[Daiyama]

I think there is a dedicated thread for HQP, maybe HPQ related topics can be discussed over there.

@JerseyD : Yes, sure the Cyan 2 is also a good option without HQP.

 

[GeraltDHowl]

All these pages of talk about settings and HQ Player as a needed upgrade has me worried. I was thinking Cyan2 might be my next DAC, but I don’t use a PC as my source, just a Node 2i streaming Qobuz via digital out to my DAC. Would the Cyan2 still be a good option for me?

It's a good option but in my case Is a matter of synergies with the he1000 Stealth and Mjolnir and taste i think that the r2r nos It's not what i'm looking for i prefer more neutral and Wide soundstage instead of depth After having tested the cyan and bifrost i've come to this conclusion, and using a laptop for streaming and my phone via usb i can't let the cyan 2 Shine as It should if anyone based on the EU (230v version) is interested i've posted it on the classified section.

 

[Picard7]

Disclaimer this are my subjective impressions on the Holo Audio Cyan 2 standard version paired with the Mjolnir 3 via xlr using only the usb cable to the laptop with Amazon Music Unlimited on High gain connected tonthe He1000 Stealth with the xlr cable. I listen mostly to post rock genre Sorry for any grammatical errors.

Starting from The Music

Jeff Buckley - I Know It's Over (The Smiths cover) the s are not disturbing at all compared to the bifrost 2/64 that was piercing my ears.
Cult Of Luna - Leave Me Here goes straight and deep to the feels not fatiguing at all
Flies Are Spies From Hell - Imagine Your Murder min 2:05 transition from Guitar fading to Attack on the Tom Tom there Is a piano in crescendo in the background that Is clearly audible
Yndi Halda - A Song For Starlit Beaches Min from 9:20 to 10:15 had goosebump Min 12:20 super busy passage with guitars violins cymabals and you clearly can hear the bass riffs

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Moya from min 8:30 It starts a busy passage very good separation with the low end that is not covering the violins in the background
Long Distance Calling - The Nearing Grave (feat Singer of Katatonia) Min 6:29 double pedal kick drums going at the same Speed of the riffs of the guitar never realized It
Mono - Dream Odyssey Min 6:20 there Is a crescendo of instruments that are not creating a Wall Sound and Is very engaiging
Her Name Is Calla - Thief Min 1:39 before the Singer starts you can hear a Lip lick that i never noticed
Kyuss - Demon Cleaner the outro where there Is a Guitar solo fading away you can hear to the last info really impressive
Coheed And Cambria The Audience Min 2:00 there Is a second Guitar in the distant background that Is doing a lot of stuff going from left to the right i can hear It but not as defined as The Merason Frerot + Pow 1 the cyan 2 Is more of a side grade than and upgrade compared to the Frerot. The Cyan 2 has better depth and holographic effect noticeable pariculary in Chocolate Chip Trip from Tool but generally speaking the sound Is more in you face, front row. the low end delivers when required, i love the timbre and the highs that are never fatiguing It's impressive in the reproduction of cymbals notes, you can distinguish a crash from a hi-hat and has a long decay that reminds me of tubes i love It.
The Merason + Pow 1 has more width and less depth but It's more neutral and airy Simply put It synergies Better with the he1000 Stealth nature but i can see how the cyan 2 could be a perfect match with the zmf headphones or the he1000 se this Always in my humble and subjective opinion.
The Cyan 2 Is and Amazing dac but it's not the sound signature that i'm looking for
If anyone wants to trade a Merason Frerot Pow 1 for a brand new cyan 2 ready to be shipped dm me i'll post It on the classified section in any case or i could always return It

How was detail retrieval on the two DACs - and what ultimately swung it in favour of the Merason?

 

[GeraltDHowl]

How was detail retrieval on the two DACs - and what ultimately swung it in favour of the Merason?

I don't want to give the impression that the Cyan 2 Is worse than the Frerot because It's not the case, It comes all to my genre of music and the pairing with the he1000 stealth that are my HP of choice, this Is the only reason.
the cyan 2 (as i'm listening it without hqplayer ecc my laptop can't handel It ) brings the music too forward and has got more depth so if gives me a tunnel effect on the stealth closing the soundstage, the merason instead exalts all the traits that i love of the stealth. About detail retrival they are really on par It changes the way they are presented.
As always for me.

 

[GoldenSound]

as i'm listening it without hqplayer ecc my laptop can't handel It

try PCM not DSD

 

[Deleeh]

Hello,

I have a question for you.

My friend has bought the Holo Cyan 2 and likes it so far.
After reading numerous posts from you here, he started wondering about upsampling and the possibilities of using a player.
When we talked we realised that his Innous Zen 3 does not upsample and is mainly used as a server.
But to get the best out of the Cyan, he needs something that is easy to use without all the bells and whistles.
A PC would be out of the question at this point.
I suggested a Raspberry Pi with the Gentooplayer, as well as a Nuc.
I'm not sure how the Nuc with Hq Player will work with the app.
Maybe someone can help?
It looks like it needs a Windows system to use the Hq Player, but what about a monitor, which would be necessary to start Hq Player via the Nuc and later control it with the app, right?

I am looking for an adequate solution for him without him having to change his whole setup to use the Cyan 2 properly.
His setup is an innous Zen 3, Cyan 2 and a tube amplifier.
Logically, he also has a router in case he needs to connect the Innous Zen 3 to the network.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[GoldenSound]

Hello,

I have a question for you.

