getting more than 16 hours of burn-in time so far. Should I let it burn-in continuously for the recommended 500 hours or switch it off from time to time? The May runs hotter than I expected so I’m a bit nervous if it should be burned in continuously. Sounds great right out of the box and I didn't notice much of a change honestly, but I leave mine on 24/7. The heat is mostly just the plethora of resistors in the ladder dacs generating heat which is what resisters are supposed to do. Leave it on, you won't hurt anything, imho. Congratulations 🎊 on getting your May, have fun! Link to comment
GoldenOne Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 1 hour ago, Lightwave said: Got my Holo Audio May DAC yesterday. It’s getting more than 16 hours of burn-in time so far. Should I let it burn-in continuously for the recommended 500 hours or switch it off from time to time? The May runs hotter than I expected so I’m a bit nervous if it should be burned in continuously. Not sure about burnin, but there is definitely a change in sound warm vs cold. Would strongly recommend not turning it off unless you have to. This goes for other r2r dacs, rockna, denafrips etc. The schiit yggy is infamous for its warmup time. Diavolo 1 https://youtube.com/goldensound Roon -> HQPlayer -> SMS200 Ultra/SPS500 -> Holo Audio May (Wildism Edition) -> Holo Audio Serene (Wildism Edition) -> Benchmark AHB2 -> Hifiman Susvara Link to comment
Popular Post ted_b Posted January 26, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 26, 2021 All digital (anything w/ clocks) requires time for thermal equilibrium. My rule: don't turn off digital. :) Solstice380, Diavolo and louawalters 2 1 "We're all bozos on this bus"....F.T. My JRIver tutorial videos Actual JRIver tutorial MP4 video links My eleven yr old SACD Ripping Guide for PS3 (needs updating but still works) US Technical Advisor, NativeDSD.com Link to comment
Flextreme Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 I did power off, because I took the break in process in overdrive (having no patience), playing max-loudness techno and pink noise 24/7. At one time, after 4 days, sound really degraded. After taking a pause and continuing the burn in process with normal music, things settled nicely. I'm quite sure my experience was incidental, because nobody reported something similar. Just do not do what I did and try to force the break-in process. Now I never power down the May. Not even stand by. Link to comment
John Hughes Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 I leave me be running all the time. Sounds great out or the box, and even better after a couple hundred hours. Diavolo 1 Link to comment
Popular Post Flextreme Posted January 27, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 27, 2021 Just discovered this amazing review by Goldenone, not shure why he did not share here, but I will anyhow: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/an-exploration-of-chord-dave-mscaler-qutest-and-holo-may-hqplayer.952934/ ted_b, fds and Diavolo 3 Link to comment
Diavolo Posted January 27, 2021 Share Posted January 27, 2021 31 minutes ago, Flextreme said: Just discovered this amazing review by Goldenone, not shure why he did not share here, but I will anyhow: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/an-exploration-of-chord-dave-mscaler-qutest-and-holo-may-hqplayer.952934/ I'm not going to lie, I just used the find button and searched for "May" 😁 That description of the May's sound is pure poetry and very aptly written. 👍 🌟 👌 😊 Thanks for sharing! Flextreme 1 Link to comment
Lightwave Posted January 27, 2021 Share Posted January 27, 2021 I have this burn-in track from HDTrack that just goes from 20Hz to 20kHz. I play it in an infinite loop. I used that to burn-in my speakers. Now, I'm wondering if that's NOT the best way to burn-in a DAC. What do you guys play to burn in the May? Link to comment
Popular Post Diavolo Posted January 28, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 28, 2021 Play this on the May if you get an opportunity. It's pretty amazing. 🎶 🎸 PS: Had more time to read your headfi review, it's very informative and well written. 👍 🌟 👌 Flextreme and Lightwave 1 1 Link to comment
Diavolo Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 1 hour ago, Lightwave said: I have this burn-in track from HDTrack that just goes from 20Hz to 20kHz. I play it in an infinite loop. I used that to burn-in my speakers. Now, I'm wondering if that's NOT the best way to burn-in a DAC. What do you guys play to burn in the May? I just play really good and varied music. I enjoy the ride. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1EoZ5oQwIxReGqARxl-p6gFZdTibaDCEp Lightwave 1 Link to comment
