HOLO Audio - Official Thread

In talking to Tim at Kitsunehifi he indicated to me the Cyan 2 will be a chip dac, not R2R, and be more affordable. I was dissappointed by the news, and ended up purchasing what he said was the last PCM Cyan, a demo model.

1 Like

That is quite disappointing. Guess I’ll be holding onto my OG Cyan forever now!

That’s too bad but thanks for the info. When did you talk to him?

That was March of this year.

1 Like

Hmmm…Jos says it will be a NOS DAC. He didn’t say anything about R-2R though.

“chip dac” could mean a lot of different things. did you take it to mean the revised Cyan would be based on a sabre, AKM or other d/s chip?

Good point I likely misread him and assumed it was going to be something from AKM, etc.

Here’s a paste of his comment. I had asked if a new Cyan model was coming out since the original model was sold out and discontinued. He told me he had an OG demo model he could sell me, or I could wait for the new model.

Quote: Fwiw, the cyan2 is not likely to be discrete r2r. But a chip dac. As we are trying to make it affordable and entry level. It will still be fantastic.

3 Likes

That sold quickly!

Was this yours?

20 ch

No way! I’m not selling mine anytime soon. I love my spring Dac. I did sell my Lampizator though. The lampi was a better Dac but it sounded too similar to my turntable setup where the spring compliments my analog rig much better with a different sound. However If I ever sell do my Spring it will most likely be to upgrade to a May.

2 Likes

If it’s not discrete R2R then it either won’t be R2R, will have to use something like the Analog Devices instrumentation DACs (which is what Schiit do), or will be using legacy chips that are either no longer in production (and are thus quite pricey) or aren’t very good.

The same applies to just “multi-bit” …

Which points towards a D/S chip.

Unlikely to be AKM … starting new designs on those wouldn’t make sense at the moment.

Doesn’t leave a lot of options …

CS, ESS, TI …

1 Like

Hmm…the “fwiw” and the “not likely” in that quote make it pretty ambiguous. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Holo Audio May.

I received this unit about a month ago and I feel it time to report some basic impressions.

This will be thoughts on the soundscape the May renders as well as comparisons to the Bifrost 2, my previous DAC, which was my main DAC for just over one year.

Audio Components: DNA Starlett, Focal Utopia (mainly) , ZMF Verite Open (unmainly).

Sources: CD, ripped CDs, streaming lossless/high res.

Musical preferences: Generally classical music but do mix in some jazz, top 40/pop music, acoustic and the hip hop on occasion.

Technical details: If interested you can check online at various sites. You can read about them there as it makes little sense for me to regurgitate this as this is already going to be long enough. Quickly though, it can do NOS, it can do OS. It is also Holo Audio’s implementation of an R2R ladder DAC.

All impressions were made with the May in NOS mode. There are sonic differences between the NOS/OS modes, but, I found myself preferring the NOS sound and didnt spend much time teasing out the differences.

To more formally start, let me say what I find to be annoying or perhaps even troublesome with this unit.

Possible Caveats:

  1. L1, L2 and KTE. Yes, there are different levels for this DAC (as well as for the Holo Spring DACs). I happened to choose L2 for the May. Its not clear as to the sonic differences between these levels and at best, it seems audible differences will be slight and likely require A/B testing to get an appreciation of. I’d suggest a buy based on what “options” you like or can afford. Some have discussed buying the KTE version simply to maintain the most resale value, whatever works for you.
  1. Size. This is better served as an audio rack component or placed within a dedicated space. It’s a double chassis, about 40lbs, and will take up a lot of real estate on a desktop.
  2. Cabling. Being dual mono there is an output on both sides of the DAC portion of the May. Cable management may be tougher if you are trying to avoid crossing over or being near power cables and such, especially if you have a number of components nearby. Also, the umbilical cable connecting the power unit to the DAC is quite stiff and almost too long if one were stacking one chassis on top of the other. However, the added length is likely there if one wanted to add some separation between the two units.
  3. Needs to be on at all times for best sound and will get warm. I’m told that this is not an issue to be concerned with from an electronics perspective but if you run this unit in an already warm area you may want to take this into consideration. Some people place spacers between the power and DAC chassis’s to aid ventilation but Ive also had it recommend to keep them stacked closely to allow the heat to better dissipate evenly between the two cases. The DAC portion gives off most of the heat so give it some breathing room above if you rack it.
  4. PLL (phase lock loop). This is tech designed to reduce jitter. To do so it “locks” onto the source and will actually tell you it is doing so on the display. This can take time, maybe 30 seconds. Not a huge bother but if you want to rapidly switch between sources the locking time will hamper that. No music plays while the May is locking. Doesnt apply to USB sources. I do use Coax as a source and the locking delay occurs when switching to this input. The PLL can be disabled easily and the method is described in the manual. I haven’t listened with the PLL disengaged so I cant comment on any benefit it may add. Its not a bother to me, just a quirk to live with.
  5. Cost. Price has recently gone up (I purchased mine before the recent price jump which seems to be about 500 or so per level). Its multi kilo buck, so not an impulse buy for most of us.
    No preamp or other things, this is just a DAC, no added goodies.

Possible Strength’s:

  1. Its purdy
  2. Remote
  3. Lots of inputs (I2S, AES, USB and so forth) along with the two typical outs
  4. Hand warmer
  5. Display can be turned off
  6. Sound
  7. Some joke about its weight re self defence against a large animal or those with bad intentions. Or some reference to Saitama going after the mosquito (if you know…)

I will now expand on the pros of “6”.

Let me begin with my just pulled out of the box, just plugged in, and sound is coming out for the first time impression: OMG I just wasted thousands of dollars on a DAC that sounds no better than my BF2. Yep, no great magic comes out of a cold May. However, I knew this beast needed some time to cook, so while I was hoping for greatness from the start it wasn’t to be had. Took about an hour or two before the firm grip of sonic improvement became evident.

For context let me get this out of the way: I haven’t heard another DAC that is supposed to be on this performance level. Haven’t heard any of the higher end Chord gear, or Rockna or Bricasti or the weird and wonderful tube DACs that are out there. This is essentially my impressions of what this DAC can do either with comparison to the Bifrost 2 or just as a general impression.

Comparisons of the May to other DACs appear online and the reviews I have come across do look upon it favourably. Is it a Dave or Wavedream killer? Don’t know. Seems to compete up there. At what I think this performance level is, its going to mostly come down to preference rather than any obvious weakness one DAC has over another; or even more simply it may come down to an option that one DAC has that the others do not.

Sound

Bloody hell, I typed all that and I’m only now getting to the part that matters most - what does this sound like? Well, it beats that same bloody hell out of the BF2 in all aspects of audio categorization. DACs matter. I will concede the point that I do have an audio chain that should be able to reveal differences so if someone were listening with an obvious bottleneck perhaps these differences would be less apparent or non-existent. But then I would question why the May is in such a chain…

Okay, back to sound…

Tonality
Better extended both ways than the BF2 without any obvious emphasis or recession. Seems to be almost chameleon like in how it portrays what is being fed to it. What I mean by that is that there doesn’t seem to be any one house sound managing to intrude into anything, it just plays what its been given without obvious colouration.

Having said that, I could very much see people finding the May on the warm side due to its excellent bass extension and low end control but when I play something bright, such as Stravinsky’s Petrushka, I do not feel like I am missing any air or sparkle. The May theoretically does have some roll off as it nears 20 kHz but it’s only a few dB based on measurements Ive seen. This is apparently typical of NOS rigs, but isn’t something Ive noted practically. My hearing may not extend that high to notice anyway but it is something I wanted to mention.

To restate, I haven’t detected any tonal region that seems to be underrepresented or over emphasized within a good recording.

