HOLO Audio MAY DAC

[GoldenOne]

Holo Serene is now available to order it looks like!

Wildism and Magna both have it up. Nothing on kitsune yet but i'm sure it'll be up soon

https://magnahifi.com/holo-audio-serene-level-2-kte-kitsune-balanced-discrete-pre-amplifier/
https://www.facebook.com/wildismaudiohk/

 

[GoldenOne]

17 hours ago, lpost said:

That’s not good. I’m sure a workaround could be crafted but it shouldn’t be necessary. 

Yeah its a shame that wasn't added.

Personally I use an ifi ipower 12v psu on a smart switch (cause I was using a passive stepped attenuator preamp from goldpoint before, which ofc doesn't have 12v trigger) as a 12v trigger so i'll just keep doing that. But would have been nice to see it included.

Regardless the rest of the preamp looks amazing

[GoldenOne]

24 minutes ago, lpost said:

 @GoldenOneare you GoldenSound on Youtube? If so, is your May DAC review pending?

 

The wifi outlet idea is a good one. I can see it working without issue just a minor inconvience. How about using one of the unused XLR outputs to latch a relay that will in turn latch a 12V supply to trigger the amp? Seems like a simple circuit but there could be more to it than I'm imagining...and certainly wouldn't want to damage the output stage of the May DAC.

Yeah that's me :)

And yes, I have a may review coming soon^tm.
I've got a few products which friends and viewers have sent in which I need to do first though so that I can get their stuff back to them in a timely fashion. But i'll do the may review as soon as the queue has been worked through. I like to prioritise stuff which people have sent in so that I don't hold onto their gear longer than needed.

Sneak peak though is: May > Dave + MScaler

I also have the holo serene preamp coming so i'll do a review on that too. (I may actually do that one first as i'd like to try to get one of the first reviews of it up if possible).

The may review is likely going to be quite long, there's so much to talk about!
Will probably be in this sort of structure:

- Intro/overview
- Subjective review of 'stock' sound (redbook with NOS)
- Discussion of engineering/design elements. (Separate 1 bit converter, PSU, dual mono, R2R, measured performance, PLL, USB isolation, independent XLR/RCA output stages, custom I2S circuit etc etc. Lots to talk about1)
- Subjective review in alternative methods of use (DSD and HQPlayer, both with PCM and DSD)

Expecting it will be over an hour, but should hopefully be good! :D

[GoldenOne]

1 hour ago, lpost said:

@GoldenOne

 

Interesting that you compared the Prozor to the Apple dongle.

 

I'm actually using the Apple dongle DAC with an old iPhone 7 and it has impressed me. It's not the last word in resolution but it's getting me by while I wait...

 

I toasted the analog board on my real DAC, PS Audio DS, and I've not received it back from repair yet (under warranty no less!)...and I await delivery of the May.

 

 

I felt it was the most apt comparison due to being very similarly priced (cheaper in fact), and quite popular.
It measures very well, and to my ears sounds very very good for the price.

I dislike that the reconstruction filter is minimum phase, but I believe the meizu dongle is linear phase and that's ~$25 so not much more

[GoldenOne]

57 minutes ago, Quadman said:

For those of you with this dac are you able to stream dsd512 via HQplayer to it with Linux or similar version of as your servers OS?

Yes. Dsd512/pcm 768khz both work fine from Linux and Linux based streamers. 

 

Dsd1024 and pcm 1.536mhz you need Intel hardware normally. As far as if you need Windows and the asio driver or if Linux will work, I'm not sure. 

[GoldenOne]

23 minutes ago, Stevem324 said:

I might place an order for the May but I have a question maybe someone here can answer.  I'm currently using a Bryston BDA3 DAC with its XLR outputs going to my balanced headphone amp and its RCA outputs going to my preamp for my speaker system.  Can the Holo May have both XLR and RCA outputs connected at the same time without degrading the sound quality?  Of course I will use only set of outputs at any give time.  I've seen comments about the Denafrips Terminator Plus stating that they recommend connecting only 1 set of outputs at the same time.  My Bryston has no issues with having 2 sets of outputs connected at the same time and I don't want to lose that capability.  I saw this same question asked by Punit on Oct 25th 2020 but no one answered his question unless I missed it.  Thanks!

