Holo Audio May DAC

Looks like I do have a bit of an issue. This DAC does not play nice with my Curious USB cable. Both my Aurender streamer ( USB DAC ERR Detected message from time to time) and the May seem it have trouble locking. The USB cable that came with the unit seems to be ok. Anyone have this issue? Any recomendations for a USB cable for this unit. Is that the best input to use with the May?

Try the Inakustik from Small Green computer.  Works and sounds great with my May.

I recommend Chord Company USB cables. I have the ChordMusic, but a SarumT or something in a cheaper Chord range would work too. In my system, the ChordMusic was better than the Shunyata Omega and the Jorma Reference. The Chord Sarum T was better than the Shunyata Sigma.

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.