I wanted to follow up on my experience with my Holo May KTE DAC. I’m about 450 hours into burn-in since receiving my DAC a few days before Christmas. At least with the KTE edition (I can’t comment on base or level 2), the burn-in hours are a must. There are a ton of upgraded capacitors in the KTE, and from my days of burning in teflon capacitors with my Conrad Johnson preamp and amp, you have to grind through the hours to get the reward. There were lots of ups and downs with the sound, at some points, the DAC not sounding particularly exceptional. If you are at 200, 300 hours and thinking, "Eh, this is not such an amazing DAC", hold the line and keep grinding. You should start to hear marked improvements around 450 hours.
As I close in on 500 hours (I’ll probably keep it running another 200 hours to see if there aren’t more incremental improvements after even 500), the sound has taken a marked turn for the best. Soundstage has gotten huge... both in width, height, and depth. The tone has also become more natural. Appropriately warm, but not too warm... natural.
Microdetails in the sound are startling and thrilling to hear. Strings, cymbals, brass, guitars... I hear things I’ve never heard before in most of my recordings. The Holo May KTE does this in a very natural way... not artificially highlighting detail, but when you hear it, your natural response is to mouth the words "Wow."
Bass is very solid, and particularly acoustic bass is lifelike and thrilling to hear. Very fast, tight, and natural.
The sustain and decay of cymbals, strings, piano notes, bells are delightful to hear. Echoes and soundstage of the halls of live events are also the best I have ever heard in my system.
When I say I am hearing things I haven’t heard before in recordings, it’s not hyperbole. Fresh new details come out that were simply not audible before. Soundstage detail and depth provide a fresh perspective on recordings.
You will quickly be able to discern which are good recordings in your library vs. bad recordings. Good recordings will really pop with lifelike details and soundstage. Mediocre and poor recordings stand out as such. You may be surprised which of your old standby’s end up falling into which category. Such is the resolution and realism of the Holo May KTE.
DSD recordings come across as softer at a given volume level than PCM, but are equally beautiful to listen to... just turn up the volume as needed. BTW... YMMV, but I personally found that the DSD sound quality improved in a noteworthy way after playing 50-100 hours of DSD-only recordings as part of the burn-in. If DSD is part of your music library, dedicate 100-200 hours of your 500-600 hour burnin to playing just DSD. DSD goes down a different path of resistors than PCM which probably explains the effect I’ve heard. Don’t judge DSD sound quality with just a few minutes of play time, even if you already have hundreds of hours of burnin on the PCM side of things. If you just listen to FLAC/PCM, none of the above will matter.
I am feeding my Holo May KTE with an Auralic Aries G2 streamer via USB with a Shunyata Sigma USB cable (arguably one of the very best USB cables on the market). I also have a Shunyata Sigma power cord plugged into it fed from a Shunyata Denali 6000T power conditioner, so cabling and streaming source is very good. I have a SOtM Audiophile network switch feeding the Auralic Aries G2 from my NAS and ISP (gigabit Verizon FiOS fiber). Amplification is a combination of the Conrad Johnson ET-7 series 2 pre-amp and Conrad Johnson Premier 350 amplifier. Speakers are the YG Acoustics Carmel. The Carmels are amazingly resolving and seem to scale upwards forever as I make improvements in my electronics chain and cabling. Shunyata Sigma RCA IC’s and biwire speaker cables feed amplification and speakers. Music is streamed from Qobuz, Tidal or my local NAS running minimserver. Almost all listening is in NOS mode.
I feel like there is still 100-200 hours of break in left, despite closing in on 500. That said, in the past 50 hours a lot of magic has come together. This DAC upgrade has really unchained a lot of tremendous resolution in my downstream components, cabling, and speakers. It really does come back to the source... a lot of expense and quality components downstream in my system were all being held back until I introduced the Holo May KTE DAC in my system.
I’ll give another update after another week or so of burnin.
-Jeff
