Cyan 2 or used Spring 2

Audio Gear Talk HQ Player
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So, I am going to switch out the Yggy. What would be preferred? r. They are very close in price, so I am not sure which direction would be a better way to go. I have watched all the reviews and read as much as I can find, and it sounds like Spring 2 has an edge in PCM, but if I am always using HQplayer, does that even matter? Does the Spring 2 also have the special DAC calibration HQplayer in the higher-rate DSD?

I will be listening to mainly 44.1 and 44.8, and it will always be processed in HQplayer

Thanks!

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It does, you can find here details

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Price is no reliable quality/performance metric these days, and personally, I’d not rely on anecdotal reports either, so better look at measurements.

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Thanks for the help. I guess what I am trying to get to is if you walked into a store and they were both free, which one would you take home if your end goal is playing back 44.1 and 48k PCM source audio? From the looking I have done I can not figure out if the Cyan is a step above the Spring 2 KTE

The striped-down nature of Cyan 2 is not an issue for me, it’s just for headphones.

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I own both Spring 2 KTE and May KTE (different locations). I use both with HQPlayer DSD256 exclusively. From what I’ve read, Cyan 2 DSD gets very near Spring 3 KTE, and Spring 3 KTE is somewhere between Spring 2 KTE and May KTE, closer to May. Cyan 2 is smaller than Spring 2, so more convenient. But the differences between them all with DSD are small-ish, to judge from the gap between Spring 2 and May: I’ve not been tempted to upgrade the Spring 2, for instance.

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