ted_b Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 6 hours ago, Flextreme said: Just discovered this amazing review by Goldenone, not shure why he did not share here, but I will anyhow: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/an-exploration-of-chord-dave-mscaler-qutest-and-holo-may-hqplayer.952934/ Yes, that is a great, well-written review/comparison. I also want to thank you for turning me onto it because in the thread is a link to the equally nice review by Herb Reichert. I feel I need to contact him, cuz we live similar audio lives (Holo Spring, RAAL Requisite, HQplayer, Todd Garfinkle friend, etc etc). I am going to redouble my efforts to get a May in here. 😎 Diavolo 1 "We're all bozos on this bus"....F.T. My JRIver tutorial videos Actual JRIver tutorial MP4 video links My eleven yr old SACD Ripping Guide for PS3 (needs updating but still works) US Technical Advisor, NativeDSD.com Link to comment
Lightwave Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 3 hours ago, Diavolo said: I just play really good and varied music. I enjoy the ride. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1EoZ5oQwIxReGqARxl-p6gFZdTibaDCEp Thanks Diavolo, I’ll switch over to variety of music for my overnight burn in. I am definitely in love with this DAC. PRaT is very good and natural. Bass is round, weighty without sounding too warm. Vocal is textured. Some recordings now sound too grainy but vocals in good recording sound amazing, smooth and with this wetness in the air. I am only using Audirvana on my old MacBook Pro to play TIDAL. MQA tracks sound grainy after Audirvana’s first unfold. Non-MQA track sounds smoother. Diavolo 1 Link to comment
GoldenOne Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 Just wanted to post re: the drivers issue Looks like kitsune has updated their driver/firmware download page now: https://www.kitsunehifi.com/product/holo-audio-may-dac/#tab-downloads-links Driver v5.0 is out, and also its got the 3012/3014 firmwares in there. It confirms that the same firmware is used for spring 2 and may which is good. Also, for @Flextreme it says in the .txt file in the driver folder that apparently 3014 has been the "stock" driver since late 2020, but that they recommend you upgrade to 3012 if your USB chipset is compatible. So that explains why you couldn't use 1.536mhz stock. Diavolo 1 https://youtube.com/goldensound Roon -> HQPlayer -> SMS200 Ultra/SPS500 -> Holo Audio May (Wildism Edition) -> Holo Audio Serene (Wildism Edition) -> Benchmark AHB2 -> Hifiman Susvara Link to comment
giordy60 Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 9 hours ago, Diavolo said: Suonalo a maggio se ne hai l'opportunità. È piuttosto sorprendente. 🎶 🎸 PS: Ho avuto più tempo per leggere la tua recensione di headfi, è molto istruttiva e ben scritta. 👍 🌟 👌 I didn't know this young musician ...👏👏 his "style" is very close to that of Antonio Forcione Diavolo 1 sistema: Server HDPlex (i7-6700-WS2016) HQPlayer con Ramdisk + HQPDcontrol > Macmini (roon core+Qobuz) o HQPlayer Client + Qobuz > HDPlex NAA (celeron G1840T-WS2016) NAD con Ramdisk, o miniPC Fitlet con immagine di Miska > Denafrips Ares2 , SPLvolume2 > Monitor KH+sub Link to comment
Flextreme Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 7 hours ago, GoldenOne said: Just wanted to post re: the drivers issue Looks like kitsune has updated their driver/firmware download page now: https://www.kitsunehifi.com/product/holo-audio-may-dac/#tab-downloads-links Driver v5.0 is out, and also its got the 3012/3014 firmwares in there. It confirms that the same firmware is used for spring 2 and may which is good. Also, for @Flextreme it says in the .txt file in the driver folder that apparently 3014 has been the "stock" driver since late 2020, but that they recommend you upgrade to 3012 if your USB chipset is compatible. So that explains why you couldn't use 1.536mhz stock. Yeah they cleared up the text on the homepage and in the driver: good. It was very confusing. Tim explained that 3012 mostly works on Intel, I figured my USB (AMD) would be the bottleneck. THe may is not the only device struggling: had similar issues with my HP reverb g2 vr set. I will retry, but I am not in a hurry, it is difficult to fault the May with the 3014, it is amazing. Do you actually notice an audible difference with 1.536mhz in comparison to 768khz with HQplayer? Diavolo 1 Link to comment
Diavolo Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 8 hours ago, Lightwave said: Thanks Diavolo, I’ll switch over to variety of music for my overnight burn in. I am definitely in love with this DAC. PRaT is very good and natural. Bass is round, weighty without sounding too warm. Vocal is textured. Some recordings now sound too grainy but vocals in good recording sound amazing, smooth and with this wetness in the air. I am only using Audirvana on my old MacBook Pro to play TIDAL. MQA tracks sound grainy after Audirvana’s first unfold. Non-MQA track sounds smoother. I'm not a fan of MQA for technical reasons related it to it not being a lossless codec, however I do allow Roon to do the first unfold and I'm not noticing any grain with my setup, but I'll turn off the MQA decoder and go straight NOS to see if I prefer the sound more. It should be as good as 16/44 redbook all things being equal. Link to comment
