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Holo Audio Spring Dac, At last a Stereophile review and tests

Some good reading here, review from Herb Reichert a vinyl junky?

For those who love the sound of Redbook converted with R2R Multibit.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/holoaudio-spring-kitsuné-tuned-edition-level-3-da-processor


Herb Reichert

"To me, a DAC is just a DAC—until it wipes away digital glare and opens the listening door all the way, letting me enter the plain-truth wonderments of the recordings I collect. And the HoloAudio Spring DAC Level3 did exactly that. Its sense of undamaged, I-am-there truthfulness let me relax and enjoy my CDs, and DSD and other hi-rez files, with renewed faith in digital sound."



Cheers George


128x128georgehifi
shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
7,477 posts
 
Poor jitter rejection. Harmonic distortion in NOS mode. Otherwise another great R-2R. Renewed my faith in Delta-Sigma ;-)

More seriously - despite all the measurement errors it sounds like a killer DAC.
ejr1953
914 posts
 
One thing I think is important for a quality DAC is the quality of the AC power it runs off of.  People who know much more about digital audio than I do frequently talk about having an excellent quality power supply and how that effects the performance of a DAC.  In my personal experience, with my PS Audio DirectStream DAC, I noticed an immediate improvement when I upgraded from a Furman power conditioner to a PS Audio P10 Power Plant, an AC power "re-generator".
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audioman58
4,137 posts
 
If this dac has the ability of a seperate power supply like my Lumin D-1
The power supply and power cord is instrumental I use the New Verastarr excellent PC.. Mojo Audio New
Illuminati-2  power supply is up there with the best of them for sure and truly makes this dac Very detailed and controlled,and very analog sounding in  many ways and for the extra $1k spent the Lumin d-1 competes easily with digital 2-3 x it's cost.
tonediary
21 posts
 
@lancelock  I am wondering about that for couple of months now but i could not find one decent comparison between LVL1 and LVL3.

My guess is that there won't be that much of a sonic difference.


tonediary
21 posts
 
I also hear people saying that the Spring DAC is better with headphones and can sound strange/funny with speakers sometimes. I wonder why would they say that.
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