Basically, if you need to go low, it will do so, if you need to go high it will do so, if you need a nice vocal midrange, yes indeed. And it will do so without any bleed into another basic region of the frequency response. Everything is tightly maintained and stays within itself. I should also state that I have found the May to be completely fatigue free to this point (not sure if that is all to do with tonality but I needed to mention it somewhere so deal with it).

I f**king hate talking about tonality for a number of reasons, so let’s move on.

Detail Retrieval
I wanted to convey this properly so I’m going to appropriate an analogy that is tired but hopefully useful: you can see the forest and the trees, but also the leaves and the dew on the leaves and the small bugs drinking that dew, all at the same time. The BF2 might get you to the dew but you’d have to strain and you’d lose sight of the forest.

It is simply effortless detail retrieval. Everything that I can hear is isolated in contrast to each other. Every note is distinct and is easy to perceive. Keeping track of all that is going on is straightforward. Musicians going nuts playing Vivaldi is a simple thing to comprehend, no smearing, no mush. Have you ever read a review talking about detail retrieval where the reviewer states that the details are there with both review items but one is just easier to hear?Well the May is the easier one to hear and also gives you more to hear.

Tchaikovsky’s 6th by Currentzis has been criticized for its use of silence or low volume playing. Now, playing or performing music quietly is not an issue, usually. However, having instruments playing so quietly that they are just within the realm of audibility that you turn up the volume in response, to better peer into the darkness, only to be suddenly confronted by an explosion of sound, well, that ain’t good for your hearing.

With the BF2 there would be passages of silence, especially within the first movement, where I wasn’t quite sure any music was playing, but resisted the urge to increase the volume as I knew what was coming. With the May, I can set the volume at a comfortable level and pick up that yes indeed, there is someone quietly playing a clarinet, I’m not imagining it or straining to hear. Its a startling performance advantage for the May. To think that a whole layer of music was simply left out by the BF2… I would have never known.

To perceive this kind of detail retrieval and combine it with exceptional dynamic and spatial performance, which I’ll talk about below, makes every note an experience; but, it doesnt come with the cost of losing yourself in the details. You can maintain your immersion in the music as it spreads itself around you and that creates a next level musical experience. The BF2 cannot do this, like this, and its hard to describe it outside of the piss poor analogy that started this section. Ultimately the May performs these analytical gymnastics without sounding cold or sterile or hard at all. The blasted thing can make the Utopia sound lush at times!

Dynamics
This out punches the BF2, to my ears this is relatively easy to discern. Hard to say what the ultimate macro dynamic capacity is regarding punchiness as the Starlett isn’t known to try and knock anyone deaf. To my tastes it is an adequate amount of bop.

Dynamic range is excellent and aids in the explosiveness of the DAC, especially with the Utopia. The dynamic elements are particularly well defined, like a lightning strike. Explosive elements do not obscure the softer constituents around it, you can still hear them immediately before and after so there is little to no overlap that I can detect. I also feel the background is darker and deeper on the May relative to the BF2, which likely aids in the macros of this unit as any emphatic gesture comes from way down deep.

But its not just in the large cymbal crashes that this DAC impresses, its with the smaller more subtle elements that the dynamic excellence of this amp shines and utterly outclasses something like the Bifrost 2.

With the May every note has a distinctive contrast to one another and these notes are also distinctly palpable. You can feel every piano key being struck, the bow going across the string, the shimmer and splash of cymbals. And its done in a simple manner, just enough for it to announce its presence without yelling and screaming and getting in your face, unless called upon. It can do delicate, it can do hammer fist.

Continuing, microdynamics are one of the strongest performance elements of the May. I will go so far as to say that BF2 simply doesnt do micro dynamics, at all, by comparison. It amazes me how the ability to project subtle nuance can be such a jaw dropping experience.