Diavolo Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 3 hours ago, giordy60 said: I didn't know this young musician ...👏👏 his "style" is very close to that of Antonio Forcione You're welcome and yes, Forcione, is very good! ♥ Link to comment
Lightwave Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 1 hour ago, Diavolo said: I'm not a fan of MQA for technical reasons related it to it not being a lossless codec, however I do allow Roon to do the first unfold and I'm not noticing any grain with my setup, but I'll turn off the MQA decoder and go straight NOS to see if I prefer the sound more. It should be as good as 16/44 redbook all things being equal. My understanding is that the 16/44 before any unfold is not the same as the 16/44 you get from red book due to compression. Not saying that I can hear the difference in the lossy compression. 😅 I don’t have access to qobuz in Canada. What I read online is that the same track in TIDAL usually sounds thinner when compared to Qobuz. When I compare my flac files purchased from ProStudoMaster.com, TIDAL sounds thinner. That’s my subjective impression and I don’t have a large library to compare with more variety of tracks in TIDAL. Diavolo 1 Link to comment
Lightwave Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 9 hours ago, GoldenOne said: Just wanted to post re: the drivers issue Looks like kitsune has updated their driver/firmware download page now: https://www.kitsunehifi.com/product/holo-audio-may-dac/#tab-downloads-links Driver v5.0 is out, and also its got the 3012/3014 firmwares in there. It confirms that the same firmware is used for spring 2 and may which is good. Also, for @Flextreme it says in the .txt file in the driver folder that apparently 3014 has been the "stock" driver since late 2020, but that they recommend you upgrade to 3012 if your USB chipset is compatible. So that explains why you couldn't use 1.536mhz stock. @GoldenOne do you know if firmware 3012 is compatible with old MacBook? Other than support for 1.536MHz, does the lower sampling rates sound better with 3012 firmware? Link to comment
Popular Post GoldenOne Posted January 28, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 28, 2021 2 hours ago, Flextreme said: Yeah they cleared up the text on the homepage and in the driver: good. It was very confusing. Tim explained that 3012 mostly works on Intel, I figured my USB (AMD) would be the bottleneck. THe may is not the only device struggling: had similar issues with my HP reverb g2 vr set. FWIW I've had some trouble on my AMD machine with the 3012 firmware, it won't do 1.536mhz and for normal sample rates the ASIO control panel has to be set to 16 bit, 24 bit won't play (i've no idea if its still playing 24 bit or not over asio from roon, I think it is but will check with my ADC once it gets back). On my Intel PCs and any linux devices/streamers though no issues at all, "it just works". So it does seem to be hardware dependent. 2 hours ago, Flextreme said: Do you actually notice an audible difference with 1.536mhz in comparison to 768khz with HQplayer? I can't say that I do no, and I usually just run 768khz via my SMS200 Ultra anyway (which actually technically can do 1.536mhz but i've not been able to get it to work properly). There is just something rather satisfying about having 1.536mhz on the display XD 57 minutes ago, Lightwave said: @GoldenOne do you know if firmware 3012 is compatible with old MacBook? Other than support for 1.536MHz, does the lower sampling rates sound better with 3012 firmware? I have no idea, but the older macbook stuff is all intel so i'd assume so. In terms of sounding better with 3012 firmware, i'm not sure, i've not done any subjective AB tests, or objective null-tests on it, but given how the advice in the driver folder is worded, it sounds like if you are able to use 3012 you should. I highly doubt there's any real difference though. 1 hour ago, Lightwave said: My understanding is that the 16/44 before any unfold is not the same as the 16/44 you get from red book due to compression. Not saying that I can hear the difference in the lossy compression. 