May is fine to connect both outputs simultaneously.
The reason its not ideal on the terminator is that the denafrips dacs do not actually have an output buffer stage. This means they have very high output impedance (1250 ohms compared to the may's 54 ohm).

So long as the amp/preamp connected to it has a high input impedance this is likely not an issue. But still quite high. 
The issue comes in when two amps are connected. If for example two amps, one with a 10kohm input impedance and one with a 25kohm input impedance were connected, the terminator would see a load of 7142Ohm. ( https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/tools/parallel-resistance-calculator/ )

Meaning the impedance ratio for the terminator would be only 5.7 : 1 (generally accepted rule of thumb is that you want 10 : 1 at least), whereas the may would be 132 : 1. No issue at all.

[GoldenOne]

Kitsune uses 'kitsune capacitors' (unclear what this means) 

Wildism uses mundorf/audionote/jensen capacitors. 

 

Kitsune uses fox logos, wildism uses the wildism logo. (kitsune also puts a cover on the dac modules). 

 

That's pretty much it. 

 

I think wildism might do some extra changes on their wildism extreme edition as was the case on the spring but not sure. 

 

All other stuff like silver wiring changes etc are the same for both

[GoldenOne]

TLDR: 
- May's PLL is incredible, and even optical from my PC outperforms dedicated DDCs by orders of magnitude with it enabled.
- May's internal USB is also absolutely fantastic
- Pi2AES is crazy good for the money, and outperforms the Denafrips Hermes DDC (I imagine having no USB in the chain anywhere is a benefit)

Ok, so I did some measurements of inferred jitter from a few devices using the may. May's own USB/internal DDC (this is the upgraded L2/L3 version), denafrips hermes, pi2aes.

(USB source for all devices was sotm SMS200 Ultra. ADC running on Raspberry pi 4 to avoid any potential windows USB problems)

Lets start with 44.1khz
- Pi2AES wins hands down here. With sidebands (deterministic jitter) only going up to -135dB, vs about -125dB on the hermes.
- Hermes additionally has a considerable amount more random jitter (shown by the 'shelf' which reaches up to -137dB, whereas pi2aes never goes above about -144)


 

Moving to 48khz
- Here its much closer, though pi2aes pulls ahead still. Both devices have deterministic jitter of about -143dB, however the pi2aes' sidebands are constrained much closer to the fundamental, whereas the Hermes has additional sidebands further out.
- I added pi2aes coax for a quick comparison here too. We get slightly poorer inferred jitter via coax than we do with i2s. With small sidebands below -136dB. I2S is definitely the better choice if your DAC supports it.

 

What happens if we turn on the PLL?
- Effectively, any jitter that I can possibly measure gets eradicated. With the may's PLL on, both sources show all jitter down at -150dB and the limiting factor immediately becomes my ADC's own accuracy. With the PLL on, its likely that actual jitter is lower than what is displayed here, but I'd need a state of the art analyzer + notch in order to measure it.
- I even tried the worst source I had (Optical from my PC), which was plagued with jitter, and the PLL just absolutely eradicated it.
- I tested may's USB implementation as well, and we can see that it's pretty excellent, with no clear deterministic jitter, and keeping all random jitter below -140dB. The USB performance did not change when the PLL was turned on or off. This means that May's internal DDC could potentially be considered better than pi2aes/hermes given as without PLL it gets better performance than either of them. However given as with PLL enabled, I2S interfaces beat it, pi2aes, i2s, PLL ON delivers the absolute best performance you could possibly ask for or measure.

[GoldenOne]

Just now, lpost said:

Good stuff. Review prep?

 

I'm thinking USB shouldn't use the PLL whether it's enabled or not as the DAC provides the clock for USB. It wouldn't make much sense to PLL it's own clock...

This was actually prep for the hermes review. Though i'm currently waiting for a response from Vinshine/Denafrips on something about the product before actually doing that review.

May review will be coming soon, though i'll be doing the Holo Serene first :)

[GoldenOne]

14 minutes ago, mrkoven said:

Do you guys leave your May on 24/7? I'm finding that it sounds better once it's been on for many hours. So ideally I'd like to just leave it running 24/7, but not sure if that's detrimental to cap life or whatnot, maybe negligible? 

