Does Qobuz count as oversample? Im using the ASIO Driver on Qobuz which switches to the rigth sample rate. I thought that the cyan was only capable of DSD OS.
Holo Audio Cyan 2 DAC
- Thread starter JerseyD
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Looking at my electricity bill, I'm paying about 17¢ per kilowatt hour. According to this online calculator, leaving the DAC on 24/7 costs me about 8¢ a day or about $30/year. Obviously $30 is $30, but I suppose it's a price I'm willing to pay.
GeraltDHowl
Head-Fier
Out of curiosity I'll try It for sure and give some other impression but i'm realizing
That i prefer OS too
If you feed Cyan 2 DSD from HQPlayer, are you saying Cyan 2 does additional processing rather than remain NOS and output remains unchanged to amp.? Thanks for clarifying further.
GeraltDHowl
Head-Fier
The thing Is that the cyan 2 as i'm listening It has that front row and tunnel effect but man It's engaing and intoxicating the merason It was more being at the centre of an hall in any case i think that If you have a bifrost 2/64 and want to make a real upgrade in a set up with the bifrost the cyan 2 Is the answer
No that's just playing bitperfect.
Oversampling is when you upsample/oversample the audio to a higher sample rate.
Most DACs do this internally, only R2R DACs can actually operate without oversampling.
Some people really prefer NOS sound some really prefer OS.
I'd strongly recommend giving HQP a go, it's a pretty incredible upgrade, and Cyan 2 can take full advantage of it with PCM or DSD unlike other DACs so you can try both of those as those give different sounds too.
Even if you get rid of the Cyan 2, HQP will be an upgrade on Frerot too, it just can't take full advantage of it.
Here's my recommended settings for HQPlayer (There's a free trial available https://www.signalyst.com/bins/HQPlayer5Desktop-setup-542.exe ). I've also attached a zip file with a .XML inside. In HQP you can just go 'File -> Import settings' and import that but here's pics to double check
These settings are for outputting PCM. I'd give that a go first, you can swap to DSD by changing the 'default mode' dropdown in the 'output' tab to "SDM"
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GeraltDHowl
Head-Fier
Thank you!! Really i didn't know where to start and you give me the answersNo that's just playing bitperfect.
Oversampling is when you upsample/oversample the audio to a higher sample rate.
Most DACs do this internally, only R2R DACs can actually operate without oversampling.
Some people really prefer NOS sound some really prefer OS.
I'd strongly recommend giving HQP a go, it's a pretty incredible upgrade, and Cyan 2 can take full advantage of it with PCM or DSD unlike other DACs so you can try both of those as those give different sounds too.
Even if you get rid of the Cyan 2, HQP will be an upgrade on Frerot too, it just can't take full advantage of it.
Here's my recommended settings for HQPlayer (There's a free trial available https://www.signalyst.com/bins/HQPlayer5Desktop-setup-542.exe ). I've also attached a zip file with a .XML inside. In HQP you can just go 'File -> Import settings' and import that but here's pics to double check
These settings are for outputting PCM. I'd give that a go first, you can swap to DSD by changing the 'default mode' dropdown in the 'output' tab to "SDM"
i'll try It and give a feedback.Btw if someone has tried the cyan 2 with the purple fuse i'm curios to know how It affects the sound, and another feedback If possible that would be very interesting for me would be Cyan 2 via i2s to Holo audio Red
No prob!Thank you!! Really i didn't know where to start and you give me the answers
Btw if someone has tried the cyan 2 with the purple fuse i'm curios to know how It affects the sound, and another feedback If possible that would be very interesting for me would be Cyan 2 via i2s to Holo audio Red
Happy to help, HQPlayer is unfortunately a bit daunting to set up so I try to provide some easy config guidance when possible. The stock settings are....'just ok' but this config will give you 2 million taps and a very high performance noise shaper.
The soundstage and placement/spatial presentation you get with Sinc-Mx in particular is kinda wild.
To be honest I wouldn't recommend going Holo Red with Cyan. The Cyan 2 already has fully galvanically isolated USB and whilst I've not seen any tests of the Cyan 2 specifically, the Spring 3 and May both had essentially flawless jitter performance so I'd imagine Cyan 2 is going to be similar
I tried dsd512 with sinc poly ext2 and asdm7ec super 512.
The sound was sublime.
Unfortunately it was using my main office rig which I don't want to use for up sampling.
I'm using old Mac mini which is is not capable of such intense workload but with pcm at 1,5mhz it dos decent job.
The sound was sublime.
Unfortunately it was using my main office rig which I don't want to use for up sampling.
I'm using old Mac mini which is is not capable of such intense workload but with pcm at 1,5mhz it dos decent job.
I'm currently using the Soekris dac1421, which by all accounts I've seen should be in a similar "tier" of sound quality as the Bifrost 2/64, but with a slightly less in-your-face presentation and without the treble glare that people seem to have issues with on the 2/64. The 1421 has been a step in the right direction for me compared to the Modi Multibit 2 I had before it, but I'm still on the (possibly insane and futile) search for the "ideal" small DAC for my preferences. Those preferences are pleasant timbre that isn't too wet or bloomy since my Atticus and soon-to-be-ordered Verite already have plenty of that; great 3D staging, imaging, air, and layering with a presentation that isn't really forward; and no sort of treble glare/splashiness/[insert any other negative adjective about treble].
If you get the chance, I'd really appreciate any impressions of the Cyan 2 with HQPlayer compared to the Frerot without the Pow1, as Cyan 2 + HQPlayer would be very similar in price to the Frerot on its own.
@GoldenSound how demading is HQPlayer? I have an 8 core Ryzen 5800X3D with 128GB DDR4 3600 RAM. My work, at the absolute maximum, can fully utilize 4 cores and maybe 90GB of RAM. That should still leave plenty of computing power to not run into any issues with HQPlayer if I'm working and listening to music simultaneously, right? Thanks for all the super informative content you make!
Entirely depends on the config.
HQPlayer has filters which are not dissimilar to what DACs run internally and could pretty much run on a paperclip. And then it has DSD modulator configs that are literally not possible to run in real-time on any currently available hardware due to how intensive they are.
Generally, for PCM upsampling, any half-decent modern PC will be fine for pretty much any config.
It's the DSD stuff that starts making your CPU start to cry
Would using your recommended setting with DSD upsampling be the sort of thing that would make a mid- to high-end gaming CPU cry?
As a purely subjective data point, I got a Matrix X-SPDIF3 and tried going direct USB to Cyan 2 and then going USB->SPDIF3->I2S->Cyan 2 and it sounds noticeably better to me. YMMV however, and I don't have the equipment to measure jitter or anything like that.
Yeah, I've set it to 256 which should run on most powerful systems. x512 might work if you also have an nvidia GPU
I've messed with DSD a little bit (just through V226 internal DAC which can do up to 256) and even on your light filter suggested earlier at 256 and multi-core/cuda enabled my 5900x, 3080ti PC drops out every 10 seconds or so. Though when I look at the performance monitor in task manager neither the cpu or gpu seem to be working particularly hard.
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