[whirlwind]

Mine arrived a few minutes ago. Using usb connection for now....the long burn in period starts now, lol

Giving it a quick spin.

 

[joseph69]

Mine arrived a few minutes ago. Using usb connection for now....the long burn in period starts now, lol

Congratulations on your KTE Spring DAC.
I'm sure you'll enjoy it very much!

 

[bflat]

Burn in tip - make sure to have an equal number of tracks that are 44.1 and 48K clock based sampling rate. That way both clock crystals are used equally during burn in.

Since I also got a new amp when I got the Level 3, I had both running during burn in. However I wonder if it's necessary to have the amp turned on during burn in if the amp is already burned in. Anyone know?

 

[whirlwind]

Wow, first impressions of this dac is very good. I was a bit concerned about it being bright, regardless of what I read and was told. That is not the case, and the bass is killer along with some wonderful retrieval of details.

Just straight out of the box , this is a very nice upgrade for me.

I need to get foobar set up for DSD

 

[joseph69]

Wow, first impressions of this dac is very good. I was a bit concerned about it being bright, regardless of what I read and was told. That is not the case, and the bass is killer along with some wonderful retrieval of details.

Just straight out of the box , this is a very nice upgrade for me.

I need to get foobar set up for DSD

My immediate impressions out of the box were very positive also, and it only gets better and better! The Spring DAC was actually the best upgrade I've ever purchased for my systems.

 

[whirlwind]

The native DSD is just simply killer.

44/16 flacs sound so darn wonderful on NOS mode.

I am going to set mine on NOS and just forget about it and enjoy my music.

Just using usb direct from pc, sounds great to me

 

[Energy]

I'm going to be downgrading back to the Spring. My Pavane has been showing some brightness issues. Getting real tired of it.

 

[oneguy]

I'm going to be downgrading back to the Spring. My Pavane has been showing some brightness issues. Getting real tired of it.

downgrading huh?

 

[Energy]

downgrading huh?

Yeah hehe. I've owned the level 1 and level 2 prior to the Pavane and have had a borrowed level 3 for a couple weeks.

I sold my first Pavane to a friend and the second one I bought ended up sounding completely different. It's like the HD800 signature edition or something.. Treble is overly harsh and hasn't gone away after 200 hours of burn in. Many times it made question my Utopia headphones until I connected it to studio monitors that I known for the last 3 years so that confirmed it was the DAC.

Now unsure whether I should just get a level 1 again or try out the Audio-gd R2R 7 DAC. Is there any other options out there for under $3000? I don't think..
I kind of didn't like the copper color accents on the Holo Audio Spring or the front panel display.

 

[joseph69]

I'm going to be downgrading back to the Spring. My Pavane has been showing some brightness issues. Getting real tired of it.

In your case I would call it an upgrade, not a downgrade. Was the copper and display the only thing you didn't care for about the Spring?

 

[MacedonianHero]

I would call it an upgrade then in your case.

Agreed.

 

[Energy]

In your case I would call it an upgrade, not a downgrade. Was the copper and display the only thing you didn't care for about the Spring?

In this scenario, yes, it would be an upgrade since this particular Pavane is dysfunctional.

When I upgraded from the Spring to the Pavane, the Pavane ended up sounding slightly better even when lacking the I2S input. Increase in price doesn't always offer performance gains, but in this case it was one of them. With similar belief to the majority of the community here I'm sure, I cared mainly for the sound quality that the Holo Audio Spring provided. DSD support didn't mean much to me as I did not own any DSD files and NOS was preferred as it sounded less digital.

I have visual issues (due to growing up with a family of designers) so the color did bother me as it was my most hated color, but absolutely nowhere close as to why I moved on from the Spring. If anything I was actually going to go for a level 3, but found a killer deal on the Pavane for the same price that ultimately lead to a slight increase in sound quality and aesthetic improvements.

Now that I use Audirvana, upsampling to DSD512 sounds like fun. I'm slightly confused however on the benefits of PCM upsampled to DSD.

"This is the ultimate step in upsampling to send to the DAC the closest signal to the one used internally in its DAC chip immediately before the conversion to analog. This enables, with native DSD compatible DACs, to bypass all digital filters and processing done in the DAC chip by those done by Audirvana Plus.