Yeah I just leave it on 24/7. 
Thermal cycling is typically worse for components than being warm for long durations, and I'd much rather the DAC be ready to go at any time

[GoldenOne]

1 hour ago, John Hughes said:

I will definitely try it, I use the Parametric EQ in Roon for speaker correction. So I think I have to duplicate that with HQplayer. This adds another wrinkle to the mix. I have a powerful Win 10 workstation (Ryzen 3950 CPU and 32GB ram) for the Roon Core, so i have the juice.  I've not seen a comprehensive guide on how to accomplish this with HQplayer, just bits and pieces and forums.  Any pointer to good resources?

HQP added support for AutoEQ format EQ files.

Simply copy your roon filter bands in the following format to a .txt file:
 

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 567 Hz Gain -1.3 dB Q 0.23
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 4951 Hz Gain 4.0 dB Q 3.20
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 8250 Hz Gain 3.6 dB Q 1.62
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 15667 Hz Gain 2.7 dB Q 1.09
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 19848 Hz Gain 5.7 dB Q 0.37
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 23 Hz Gain 1.7 dB Q 1.14
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 52 Hz Gain 1.2 dB Q 2.47
Filter 8: ON PK Fc 1289 Hz Gain -2.0 dB Q 2.26
Filter 9: ON PK Fc 2037 Hz Gain 2.6 dB Q 3.78
Filter 10: ON PK Fc 3486 Hz Gain -1.6 dB Q 7.98

Then in HQP just go to Matrix -> Pipeline setup
Tick the "enabled" box, and then for channels 1 and 2 browse for and select the .txt file

Then hit play :)

[GoldenOne]

1 hour ago, John Hughes said:

Hey Steve, congrats!  I am really curious what your experience would be to listen for a while without upsampling in the loop through HQPlayer.  The May does such an excellent job at Nos, I have found I prefer it to any upsampling that Roon can do (up to DSD512 or 384PCM). Nos was definitely more open.  I have not taken the leap to HQ player though.  Its been my experience that while upsampling can add technical merits to audio quality, it can also make it sound more closed in with less energy and possibly more synthetic.  Some people have been 'converted' lol.  

 

1 hour ago, ted_b said:

John Hughes, you need to try HQPlayer sometime soon.  When you get the just the right recipe of filter and dither/modulator (especially if your server has enough gas to do EC modulators) you'll hear that it goes way beyond what Roon can do.  Roon is still a piece of this, but on another machine, feeding HQPlayer (the startling benefits of taking Roon off your HQPlayer machine is quite dramatic in my estimation).  Another nice thing about upsampling in general, and HQPlayer's upsampling in particular, is that almost all dacs have a sweetspot where they sound best.  Because Holo products like May can be put in NOS mode, it's easy to find that sweetspot(s) over time. 

I've had my May since shortly after it was released, and have tried a fair few options with it.

I tend to prefer PCM one way or the other to DSD on the may. Both are excellent, and having a true DSD converter is great for native DSD content which I have a fair bit of, but for upsampling I prefer upsampled PCM instead of DSD. (Not the case with other dacs, this is specific to the may).

I've of course spent plenty of time with it NOS, but have also tried it with the Hugo M-Scaler, and HQP through various DDCs.
I find that HQP sounds better than the M-Scaler, and I tend to either use NOS or HQP sinc-M, LNS15 @768khz from an SMS200 Ultra.
I don't have a favourite between NOS and HQP OS, they're just different and suit different moods/tracks.

I do also have a pi2aes but the SMS200 ultra has 768khz support whereas pi2aes does not so I normally only use pi2aes with native content and other dacs.

[GoldenOne]

5 minutes ago, lpost said:

Did you grab the one on Usaudiomart for just a couple hours yesterday?

 

I've got 110 hours playtime on my KTE and the treble has become quite harsh bordering on unlistenable. Did anyone else experience a marked bad period like this during break in?

That's definitely unusual/unexpected. 

 

Do you have an audio interface/adc you could use to do a couple basic measurements just to see if there is something wrong? 

[GoldenOne]

I measured the jitter from the may fed by USB and it did not change at all when PLL was on vs off.
Other inputs did of course, but USB did not. (It was excellent in both situations though, with firmware on 3014 (was using 3012 previously which didn't seem to play nice with my AMD pc, i'm getting much better results on USB now, not that they were bad before, also I have a new ADC so can measure much lower)

 I got jitter close sidebands at -155dB and wideband random jitter approaching -170dB. Insane

 

[GoldenOne]

Whether or not HQPlayer brings an audible improvement to you is of course up to the listener, but to claim it does nothing is quite demonstrably false. And you can check the performance (and differences) of the various options it has available yourself. (The trial for HQP Pro offers enough to check that stuff using other tools without having to use a physical DAC/ADC)

 

NOS is inherently going to sound quite different to OS of pretty much any kind. 
And if you prefer it that's fine, audio is subjective and people are going to like different things, but making false and hostile claims about software being a virus/miner, or being abusive toward the dev isn't ok.....

