Measurements & Preview of Holo Audio Spring 3 DAC / wPreamp (Prototype)

[Le Concombre]

I understand pkane is in Holo for R2R while I suppose, Keith, maybe not so much contradicting pkane, suggests it's a waste for at best resistor can sound like sigma delta? Miska from HQP seems to approve the spending though

 

[pkane]

I understand pkane is in Holo for R2R while I suppose, Keith, maybe not so much contradicting pkane, suggests it's a waste for at best resistor can sound like sigma delta? Miska from HQP seems to approve the spending though

If you need Miska's approval for spending thousands of dollars on a DAC functionality and implementation, go for it!

I've liked R2R as a concept from the early 90's and got a Spring DAC a few years ago because I wanted to see how much things have changed over a few decades. It's a good DAC, but not better than many others, many at a much lower cost. The designer has done a marvelous job of making R2R work well, with low distortion and good linearity. All the things you usually get from the cheaper delta-sigma DACs.

If you like the idea of R2R, get May or Spring, but considering R2R ladder is not used in DSD playback, you're paying for a lot of engineering and components that you will never use if DSD is what you prefer.

 

[Le Concombre]

If you need Miska's approval for spending thousands of dollars on a DAC functionality and implementation, go for it!

I've liked R2R as a concept from the early 90's and got a Spring DAC a few years ago because I wanted to see how much things have changed over a few decades. It's a good DAC, but not better than many others, many at a much lower cost. The designer has done a marvelous job of making R2R work well, with low distortion and good linearity. All the things you usually get from the cheaper delta-sigma DACs.

If you like the idea of R2R, get May or Spring, but considering R2R ladder is not used in DSD playback, you're paying for a lot of engineering and components that you will never use if DSD is what you prefer.

what's your recommended DAC for the price of a L2 Spring 3 (or at much lower cost if as good ?)

 

[Kenmoreira85]

If you need Miska's approval for spending thousands of dollars on a DAC functionality and implementation, go for it!

I've liked R2R as a concept from the early 90's and got a Spring DAC a few years ago because I wanted to see how much things have changed over a few decades. It's a good DAC, but not better than many others, many at a much lower cost. The designer has done a marvelous job of making R2R work well, with low distortion and good linearity. All the things you usually get from the cheaper delta-sigma DACs.

If you like the idea of R2R, get May or Spring, but considering R2R ladder is not used in DSD playback, you're paying for a lot of engineering and components that you will never use if DSD is what you prefer.

The spring uses its r2r for dsd. It has a whole ladder dedicated just to dsd.

 

[pkane]

The spring uses its r2r for dsd. It has a whole ladder dedicated just to dsd.

Considering that DSD is a one bit per sample format, what use is the whole r2r ladder in this case?

 

[pkane]

what's your recommended DAC for the price of a L2 Spring 3 (or at much lower cost if as good ?)

Why would you care what I prefer? Find a decent measuring DAC from the list reviewed here, with features that you need and at a reasonable price (say $500 or less).

 

[Kenmoreira85]

Considering that DSD is a one bit per sample format, what use is the whole r2r ladder in this case?

Probably the ladder changes them 1s and 0s to music. . I'm not a sound / circuit engineer. Too many people here already seem to think they know more than engineers do. I'm gonna just say, I don't know how the shit works. I accept it does and sounds beautiful.

 

[pkane]

Probably the ladder changes them 1s and 0s to music. . I'm not a sound / circuit engineer. Too many people here already seem to think they know more than engineers do. I'm gonna just say, I don't know how the shit works. I accept it does and sounds beautiful.

There's a design and engineering aspect of how a DAC works, and you made a statement about this, specifically. If you don't know how it works, perhaps you shouldn't comment on the subject?

 

[Kenmoreira85]

There's a design and engineering aspect of how a DAC works, and you made a statement about this, specifically. If you don't know how it works, perhaps you shouldn't comment on the subject?