I use a violin track, a Hilary Hahn piece composed by Max Richter, to test for “purity of tone” for lack of a better descriptor as well as to gauge how emotionally involving some change in my audio chain is. Listening to this performance during a period of solo violin playing is mesmerizing. I have heard this track innumerable times yet the vitality and life the May gives to it really pissed me off as I could not believe I was missing this before. I broke out in a laugh when the full scope of what I was hearing finally registered.

Hahn’s bow was creating so many beautifully different singular elements of music, all within just a few strokes, that I actually sat back in wonder at the skill set of a violinist being able to create such artistry. I still think it’s physically impossible but the ears tell me otherwise.

For me, being able to hear this kind of otherworldly microdynamic scale, where an inordinate amount of the grey between black and white is on display, is one of the most musically engaging experiences I can get and is an amazingly wonderful trait of the May. The BF2 now sounds closer to binary, the fuzzy ain’t there like I now know it can be.

Transient Performance
One of my favourite classical compositions is Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Ive heard many different renditions by various artists. One of my favourites is a Janine Jansen version and even though I am partial to it there were times where I thought the transition between notes, especially for the higher paced parts, was just not as defined as I would have liked. One of the few things that held this recording back at times.

For whatever reason it took me a spell before I listened to it with the May. At the time I was also mucking about with HQ Player, experimenting with filters and upscaling. I queued up the Jansen and the transient performance I was looking for was suddenly there, the speed and the sharp delineation between physical movements that I wanted was easily appreciated.

My first reaction was how the hell did HQP manage this? I was all excited about this software until I listened to the same album on another digital player, Audirvana, without HQP, and heard the same improvement in transient response, I then realized the difference was the May. And oh what a difference! What was once a bit of smoothed over blur became a series of succinct purposeful movements. BF2 just couldnt pull it off.

The main benefit of the May is the leading edge performance. Everything starts with a crystalline, sharp, well defined crest of tone that ends with a decay that then drifts away into the ether. For reasons unknown to me I always felt NOS DACs would possibly be slower and I wasn’t expecting much improvement over the BF2 to be honest, but I’m happy to be incorrect in this case.

The trailing edge, while not fading away immediately, which some might prefer, doesnt maintain itself long enough to create a wall of sound effect or take up space in the background. It maintains a discrete yet tasteful presence until its no longer needed. Extremely natural sounding.

Spatial Representation
This is where the May crushes the BF2 in no uncertain terms. Now, I’m not someone who needs massive staging to feel immersed in music. In fact width can at times feel artificial to me if the soundstage feels stretched, but I appreciate precise imaging and the ability to follow layers of music and this is what the May does so very well.

Every single instrument is within its own space, which in and of itself is no big deal as most decent DACs should be able to do this so you might be saying, so what? Well, its the manner in which the May presents those images that elevates it.

No matter how busy or how many instruments are involved in a track, the May not only gives them their own space but also provides them with a buffer zone of air, creating that wonderful effect where you really feel like you can walk around the images. Its a tremendous improvement in imaging precision and creates a real sense of time and space. The BF2 images decently laterally but the walk around effect is simply absent by comparison.

This also applies on the smaller level as movements made by the musician are better defined. I could appreciate hand movements with the BF2 as someone made their way up or down piano keys but I always felt the BF2 presented that with a projection of height rather than depth. With the May you get a truer sense of proper self contained instrument placement due to it creating that better sense of depth. Add in the ability of the May to render its imaging and spacing capabilities basically on a note for note level and you got something that is at times truly stunning.

Layering is also excellent and again outpaces the BF2 handily. Listening to Sibelius’ Symphony No 2 (Vanska/Minnesota/BIS) there is a lovely use of layering and movement in space to shift the emphasis between instrument lines, truly amazing stuff. There is an instance within the 4th movement where an instrument line slowly begins to fade and is then shifted to the background to be superseded by another instrument line that plays over top of it. However, this new background instrument line does not simply fade out, it maintains itself just behind and below the front line instruments as a well defined sonic entity, keeping a pace that reinforces the overall tone of the movement. That background line is then shortly brought back to the foreground to become part of the main flow of music again.