[GoldenOne]

1 minute ago, ted_b said:

Have May I2S users (Singxer, etc) found that 1.5Mhz and/or DSD1024 is available?  Or does this still fall back to USB drivers (this time the Singxer-owned ones)?

It is available but you need an Intel pc/endpoint in order to use it. 

 

Also may has been shipping with firmware 3014 at stock for a few months (which provides compatibility with any USB host but doesn't support 1.536mhz).

 

So you'll need to swap it to firmware 3012 if you want 1.536mhz

[GoldenOne]

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried getting 1.536mhz working from the USB C port on their 2000/3000 series Nvidia GPU?
Not sure what controller they're using but given as it was made explicitly for very demanding VR use I wouldn't be surprised if that worked

 

[GoldenOne]

19 hours ago, Miska said:

 

It is likely Nvidia's own IP block. But in this case it doesn't matter if it's for demanding VR use. It all boils down to implementation details. And I think Nvidia card's Type-C port doesn't support USB at all. Note that "USB Type-C" has Alternate Mode capability and the same physical port can switch between between USB, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, HDMI, etc functionality. Where the actual signaling is totally different while using the same physical connector. A bit like we now see HDMI for display connectivity and same connector and cabling hardware used for I2S while the two are totally different (just lacking Type-C's capability to negotiate which configuration to use).

 

So it is really case-by-case if it's going to work or not. There's no simple way to tell without testing.

 

Just gave it a go, it does work for USB and I can run my DAC from it, but unfortunately doesn't work with 1.536mhz :(
Oh well, was worth a shot

[GoldenOne]

5 minutes ago, Quadman said:

The only enabled device is HQplayer.  Holo waspi and asio are not enabled.  Jussi mentioned to do this, as I had the issue yesterday on a older windows 10 pro version (1909).  I figured fresh install of everything would solve this, nope.  48K is checked as is adaptive rate as I don't want to up sample all 44.1 rates to 48 based rates.  I never had an issue with my T+A and its non-theyscon driver.  Yet yesterday with 1909 windows I output DSD512 via roon with holo asio enabled.  

Could you send a screenshot of your hqplayer settings? 

[GoldenOne]

On 4/8/2021 at 4:27 AM, jeti said:

For Holo May connecting to active speakers, would using HQPlayer to control the volume be a good choice? How does this compare with using a pre-amp, say Holo's Serene?

 

Would appreciate any input and suggestions! After all Serene is also expensive.

I have a holo serene arriving this week so should be able to let you know.

At the moment i'm using a goldpoint SA2X stepped attenuator.
In terms of analog volume control this should be the cleanest way to do it ( https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/goldpoint-sa1x-and-sa2x-passive-attenuator-technical-measurements.7303/ ) so it should be an interesting comparison.

I don't know why, but personally I felt that using the goldpoint sounded better than doing DSP volume control via HQPlayer (or Roon).
I know this shouldn't be the case from a theoretical standpoint, but hey.

(I do keep HQP at -3dB to avoid intersample clipping ofc though, but further vol control I do with the goldpoint)

[GoldenOne]

Serene just arrived, first impressions are VERY good

[GoldenOne]

10 minutes ago, lpost said:

I don’t really know but everything I’ve read talks about separate paths. I don’t believe DSD can be processed thru an R-2R ladder.

 

hoepfully others that know can chime in.

 

1 minute ago, madfonzy said:

Some text from the crux audio website

 

”Patented R2R technology. Discrete DAC that has Linear compensation and this allows for ultimate music reproduction accuracy. Separate R2R network for PCM, and  R2R for DSD.

HOLO Audio is the world’s first to support DSD natively on R2R DAC, so far the only one. This is not the DSD converted to PCM before digital-analog converter, but directly by the discrete components of the DSD digital to analog converter. Supported currently on MAC (DOP)and Linux (DOP), and Windows/PC (Direct Native and DOP).“

 

so yes it has separate ladders.

