Holo Audio May DAC

Thanks for the recommendation. Are you using the chord USB directly from your source or do you have a jitter device between it and the May. Have you tried other inputs yet? Was using a Matrix I2S box with the DS and it was much better with that then USB. With the May USB seems to be better.

@nquery did you tried the EC modulators as well? do you still like the pure NOS over EC mods with HQPlayer?
I ask because per your post I noticed you are using PCM not SDMI’m just curious that’s all

@luisma31 I have not yet as my current core server is not powerful to do it justice and I also want to stick with PCM upsampling first to dial in the sound before making comparisons to DSD. Right now, I am really liking the new poly-sinc-gauss-long filter that Jussi just added. It’s a filter that he has been working on for 6 years, It’s supposed to be the best of both worlds. It sounds fantastic, better than pure NOS.

I am also using a cheap intel pc stick as my endpoint so I can do 1536kHz. This was also a test of the May’s USB input to see if it can back up claims that a fancy USB chain is no longer required. I have had a Sonore OpticalRendu and Allo USBridge Signature in place before this. So far, I can’t tell a difference which is great. One can not worry about USB source as much anymore. That said, I still went with a low-power endpoint and am using an LPS with it.

The other change I made (and mentioned above) was to get a quality Balanced XLR to Single Ended RCA transformer (cinemags) and see if that improved the sonics on my SE amp. I think there is an incremental improvement but haven’t really A/B’ed it yet.

Along with another 400 hrs of burn-in and ability to do digital volume attenuation, I am now much happier than when I first plugged the May in a few weeks ago. I do sometimes miss the organic mid-range and spatial depth of my tubed Lampizator but in most other aspects I am getting better sound from the May.

I don't think USB cables should be making a difference given the May's implementation unless they are simply out of spec. I use a Supra USB cable without issue. And again, I have not noticed a difference between 3 low-powered (and LPS powered) endpoints.

Cudfoo : usb to matrix spdif to dac

I realize the Holo May KTE is an R2R DAC and the Chord DAVE is a delta-sigma DAC.  But has any compared the realism, soundstage, and tonality of both units?

Secondly, how does it compare to some of the pricer MSB and dCS offerings?