The BF2 simply cant generate these layers. While you know that there is a line that has been faded out volume wise there is no real spatial separation accompanying it. The definitive shift in spacing that the May pulls off is absent. Essentially within this example the May creates two separate groups of instruments playing in different spaces at different levels, whereas the BF2 kinda just lines everything up straight and plays with the volume.

This spatial definition provided by the May gives you a musical experience where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. These layers are easily synced, easily heard and transitioning between them is simple. The audio summation from all of this hard to describe - forest and trees and blah blah blah, remember? The May simply allows everything to be distinct and exist on its own, seemingly untroubled by the rest of music floating around while still managing to keep things cohesive. The BF2 is distantly inferior in this regard.

Concluding Thoughts

I had been searching for a new DAC for a few months as I felt the BF2 was a bottleneck for what I was hoping to get from my rig. Turns out I was correct. The May has provided me with the upgrade I was looking for. It also made me realize just how fantastically capable the Utopia and the Starlett are.

There is an argument to be made re value in relation to the BF2. Is the BF2 good, yeah, I think it a fine DAC and would heartily recommend it to anyone looking for something above entry level but still within an expense range affordable to more folks. But, the May is better and if you are looking for high end performance to round out your rig, well it could be money well spent and there is value in that and I indeed find great value in it. I dont regret the purchase at all and Im happy to have a rig that sounds consistently amazing.

44 Likes

I ordered mine about 5 weeks ago - I sure hope it shows up next week, but I know I must be patient - this review has me very excited - thank you for such a detailed review!

2 Likes

Congrats on the May and thank you for the very thorough breakdown.

I know Holo Audio stuff is currently difficult to get with supply chain issues and backorders so I’m sure this write-up has left anyone waiting on their pre-orders foaming at the mouths.

I’ve yet to hear any of the Holo Audio gear but definitely on my bucket list to try out at some point!

7 Likes

I’m quite surprised there are crickets in response to this very thorough and enjoyable read. There have been much chatter from folks on this DAC and also the Spring 3, would expect some questions or follow up commentary at the very least.

Perhaps @perogie should have posted some gear porn to get folks excited a bit more? So many enjoy posting pics of their cool gear, yet never follow-up with any information such as what was posted above.

I am being cynical, need more substance like this and less flex on the gear porn.

7 Likes

I was lucky, my order to door turnaround time was 2 weeks. I was shocked, also because Holo/the courier didn’t tell me it was on the way, so it just showed up on my door stop. Took me a second to realize what it was.

Can you imagine, the thing would have taken up twice as much space!

7 Likes

As it happens, I emailed Tim earlier today to get at status update, and he replied,
*“We experienced a delay wirh our new usb modules arriving around 10 days too late. But received them this last weekend and have around 80 dacs shipping soon. We are doing our best to get orders out. As this is a delay related to pandemic where they were understaffed for the courier shipping our usb modules. Anyhow, good thing is you have usb module with improved compatibility or amd users who were limited to dsd512 and pcm768. It can now communicate/handshake with amd usb chipsets beyond this to dsd1024 and pcm1.536M”
He said that mine should be shipped out this week…

6 Likes

Believe me @perogie’s review is making it hard to not bite the bullet and pony up for a Holo Audio Spring 3 KTE, given his comparison of the May to the BF2, which is my current DAC.

5 Likes

Absolutely stellar review, @perogie! The Holo May is on an extremely short list of components I’m genuinely curious about in terms of how it would compare and compete with my rig, and your post hasn’t helped :wink:

Super enjoyable read, and your descriptions let me almost hear the May without - well - hearing it. I also queued up the HIlary Hahn piece you mentioned as I passed by it, which improved the reading experience further.

I hope you’ll write more like this!

4 Likes