Holo Audio May DAC

I'm still months away from a new DAC, and now the May has moved into my sights which were previously fixed on the Wavelight. In my system I have no preamp (just feed my current dac with volume control direct to my Hegel amp) so one thing that attracted me to the Wavelight, besides the organic/analog sound-quality accolades, was the fully analog volume control that was also well-praised. If it had the May I'd need to get a preamp (and another set of XLR cables).

So with that in mind... is there an affordable preamp or "analog volume attenuator" that is affordable? It would seem that in its most pure sense all I'm really after is a way to attenuate the sound without degrading the quality (i.e. what's basically happening with the volume control of the wavelight)... any such device? Or is an audiophile stuck having to buy a $$ preamp to basically serve that purpose? Any input appreciated :)

i have the wavelight and the may kte.

the may kte is an excellent dac, but I am preferring the wavelight by a small margin. and yes, the wavelight preamp is very very good.

@dvdboulet

So with that in mind... is there an affordable preamp or "analog volume attenuator" that is affordable? It would seem that in its most pure sense all I’m really after is a way to attenuate the sound without degrading the quality (i.e. what’s basically happening with the volume control of the wavelight)... any such device? Or is an audiophile stuck having to buy a $$ preamp to basically serve that purpose? Any input appreciated :)

If that’s all you want then why not just use the digital volume control in Roon or HQPlayer?? That’s what I have successfully done while testing the May into the pre-in of my Line Magnetic amp. It has provided an incremental gain in SQ over the somewhat basic/mediocre pot volume attenuator in my integrated. The May's extremely low noise floor combined with 64 bit volume control provides for tons of headroom.

I should provide an update after another 10 days of testing the May alongside my Lampizator Amber 3. In straight head-to-head comparisons there are pros and cons to each. But where the May has shined for me is with HQPlayer upsampling and digital volume control. It’s extremely low noise floor certainly allows for a lot more flexibility and tuning in this regard and obviates my desire for a better analog volume control/pre-amp in between DAC and amp. But the Lampizator is absolutely no slouch at all and I would still like to hear the new Baltic 3.

One other factor is that my amp is single ended and after some reading and talking to others about the Holo architecture and such, I am convinced that I am not getting the most out of the Holo May. The May actually only uses the output of one side of the R2R ladder for RCA outs, and Jeff Zhu even says the balanced outputs sound better. To this end, I have ordered a quality balanced to SE transformer, the Black Box from AmpsandSound. It is basically designed for this exact problem with many current DACs and the recently updated version Justin is sending me has an additional stepped attenuator to dial in the excess gain. Will update with my observations once it’s in the chain this week.

@nquery... I too am using the MAY single ended.  Do report back on your experience with the Bal-SE solution differences I am very interested.