Holo Audio Spring R2R DAC does DSD512

I ordered one. I should get it in 1-2 weeks.

Pretty cool, hope you can post some reviews here.

Vinshine has dropped their price to $598 ($648 shipped to US). Looks interesting. Plus, they state that the Tomahawk (next level Denafrips) will be announced 15 March.

Looking forward to your comments @thyname.

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@MusicEar

I will. At head-fi forums most likely. But don’t expect the eloquent reviews that some hard core head-fiers write.

@J_William_Truett

That price has been around for a couple of weeks I have been tracking. That’s what I paid

Hello Andrew,

Just curious about how did you find the HOLO vs your VEGA, i have a VEGA and would like to know if its worth it to sell it and get the HOLO instead

Kind regards

Miguel

Hi Miguel,

I waited a very long time before upgrading from a heavily modded Cambridge DACmagic IIa (the original Pink Triangle design) so the Vega struck me as something of a revelation. I still really enjoy it and am seriously considering deploying it at my girlfriend’s place rather than selling.

(This would involve pushing her tolerance for audio boxes a little high, so it may be a long term project. I blotted my copybook over the weekend on a long drive by attempting some Ozark Mountain Daredevils. This resulted in immediate assault with an empty plastic water bottle combined with her frenzied blind stabbing at the car stereo controls to stop the pain. Interstation FM static was deemed preferable).

Unfortunately I can’t setup both DACs to do a meaningful A/B comparison. I think the Spring in NOS mode with upsampled DSD 512 through HQP has a bigger soundstage than I recall with the Vega. I think the Vega presented more detail “up front” although I certainly didn’t find it fatiguing.

The Vega has a remote control and digital volume that the Spring lacks.

I would say to certainly try out the Spring if you want to experiment with DSD512, but if you are content with DSD256 (which the Vega can do with the firmware upgrade) then I wouldn’t think the cost/value of changing was justified. I am attracted to the R2R discrete resistor chain rather than an IC DAC but I couldn’t attribute any particular SQ difference to it because I haven’t made the necessary A/B/X comparison. Similarly I believe the linearity correction from using duplicate R2R chains is a good architecture, but can’t say anything about a comparison. The Spring feels very transparent in my system, but others have thought it a shade warmer and darker in comparison to SABRE DACs. I wouldn’t call that a bad thing.

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Woman driven to violence by Country music

A post was split to a new topic: Woman driven to violence by Country music

Cleaned up the thread :innocent:

Thanks for the inputs on this,

I tried to upgrade my vega to 256 but the “program” is ended as Wang told me so no upgrade for my Vega

in ht either side i have been reading that upgrading to DSD512 is something quite better that being upgrading at dsd256

So i think i will sell

Kind regards

Some nice review from AudioStream, I agreed listening in NOS mode is what makes this DAC so unique from the rest. Considered the price range, it is simply hard to find one that comes close.

Googling has failed me, does anyone know where one can get one of these in Europe. The DAC looks very interesting and not hyper-expenisve as these things go.

.sjb

I just got myself a Level 3! For my birthday.

Oh wait… my birthday is in January :grin:

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Not sure about EU, but I got mine from Wildism Audio in HK. His quote is reasonable and ship worldwide.

Seems incredible value certainly!

:slight_smile:

.sjb

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Haha! Need to get a quote from him…

@Sloop_John_B you can buy them in The Netherlands. I am not annyway connected to Them. http://www.magnahifi.com/index.php/nl/webshop/product/holo-audio-spring-dac-level-2-red-label-r2r-dsd

it is a trusted shop amoung dutch audiophiles and one of the sponsers of a dutch audiophile forum. So you should be good :wink:

Hope this helps

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Has anyone compare the SQ difference between hardware OS in Holo Spring (AK4137) and Roon 1.3 up sampling in the following.

  1. Holo Spring (set OS ) of 44.1k source vs Roon 1.3 up sampling to 352.8k(set Holo Spring to NOS)
  2. Holo Spring 44.1k to DSD256 (set OS DSD) vs Roon up sampling 44.1k to DSD256 (set Holo Spring to NOS)

I haven’t done that yet Guy, but might try it this weekend. I’ve never played music through the OS section of the Spring though, so it might need to break in ! NOS all the way here.

also very interested in the Spring, and how it performs with the OS of Roon.

A friend and I compared the Roon OS with the native OS of his Audio-GD DAC19, and here we found the OS of the Audio GD markedly better, to our surprise (we expected the Roon OS to be better due to more processing power being available through the Roon server).

For anyone interested, we tested like this:

Roon without OS -> Audio-GD with OS enabled -> amp,
vs Roon with OS -> Audio-GD with OS disabled -> amp.

Tried both maximum and 2x maximum on Roon.