DSD Cannot be processed natively on an R2R ladder.

Rockna converts DSD to 768khz PCM. Denafrips converts to 6-bit (unknown sample rate)
Holo has a completely separate DSD converter which is genuine 1-bit.

It does not use the R2R ladder for DSD

[GoldenOne]

1 hour ago, lpost said:

and this from Kitsune website. It's rather ambiguous 'based on R2R however we don’t refer to it as R2R since the design is far superior.'

 

'The May DAC is the most recent product and is capable of DSD native on an Discrete Resister Ladder DAC!  This May DAC is capable of DSD1024 native and actually running on his bespoke discrete ladder DAC! This is a unique custom build discrete resistor network dac with linear compensation and advanced architecture based on R2R however we don’t refer to it as R2R since the design is far superior.'

 

Regardless of the tech, it sounds wonderful.

I imagine it might share some similarities with stuff like the tambaqui or this: http://puredsd.ru/

[GoldenOne]

So my may when standalone typically measures 38-39C, sometimes a degree or so higher/lower if room temp is hot or cold.

I got the serene recently and tried various combinations of having the may with it's PSU sandwiched between it and serene, may ontop of serene etc etc, but in all cases it was getting up to about 45C. 
Not really "concerning" or anything. But for peace of mind I've moved it and am keeping may standalone again. I think the answer here is:

- Don't put stuff ontop of may
- Don't put may ontop of hot stuff

Unfortunately May does just need a little breathing room, but hey, when we're this deep into audio with a 20kg slab of DAC, making a little space for it is hardly a huge ask.

[GoldenOne]

7 minutes ago, ted_b said:

Update: 

Note:  I have not gone into my Win 10 server's bios and turned on the mobo USB ports, so I am working with only my Asmedia 1142 USB card and my Singxer Su-1 I2S options.

USB card:  not identified when May is at 30.12 firmware.  When I update to 30.14 all music (PCM or DSD, whether Roon-served-to-HQP from another computer, or files drag-n-dropped locally into HQPlayer) has a popcorn machine running along side the music...i.e unlistenable.

SU-1 (into I2S 1 input):  sounds glorious, albeit 8fs only, from any or all sources, in any firmware.

 

So all I've been able to do so far is to reach a simple conclusion that the Holo May KTE, at 8fs, has a decidedly lower noise floor and smoother presentation than my Holo Spring KTE, also at 8fs.  I will compare DSD256 ASDM7EC presentations shortly......but this simple conclusion is nowhere near the entire reason I asked to demo the May.  I want to hear it output 16fs and 32fs, and so far no go. 

Have you tried another source device or streamer? Would strongly recommend trying the mobo usb ports as that could likely be the issue. 

16x should work fine if on the 30.14 firmware. 30.12 is tricky with non-intel hardware (Amd pcs and third party usb cards etc) 

 

But would recommend trying the mobo ports regardless. 

 

7 hours ago, dkdali said:

Sorry for taking up a topic from another forum (hope it is ok!?). Its May dac related 😉

@GoldenOne and others. With your experience with the May dac, HQP and ROON I would like to ask a question:

Have you tried the May dac with a high quality dedicated ROON streamer (like a Innuos Zenith) and compared it to a PC or NAA device streaming HQP?

I have a Innuos Zenith Mk.3 and it was a significant improvement over my PC for ROON (sound quality and convenience)(and it fits nicely in to a HiFi rack 😉). I have been wondering if the sound improvement from the Zenith would compare with the improvements with HQP. My dream scenario would be that the Zenith could be a NAA device but I haven't found any information about that option.

It is not easy for me to make the comparison at the moment due to not having a PC anywhere near my May so any relevant experience would be greatly appreciated.

 

I have tried a few sources. 

 

Interestingly the may was the first dac where I honestly could not tell the difference between most usb sources. The exception being my pc which was worse. 

 

I still use my sms200 ultra just because why not, might as well use the best source I've got right? But the may usb is phenomenal regardless of source. And I'd be quite happy with just a raspberry pi endpoint. 

 

On other dacs though the differences are more pronounced.

 

Clearly holo's usb implementation in the may is excellent. 

 

I also measured the jitter on it and the close in sidebands were below - 155dB, with wider random jitter all below -170dB. Absolutely crazy performance