My friend has bought the Holo Cyan 2 and likes it so far.
After reading numerous posts from you here, he started wondering about upsampling and the possibilities of using a player.
When we talked we realised that his Innous Zen 3 does not upsample and is mainly used as a server.
But to get the best out of the Cyan, he needs something that is easy to use without all the bells and whistles.
A PC would be out of the question at this point.
I suggested a Raspberry Pi with the Gentooplayer, as well as a Nuc.
I'm not sure how the Nuc with Hq Player will work with the app.
Maybe someone can help?
It looks like it needs a Windows system to use the Hq Player, but what about a monitor, which would be necessary to start Hq Player via the Nuc and later control it with the app, right?

I am looking for an adequate solution for him without him having to change his whole setup to use the Cyan 2 properly.
His setup is an innous Zen 3, Cyan 2 and a tube amplifier.
Logically, he also has a router in case he needs to connect the Innous Zen 3 to the network.

Any help would be appreciated.

Is he using roon on it? If so he can try roon oversampling for starters as its easy to enable. Not as good as hqp but will allow him to see if he likes the path or not

 

[Deleeh]

Is he using roon on it? If so he can try roon oversampling for starters as its easy to enable. Not as good as hqp but will allow him to see if he likes the path or not

No, I forgot to mention that.
He doesn't like Roon and doesn't use it.

 

[Erick Muller]

I know a person from Slovak forum who uses Gigabyte Z390 Gaming X motherboard with Intel Core i9-9900K and GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3060 GAMING OC 12G. He is successfully running upsampling to DSD512 without overclocking. You should have no issue with DSD256. Please read my longer post where I mention also 2 points related to BIOS and power profile setting for Windows.

Already did that, XMP is activated and power settings are as they should because I wanted to overclocked my system a little bit.

HQPlayer is real time application. Important for it is ability to process tasks fast. CPU utilization tells you that your CPU is yet able to handle other tasks in parallel but it does not tell about the speed of processing of individual tasks.

Imagine a big ship flying from port A to port B. The ship is too slow for you to reach train at port B, but it is half empty, it could wear much more load than it is currently doing. But not enough fast for you. Therefore the settings I mentioned above. With your K type of CPU one can try also overclocking but your configuration should run well also without at least at DSD256.

I runs "fine" enough with DSD upsampling but it does take a few seconds using @GoldenSound recommended settings, if I use less intensive modulators is a lot faster and what I've learned is that you have to create a queue on roon or on HQPlayer itself in order to have gap-less playback.

 

[Daiyama]

First measurements by Jussi:
Roon Forum

 

[Erick Muller]

The 48k DSD setting from GoldenSound's picture is not suitable for SMSL DACs when playing 48k based PCM content like 48, 96 or 192k. SMSL DACs mostly don't support 48k based DSD rates. My SMSL D300 with MCU firmware 1.0 is an exception, newer firmwares disabled that posibility.

Uncheck 48k. Set the tri-state Adaptive rate box to the middle state. Set '41k x 256' as max. output rate in DSD tab. Then try to play some 44.1k based PCM content.

My particular DAC didn't do playback of those files until I checkmarked it, now it does play them back using DSD upsampling and I haven't had any issues so far since I made that change to the settings in HQPlayer. The problem is that according to SMSL specs for this DAC, it should do up to DSD512 but it tops out at 256, tbh and for what I heard from other people, there's not a big difference between the two, and I guess even less so with my particular DAC even if it could run those higher tier DSD formats.

 

[Erick Muller]

Yeah it would seem unless I can figure out what's up with my PC or hqp settings then pcm would be my only option for now. Even on the other suggested settings for easier filters and dropping to 128 I still get short pauses every 15-20 seconds.

Tbh HQPlayer is kind of a pain in the ass to get up working in the first place and there's a lot of jankiness to it, but again, this is a software that's being made by a single person, so kudos to that and once you get it working, it's wonderful.

 

[bogi]

according to SMSL specs for this DAC, it should do up to DSD512 but it tops out at 256

There is some issue in your settings. Maybe max. DSD rate, or you have set DoP, or driver issue. But we are in Holo thread. Just move to HQPlayer thread if you want to fix it.

 

[Dave657]

Just want to add another option, Audirvana upsamples to DSD as well and it sounds very, very good, even through a "crappy" DAC (fiio k7),
feeding my Trafomatic head 2 SE Amp with Erzetich Charibdys
The Cyan 2 seems like a good solution, hoping for some reviews (or shell more for something like a cen.grand dac)

My pc is basically a 10yo i7 3770k, 16GB ram, later on got a GTX1070ti

 

[Anaz]

Seems like my 5800X3D + 7900XTX probably wouldn't be the best for HQPlayer then. Might sway things back in favor of the Frerot for me

Ha, we meet again!

You should be able to use HQP just fine - I have the same 5800X3D CPU but with a 4080 ... here's a comparison with CUDA offload unchecked and checked on my system

Playing a 44.1k source:

HQ Player GPU CUDA offload not checked, no issues upsampling to 1.5MHz:

HQ Player GPU CUDA offload checked in case your interested

Playing a higher bitrate source (e.g. 192kHz below), the CPU load is less

HQ Player GPU CUDA offload not checked