HOLO Audio MAY DAC

[GoldenOne]

2 hours ago, Kalpesh said:

how do you do that ? isn't some kind of player required (and then most certainly inferior to HQP) ? 

I admit that after you or Atkinson in Stereophile, I have enjoyed NOS reproduction (albeit of 2N + files only, imaging and roll off exist at N SR). This being, @Miska has been pretty persuasive with his explanation of raw puzzle data/ no analog reconstruction filter to reproduce what happened at ADC level : I dropped pure NOS.

However, in spite of the majority report, I stick with you, though we certainly have very different perceptions or system, for I find the May a much superior DAC to the Spring 3, certainly not close as you reviewed it, when it comes to chose PCM output for PCM sources.

I understand how SDM upsampling might be highly seductive but a) is too transformative vs NOS for my peace of mind b) out of its nice polished varnish oddities spike once in a while that are either more melted/buried when PCM is left PCM or even make sense while those oddities (noise, echo etc) don't make sense through SDM output. Even at 700+ PCM the technical data are so good and close to DSD 256 that I can hardly believe that PCM 1.4/1.5 miss details/imperfection that only glorious DSD might reveal because of an even/cleaner noise floor downed a few dB to -160. 

I have adopted for the PCM route : ps gauss long for N sources and hires mp (not lp contrary to Jussi's published suggestion) for hires. and FIR2/xfi 7EC (can't do v2) 256 for DSD sources.

And overlap-save for convo

so things are pretty much automated and I try to adopt a whatever it brings I enjoy kind of attitude and avoid fiddling... for the time being !!

but if you explain how to I'll give playerless playback

I don't mean playerless I just mean playing back the file bit-perfect and unaltered (I use Roon).
ie: Not using HQPlayer for oversampling, volume control or dithering.

I listen about 40/60 in NOS vs with HQP OS. It just depends on my mood and what I'm listening to

[GoldenOne]

1 hour ago, copy_of_a said:

Loosely related to the discussion above (USB noise measurements) on the Intona Forum the Designer posted measurements of the "7055-C", also some comments as far as comparison the the "7055-B" goes:

https://forum.intona.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=11

On top they put out linear 5V through USB (in case you want to power an appropriate 5V USB powered DAC).

Realistically I think as @Miska said unless the DAC is USB powered, almost any of them are going to perform the same, they're all incredibly low noise.

I've got three 7055-C's and a 7055-D and have not been able to hear (or measure) any difference between the C and D with any DAC so far.
Also for DACs like the Holo May where the isolation is done internally anyway, it's not needed.

Though to be honest, if your DAC IS USB powered then it's questionable whether the money would be better spent on an isolator or upgrading the DAC to begin with.

[GoldenOne]

17 hours ago, Hensema said:

@GoldenOne Have you measured the linearity of both the May L2 and May KTE? I’m wondering what the difference is because of the hand picked ladders from the KTE version.

Not side by side no, I had my L2 before I got my analyzer unfortunately