The computer CPU is much more powerful than the DAC chip and thus enables to use much more sophisticated upsampling algorithms to give strongly increased sound quality."

- pulled from an Aurdirvana Article

Now from what I'm aware is that DSD is 1 bit and ran under various frequencies. Since NOS already bypasses the hardware filters thus being free from digital filters, wouldn't the benefits of DSD only be beneficial for 1 bit chip-base delta sigma DAC's? Are there more digital filters than can be bypassed even for R2R Ladder design that I'm not aware of? Also, is the impulse response of playing through DSD better than PCM?

 

[oneguy]

Yeah hehe. I've owned the level 1 and level 2 prior to the Pavane and have had a borrowed level 3 for a couple weeks.

I sold my first Pavane to a friend and the second one I bought ended up sounding completely different. It's like the HD800 signature edition or something.. Treble is overly harsh and hasn't gone away after 200 hours of burn in. Many times it made question my Utopia headphones until I connected it to studio monitors that I known for the last 3 years so that confirmed it was the DAC.

Now unsure whether I should just get a level 1 again or try out the Audio-gd R2R 7 DAC. Is there any other options out there for under $3000? I don't think..
I kind of didn't like the copper color accents on the Holo Audio Spring or the front panel display.

Interested the hear about your impressions if you get the R2R 7. I've been curious about that DAC. There is also the Denafrips Venus.

 

[joseph69]

In this scenario, yes, it would be an upgrade since this particular Pavane is dysfunctional.

When I upgraded from the Spring to the Pavane, the Pavane ended up sounding slightly better even when lacking the I2S input. Increase in price doesn't always offer performance gains, but in this case it was one of them. With similar belief to the majority of the community here I'm sure, I cared mainly for the sound quality that the Holo Audio Spring provided. DSD support didn't mean much to me as I did not own any DSD files and NOS was preferred as it sounded less digital.

I have visual issues (due to growing up with a family of designers) so the color did bother me as it was my most hated color, but absolutely nowhere close as to why I moved on from the Spring. If anything I was actually going to go for a level 3, but found a killer deal on the Pavane for the same price that ultimately lead to a slight increase in sound quality and aesthetic improvements.

Now that I use Audirvana, upsampling to DSD512 sounds like fun. I'm slightly confused however on the benefits of PCM upsampled to DSD.

"This is the ultimate step in upsampling to send to the DAC the closest signal to the one used internally in its DAC chip immediately before the conversion to analog. This enables, with native DSD compatible DACs, to bypass all digital filters and processing done in the DAC chip by those done by Audirvana Plus.

The computer CPU is much more powerful than the DAC chip and thus enables to use much more sophisticated upsampling algorithms to give strongly increased sound quality."

- pulled from an Aurdirvana Article

Now from what I'm aware is that DSD is 1 bit and ran under various frequencies. Since NOS already bypasses the hardware filters thus being free from digital filters, wouldn't the benefits of DSD only be beneficial for 1 bit chip-base delta sigma DAC's? Are there more digital filters than can be bypassed even for R2R Ladder design that I'm not aware of? Also, is the impulse response of playing through DSD better than PCM?

I see, I thought your main concern about the Spring was aesthetics…glad to hear it is not. As far as DSD is concerned, I also don't have any DSD files, so I have no experience with using DSD mode. I do have a number of SACD's that a fellow H-F member made for me, and I've been trying to listen to them after importing them to JRiver MC-21 to no avail. Every time I try playback I get a message saying "File not found" but I can see it was imported? I need to work on getting these SACD's to play because I am interested in hearing them.

 

[whirlwind]

I see, I thought your main concern about the Spring was aesthetics…glad to hear it is not. As far as DSD is concerned, I also don't have any DSD files, so I have no experience with using DSD mode. I do have a number of SACD's that a fellow H-F member made for me, and I've been trying to listen to them after importing them to JRiver MC-21 to no avail. Every time I try playback I get a message saying "File not found" but I can see it was imported? I need to work on getting these SACD's to play because I am interested in hearing them.

@MacedonianHero was right. DSD sounds amazing on this dac, and mine is only a few days old....needs many more hours of burn in....but just wow on the DSD quality.

Too bad there are not more albums to choose from...I listened to this this morning and it is killer.....but 44/16 flac is wonderful as well.