Hello and welcome @slingshot.
I just wanted to let you know that the Holo Spring DAC has been sold. As said TT2 + M Scaler is a better buy!
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I have the TT2 and the M-Scaler on order. Yes, I know they are much better than the S2. Actually the headphone output in my old Arcam AVR sounds better than the S2 as you would expect. Obviously I would prefer to only have one Dac. However as I am going to have thousands of 256 DSD tracks, I want to hear them in at their best. It is very time consuming to convert them but I only have to do it once.
Also I have very efficient Omega speakers and I am going to try to drive them with the TT2 which has 18 watts, the same amount of my First Watts SIT-3 amp. I need a special cable. As noted the S2 has a pre-amp in it so I have been listening to the Omegas with it and the SiT-3. It also has MQA; it’s an amazing unit for the price. It has been easy to move the S2 back and forth between the two systems as it is tiny.
I am going to connect the Auris Audio HA2-SE later today or tomorrow to the S2. I will be ordering the Focal Clear headphones within the week. I think that will be a huge improvement .
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https://www.rme-audio.de/adi-2-dac.html
the new AKM 4493 model is up on their site =) I believe Darko somthing did a review of it =)
yup here it is:
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Glad I didn’t pull the trigger a few weeks ago!
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Happy cake day.
Haha I didn’t even notice. I found this site and went from a pair of Fostex TH-X00 to the Focal Clear. A year later and I’m onto LCD-3 and Focal Stellia. Wallet light. Heart and ears fuller. Love this site and the group!
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I know it’s so easily done. Wallet full one minute wallet empty the next. I agree too wonderful hobby wonderful site and forum.
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Happy cake day! Yes, this forum is great for the audio soul, not so great for my wallets soul lol
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Lol Honestly man there are worse habits or hobbies!
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True…true… I hear photography is a real drain on the wallet…
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Lol it sure can be! 
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It looks like the updated (new remote, AK4493 chip, other circuit tweaks) version of the RME ADI-2 DAC fs is starting to show up in stock in the US.
Mine is set to arrive on Monday, via Sweetwater.
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Nice. Looking forward to your thoughts/impressions.
They’re very likely to be extremely brief as I don’t imagine the differences will be directly audible (if audible at all). Maybe the new filter option will be, hard to say.
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It’s already a great product. Just curious as to any of the changes made (sonically). I know you’ll be able to discern any differences.
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Despite Seattle’s best attempt at a disruptive snow-storm … Sweetwater/Fedex got my new RME ADI-2 DAC fs here on time.
As you can see it’s visually indistinguishable from the original (ignore the screens looking washed out/burry, they’re not … that’s just from the quick and dirty cellphone picture):
And the new remote …
God help you if you mix them up as, as far as I can tell, the only way to tell one unit from another is by looking for the “SD LD” digital filter option in the menus (unless there’s some magic to the serial number or other marking I am not seeing).
Now to do some listening and see if there are any audible changes at all.
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Look forward to your comments, or findings, or review.
I have the original RME ADI-2 and love it with my Senn HDV820, WooAudio WA6 (with their best tube upgrade) and Burson Soloist…using mostly a variety of Senn headphones and Ortho’s from Audeze, HiFiMan and MrSpeakers as well as the OPPO PM1.
Am considering the new version RME for use in another system with Schiit Jotunheim and Beyer A20 amps, normally using MassDrop Ether C, MassDrop HD6XX with Cardas Cross cable, Beyer T1-S/2nd gen., Beyer DT880 and Focal Clear. The new RME would upgrade an existing SMSL SU-8 DAC used with this other headphone system, which is in another room of my house. Most of the music listened to on this other system is Classical, through a Marantz CD player.
Thanks in advance, Torq, for your thoughts…Lee
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So after 12 hours and change of listening/blind* comparison, I’ve a few thoughts on the updated RME ADI-2 DAC fs:
Normal Use
In normal “for pleasure” listening, with a lossless source, feeding a variety of headphones (dynamic, planar, low and high impedance), and with both RME units configured and fed identically, there’s no audible difference between the two.
Critical Comparison
Using test tracks, and critical/audition/review style listening, and some deliberate problem-causing scenarios, its possible to audibly discern some extremely small differences - and one not so small one (but that won’t come up for most users).
Headphone Output
The original version could exhibit some minor dynamic compression (minimized somewhat in high-power mode). This was most noticeable with dynamic headphones that already had superlative micro-dynamic performance (e.g. the Focal line). It was never a factor with the IEM output. And it was not something I heard with any planar headphone shy of the LCD-4 and AB-1266 Phi CC (which needs more power anyway).
In the updated unit, this is less apparent. I won’t say it’s gone completely, but it wasn’t audible until I was using headphones like the Stellia, Utopia, Vérité and MySphere, and even then it took focus to hear it and the effect was reduced.
Chances are this means you won’t need an additional amplifier with anything less than flagship cans with class-leading dynamics for any reason other than getting balanced drive or more power.
Digital Filters
The updated unit exposes a new digital filter in the 4493 IC that is not present on the 4490, specifically the “SD LD” filter or “Short Delay, Low Dispersion”.
This yields lower latency, shorter/lower-amplitude pre-ringing and reduced phase issues than the more common minimum-phase filters, but still has phase shift vs a true linear-phase filter. So far I like it better than the default “SD Sharp” filter, and would say it’s the second “best” filter on the unit.
My preference remains the linear-phase “Sharp” filter, however.
It yields the most natural, accurate, reproduction of material (using my own recordings as a baseline) as far as I can discern.
Headroom
RME appears to have increased the available headroom for full-range digital signals. This is most apparent when using the unit at 0 dB with material that exacerbates issues with inter-sample overs. The result is such material now sounds just as smooth and refined as non-problematic sources did before.
*I will detail the special box I use to facilitate hardware-assisted blind tests for sources, DACs and amps in another post sometime. But it employs level matching to within 0.1 dB, hardware entropy source/TRNG-driven undetectable switching and capture and logging of elections. It has a ton of other features as well, but I’ll cover those at the same time.
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