Had a Holo May KTE L3 and now use a DAC200. Measurements aside, the DAC 200 is subjectively on a different level, particularly when fed DSD (upsanpled via HQPlayer) The preamp is excellent and it’s fully balanced throughout. Just a great piece of kit for the $$$.

Maybe, but a $10 bus powered USB hub actually makes the 3.0 work. There is no added power input involved to the hub or Intona. Can’t figure that one out.

You are able to get an Intona to connect to the Red? If so, is it an Intona 2.0 or 3.0? My Intona 3.0 won’t connect to the Red unless I put a USB hub in between.

From my experience somewhat closer to none … hope you can find a resolution.

I am trying to figure this out as well - if the USB type B port can be used for any other purpose outside of Holo RED OS DDC redirection eg. Flirc IR receiver with Ropieee OS or Bluetooth receiver for Rooextend OS or attached disk as per your case .... (with a type A or B adapter likely). (An...

If the jitter/delay is so bad that the dac’s usb buffer overflows then it will be clearly audible as a small pop/click. There’s no grey area here. Electrical ‘noise’ is the part that seems to be more up for debate.

After some initial struggles, I have found a happy place with the RED streamer ... a) RoPieeeXL with RoonBridge and NAA. Seems a bit more stable than RED OS and no tiny dust pops so far with DSD 256 via NAA/USB. Guessing that RED OS is still a work in progress and hard to know how much has been...

So I was able to get the RED -> Intona to work by putting a mini USB hub in between them. Apparently an AQ jitterbug or iFi iSilencer will work as well so I might try one of those to reduce cable count. I was also able to the get the NAA 4.3.0 RPi4 image to run on the RED after adding the...

Just to be 100% certain, are you running an NAA image on the RED or just have NAA enabled in the RED OS? I assume it's the latter.

After some further listening time, I am having trouble discerning much difference between the RED OS NAA vs dedicated NAA Intel mini-pc, except that on occasion I get a light pop from the RED like dust on vinyl. As per prior posts, this implies the occasional USB outbound packet loss (125µs). I...

Yes it's frustrating. I use Roon -> RAAT/RoonBridge when doing multi-room playback ('party' mode?) and Roon -> HQP/NAA when doing single system critical listening in my primary room. So what I do is run RoonBridge via SPDIF to my DAC, and HQP/NAA via USB to the same DAC. The Holo RED can be...

To a degree. If USB, you have to remember that, unlike Roon, HQP NAA locks on to a USB device/output and doesn't let go when music is stopped, so the USB output is not available to other sources until HQP is manually shut down. (My only gripe with HQP). (Can't speak to Spotify Connect). With...

Good idea but as far as I know, the Aux power on the intona feeds the isolated/output side of the Intona, and is separate from input side. The Intona can connect to an input without having an output/dac connected to it. And that has it's own handshake protocol that one can observe via the green...

Thanks for validating. Quick impression is that my UP Gateway running NAA image —> Intona —> DAC is clearly better than RED OS NAA —> DAC. Not surprising I suppose. Shame I can’t test RED —> Intona —> DAC.

Just hooked up the RED to my system and it doesn't work with the Intona 3.0 (7055-C) from the USB output in streaming mode. The Intona just can't connect properly to the RED - it flashes and makes a ticking noise at 4Hz (indicates "Full Speed" 12Mbps transmission as per Intona doc but the...

I am going test it again, but I believe I did notice a bit of an improvement using the Sonore OpticalRendu instead of the Allo USBridge signature. Others have said that the USB interface is impervious to upstream USB endpoint/source but not entirely sure about that.

Hi @zorilon , just wondering how/if things changed with further burn-in of your May DAC ... I recently acquired a May DAC to compare to my Lampizator Amber 3 and I could literally replace the words "Spring 2 KTE" with "Amber 3" above and it would *exactly* match my feelings about the two. So...

Hard to quantify but I think the output buffer ECC82 is where will you will see the most benefit, for somewhat obvious reasons I think. The ECC82 upgrade provided incremental upgrades in a number of areas, not just one major thing. Just a bit fuller, cleaner, and larger soundstage at the same...

Which version of the Amber III are you basing that on? Since last April, when I got mine, they are a using a new USB board with better clocks and such. Just fyi. Did you compare the mutec/spdif to latest usb? I used to prefer spdif over usb. I now use an opticalRendu which possibly obviates any...

I keep my Amber III on almost 24x7. As mentioned, the tubes are not driven hard and the stock tubes are very cheap to replace. That said, I have rolled a Sylvania 6X5GT rectifier and a much more valuable early Valvo Hamburg ECC82 output tube. So now of course I think about turning it off more...

Yes! One of the reasons I went with the Lampizator in this relatively fast changing segment of audio.

That's a pretty good price considering recent price hikes. The Amber 3 base price has gone from $2950 to $3400 and now to $3850. The euro has gotten a bit (10% ish) stronger vs USD but also seems like they think they can get more $$ for it. The only question is how the new JL Audio USB card...

BTW, the USBridge Signature is great. Make sure you get the Shanti LPS to go with it. I upgraded to a Sonore OpticalRendu but theres not a huge difference. I am a big fan of the Allo products if you are ok with flashing the microSD cards via a pc/mac if need be.

I had one running in front of my Amber 3 and it worked perfectly. Generally speaking the only driver requirements are running a windows OS into the Amber. The Allo products use rPi linux variants and drivers are generally a non-issue. Are you running the older Amber 3 with Amanero USB or the new...

I was playing in this same price range. Just got a new Lampizator Amber 3 with their newly revised standard USB module and it has easily exceeded my expectations after having tried a number of dacs. I was toying with the idea of a Holo May but the qualities of the Amber 3 are what I like - a...