Holo Audio: one of the best dacs ever? J Atkinson, H Reichert, S Deckert, M Lavorgna, GoldenSound, D Abramson and the Stereophile reviewers think so. Stereophile A+ and POY 2020

Once again, It’s too early to say which DAC is best. Suffice it to say that I own a DSD with the transformer upgrade an S/R orange fuse in place, the Sunlight firmware, and lots of burn in. But, I keep returning to listen to the May DAC every night. It has about 400 hours of burn in. Will it get better? -No idea but hoping.

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No. comparison was asked, I just wanted to know if you like it. Good to hear that you are happy with it :+1:. It’s all about enjoying the music :blush:

Mine seems to have settled around 1300 hours. I’m at 1700 and it’s consistently sweet but there are some rough patches one must persevere through.

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I forgot to mention, after a couple hundred hours, I turned the unit off overnight for just one night…I repeated this every ~400 hours or so. It seems to have nudged ‘burn-in’ along. Of course, I don’t have a control to compare but it certainly didn’t hurt things.

It’s also nice to know that a new (infant) electronic device can tolerate a few repeated heat-cool cycles and keep working.

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It doesn’t seem to have a standby button, only power on or off, and I hear that it gets quite warm. Is it recommended to keep it powered on all the time (with maybe a few offs like you did), even when not listening ? I haven’t seen anything about this in the user guide.

Most equipment (tubes excepted) likes to remain on and sounds the best this way. Given there is not standby, I suspect the manufacturer intends you just leave the unit on.

Even while knowing this, I turn things off as I dislike wasting energy.

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The standby button is on the front left of the DAC unit. The complete power off switch is on the back of the power supply just like the DS. If you don’t stack the two pieces it doesn’t get as warm.

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Thanks @Elk and @dawkinsj, I was mistaken indeed. It’s like the DS, with a rocker switch in the back and a standby button in the front. The European distributor, Magna Hifi, recommends putting it in standby when not playing music, but keeping the power on all the time, just like the DS.

The button on the dac is not quite like the standby of PS Audio gear. I don’t know how much of the circuit remains on, if any, but the unit gets cold when off with the power supply unit still on.

DAC uses ~50w. Surface temp is ~100F. Power supply remains just a degree or two above ambient and draws less than a watt when on with dac off. Measured by P10.

It does not sound bad when cold and warms rather quickly but yes Tim at Kitsune (at least) recommends it stay powered for best performance. I don’t know if Jeff Zhu recommends this or not. I’ve not found much of anything written by him.

If I recall correctly the DS consumed ~30w continuous.

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It looks like the US and European distributors recommend different approaches :thinking:

What does Euro distributor say?

Watts will be different at different voltage, of course.

He says : keep the rocker switch on the back on at all times. Push the front standby button to turn it on when listening (of course), and push it again to return to standby when you are finished listening.

Do you have a Holo Audio May?

I don’t think one can go wrong with either suggestion. I like to save power but not at the expense of sound quality plus there is no power toggle on the remote :frowning: so it requires manual effort and remembering to turn on/off.

50w 24h/365d at 12c/kwh is ~$50/year. I can justify this expense with a $5000 dac quite easily.

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Yes and at this point it is just past 350 hours.

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Happy with it so far ?

Yes and I also own the DS Sr. and the Aqua La Voce S3

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You are a lucky man :+1:. Reminds me of another forum member, located in Minneapolis, who owns lots of dacs, cables, speakers, etc :wink:

Totally agree. I only care about sound quality and not damaging the dac. I have solar panels on the roof :sunglasses:

The ambient temp seems to impact sound quality as well. Or I should say if I run a very small volume of air across the top of the dac cooling it to ~85F from 100F I feel like the sound suffers just a smidge. I can’t quantify a smidge, perhaps noticeable is a better word, but it’s not dramatic like coating the power cable in unicorn spit or anything that good. (sarcasm).

I’ve not found changing the footers to have any noticeable impact. It rests on a pretty well isolated wall mounted shelf with the power supply nested on the same weight bearing surface but they are separated by a couple inches. A photo would tell all.

I like PLL on with USB (the default). I’ve not used any other inputs. USB seems pretty darn immune but I’ve also not cared to experiment much. I’d rather enjoy the music.

I understand in theory anyway USB should not use or benefit from PLL as the clock for both or either (USB clock vs. PLL clock) are both in the May, if not the very same clock. For SPIDF and IS2 definitely as the May is ‘slave’ to the clock in the sending unit and PLL has been measured to effectively negate jitter to levels below the noise threshold of the measuring device.

PLL has a larger impact on the stage width and depth than the temp change -15F does.

Display is typically off and I have no use for the remote. The PS is on Isoacoustics mini-pucks and the dac is on 3 Herbie’s Tenderfoot. I already had both from days gone by. The two supporting surfaces don’t touch except for coming together on the doubled plywood shelf.

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