I simply said the their is a ladder dedicated specifically for dsd. It is a chip less dsd conversion

 

[Le Concombre]

Why would you care what I prefer? Find a decent measuring DAC from the list reviewed here, with features that you need and at a reasonable price (say $500 or less).

yeah I don't even know if you can reproduce music at life like SPLs

 

[pkane]

yeah I don't even know if you can reproduce music at life like SPLs

Only when I play the real piano

 

[Miska]

That's silly. Why buy Spring or May if you don't want R2R? That's mostly what you're paying for in those converters.

I pay for their DSD conversion implementation. So far, from Holo Audio I have Cyan DSD, Spring 1, 2 and 3. And I use it only for playing DSD, because it performs better that way.

I could as well ask, why do you buy Spring or May if you don't want their DSD implementation?

(same way for T+A DACs, I pay for the DSD side, not for the PCM side which stays unused)

 

[pkane]

I could as well ask, why do you buy Spring or May if you don't want their DSD implementation?

I suspect that you play DSD on all your DACs, Miska, and that's certainly your prerogative

As I said earlier, I was into R2R DACs in the early 90s. I was curious about Spring PCM R2R implementation which was claimed to be a novel design with a separate compensating R2R ladder to improve linearity. While I tried everything up to DSD512 with it, I still preferred PCM.

 

[Miska]

I suspect that you play DSD on all your DACs, Miska, and that's certainly your prerogative

Yes, for both objective and subjective reasons. There's a reason market is dominated by SDM technologies these days.

]As I said earlier, I was into R2R DACs in the early 90s. I was curious about Spring PCM R2R implementation which was claimed to be a novel design with a separate compensating R2R ladder to improve linearity. While I tried everything up to DSD512 with it, I still preferred PCM.

When run correctly, utilizing it's linear range and suitable noise-shaper at higher rates it can perform fairly OK.

It is also one of the discrete DSD DACs. Of course there are number of others too (T+A, Playback Designs, Nagra, Denafrips, EMM Labs, Meitner, Esoteric, TEAC, Marantz, etc).

I'm curious about novel discrete bit-perfect DSD DAC designs. And bit-perfect DAC designs in general, PCM too.

 

[Kenmoreira85]

So if I'm reading correctly, one prefer holo dsd, the other pcm.

To each, what does the perspective formats sound like to you, that makes you prefer it.
DSD vs pcm

 

[Le Concombre]

All the dacs we represent sound identical because they are properly engineered and this is reflected in their measurements, customers choose on aesthetics and mainly the features they require, digital is done.
Keith

Got my Spring 3 L2. I invite you to perform a simple experiment with at least 2 or your DACs you claim are sounding identical : feed them the same signal, whatever, provided it's decently loud and lively (some chamber music peaking around 86 dB at LP in my exemple), record in your room the cumulative spectrograms yield by a whole track and show us the results. For whatever reason, call it distorsion if you wish, all traces are different in my experiment. Oddly, the BB 1795 TEAC 501 fed DSD 128 and the R2R S3L2 fed PCM 1536 are close while S3L2 fed DSD 128 and 256 yield quite different spectrograms, most notably they are the highest traces @140 Hz

 

[Le Concombre]

So if I'm reading correctly, one prefer holo dsd, the other pcm.

To each, what does the perspective formats sound like to you, that makes you prefer it.
DSD vs pcm

In my previous post, DSD 256 is the red trace, the highest @ 50 and 140. Does it explain why I too prefer it ?I'd say the excess precision and definition turn what could be harshness with PCM into richness, perceivable details, cues to stir memories of what the real thing sounds lile. In as few words as possible : DSD is more music, PCM more Hifi

 

[Le Concombre]

This is pure measurement error.

So if it sounds different and that it's proved by measurement it's because measurements are erroneous ? laughable ; just do the experiment and show us the results with the DACs you build

 

[JohnYang1997]

So if it sounds different and that it's proved by measurement it's because measurements are erroneous ? laughable ; just do the experiment and show us the results with the DACs you build

I won't get into this. I have removed my post.

 

[Le Concombre]

the post from Topping referred to my post #76 and said "This is pure measurement error". One technically sound answer would have been "show your margin error by repeating measurements for the same track on the same DAC fed the same way (I did when I first published spectrograms comparing options).

Truth is that different Dacs or different paths inside the same DAC sound different and yield different spectrograms, way beyond the margin error, which is pretty logical when you're not blinded by a credence