😅 I don’t have access to qobuz in Canada. What I read online is that the same track in TIDAL usually sounds thinner when compared to Qobuz. When I compare my flac files purchased from ProStudoMaster.com, TIDAL sounds thinner. That’s my subjective impression and I don’t have a large library to compare with more variety of tracks in TIDAL. (Apologies in advance for the long post here) MQA files without unfolding are indeed different to the "standard" flac version. I did a DeltaWave test between the non-MQA release of "Level of concern (Live from outside)" by twenty one pilots and the MQA version (no unfolding). The full report is attached, but the main things to note is that the correlated null is only 58dB, and looking at the spectrogram, higher frequency content is most affected. You can repeat this test yourself using deltawave (or audiodiffmaker for a more basic test), and any MQA file from tidal, vs a standard res one from qobuz or elsewhere. Important to note: A NON-MQA file from tidal and Qobuz are a perfect match. So this isn't an issue of the two services having different files. This difference only exists when MQA is involved. (Time on X axis, frequency on Y axis. Green means more similar, red means less similar) In fact even just looking at the spectrogram of the MQA vs Non-MQA file, the MQA version has all sorts of HF-Noise whereas the standard version does not Standard: MQA: Why is MQA bad? Many reasons: 1) MQA incurs an additional cost to you. You are paying for the licensing fees that are tacked on to products to get MQA support, and at every other step in the process. A good post from the manufacturer Linn is available here: https://www.linn.co.uk/blog/mqa-is-bad-for-music 2) MQA restricts what manufacturers can do with their own products. Schiit has spoken openly in part about this here: https://www.schiit.com/news/news/why-we-wont-be-supporting-mqa MQA requires manufacturers to hand over not only extensive information about their product design to MQA in order to get certified, but also a significant amount of actual CONTROL over the design too. MQA gets to have a say about the hardware and filters that can/can't be used. For instance ifi having to remove their custom filter options when MQA was added. 3) MQA is NOT sourced from a high-res master. It is NOT higher resolution than normal FLAC. MQA creates files however they damn well please. Artist Neil Young actually removed his music from Tidal in protest because he provided tidal with standard 16 bit / 44.1khz masters, and suddenly, tidal made available "HiRes MQA" versions of his music. Most MQA is simply minimum phase upsampled versions of the original (further evidence of this in point 5). https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Tidal-Misleading-Listeners "Tidal's master is a degredation of the original to make it fit in a box that collects royalties. That money ultimately is paid by listeners, I am not behind it. I am out of there. Gone. My masters are the original." - Neil Young 4) There is ZERO proof of any of MQA's claims. There is absolutely zero evidence to support any of their marketing, claims that they can fit 24 bit 192khz content into a 16 bit 44.1khz file, and in fact, all objective evidence and testing so far conclude that MQA's claims don't make sense. All testing so far shows that MQA is nothing more than a minimum phase upsampling filter, which is arguably WORSE than a linear phase filter that most decent DACs or upsampling players will use. MQA is 100% closed-source, and they go to great lengths to make it impossible to directly compare files that have not been altered. 5) MQA is actually probably worse than native playback. MQA makes it impossible to obtain a "normal" and MQA version of the same hires file. BUT, Stereophile did manage to convince them to send an MQA encoded single-impulse file. Their testing showed three things: - Playing back an MQA encoded file on a non-MQA dac caused issues, and created an asymmetric impulse response. - Playing it back on an MQA capable dac, it was minimum phase, not linear. - Playing back a NORMAL, non-MQA encoded impulse response file, with MQA filter turned on on the DAC, produced an IDENTICAL result to the MQA file, all but proving that MQA is nothing more than a basic minimum-phase upsampling filter. https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-tested-part-1 There is significant evidence from multiple third party sources to show that MQA has all sorts of problems. http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/02/musingsmeasurements-on-blurring-and-why.html MQA vs NoMQA.html Josh Mound, barrows, Diavolo and 3 others 2 3 1 https://youtube.com/goldensound Roon -> HQPlayer -> SMS200 Ultra/SPS500 -> Holo Audio May (Wildism Edition) -> Holo Audio Serene (Wildism Edition) -> Benchmark AHB2 -> Hifiman Susvara Link to comment
Lightwave Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 @GoldenOne, thank you for the detailed explanation on MQA. I appreciate you taking the time to shed some light on this confusing and seemingly protected MQA practice. It confirms what I heard. Perhaps MQA stands for Mob Quatrol Assurance. 😆 Now if anyone knows how Canadian can sign up for Qobuz, please help a brother out. Diavolo 1 Link to comment
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