Anyone can compare with Denafrips Dac?
Holo Audio Cyan 2 DAC
- Thread starter JerseyD
- Start date
After the “Cyan 2” replaced the “RME ADI-2 Dac” a few days ago, today the RME is back.
With RME, the higher tones are more apparent, the physical representation of C2 is missing. Someone might briefly think that the RME has more details, but unfortunately not, the representation of the body, i.e. the details there, are missing. Wider stage on the RME? No, the lack of a body makes the music appear airier, as if there were more air between the instruments, which is not the case. The stage shifts back a touch due to the lack of body the C2 adds.
All points go to the C2, it quickly regains its pole position, together with the HD800s the C2 creates a much more realistic, lifelike sound impression.
The comparison was made with files of 44.1 K, but the look of the C2 screams upsampling, so I'd be interested to see how the C2 responds sonically to upsampling to, say, 88.2 K or 176.4 K..
With RME, the higher tones are more apparent, the physical representation of C2 is missing. Someone might briefly think that the RME has more details, but unfortunately not, the representation of the body, i.e. the details there, are missing. Wider stage on the RME? No, the lack of a body makes the music appear airier, as if there were more air between the instruments, which is not the case. The stage shifts back a touch due to the lack of body the C2 adds.
All points go to the C2, it quickly regains its pole position, together with the HD800s the C2 creates a much more realistic, lifelike sound impression.
The comparison was made with files of 44.1 K, but the look of the C2 screams upsampling, so I'd be interested to see how the C2 responds sonically to upsampling to, say, 88.2 K or 176.4 K..
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Francisco Evangelista
100+ Head-Fier
Is the wandla worth the difference from the Cyan 2 ?
Would like to add a different dac on my desktop beside my Chord TT2 .
Would like to add a different dac on my desktop beside my Chord TT2 .
lukeslens
100+ Head-Fier
My experience with my RME mimics this as well.
I will also say that I continue to play with HQPlayer on my Cyan 2 and it is creating a very wide soundstage and creating an INSANE amount of separation between instruments. Especially on my Arya Stealth's, it is expanding soundstage and creating a hugely holographic sound.
StaxEnjoyer
New Head-Fier
I bought the HQ Player for the Cyan 2 because of the amazing sound separation and and wide soundstage. I think its worth it purchase cause i can stream all my Qobuz music onto the HQPlayer and it sounds amazing. ~300 is a lot for software but i honestly don't like to restart the app all the time. Im verry happy with my purchase.
Well, I just blind bought a Cyan 2. Holo Audio is one company I'm fine buying from before reading reviews. Very interested in comparing to my similarly priced Gustard R26.
Very intrigued by this product, especially at its $1200 price point. Holo Audio products get extremely high praise for good reason, but the price points are a bit more than I'm willing to shell out. If a $1200 DAC can get me 90-95% of the way there I'd be very happy. Hoping to hear more comparisons with BF2/64, R26 and other sub $2k DACs.
Yeah, $3k for a Spring 3 or $5k for a May just to get slightly better performance than my $1500 Gustard R26 never really felt worth it to me.
BUT $1300 for the Cyan 2 that has 127dB dynamic range vs May's 130dB dynamic range (in other words very close objective performance) seems like a very worthwhile purchase. That extra dynamic range means I can run HQPlayer at 21 bits instead of 19 bits like my R26 (which has 116dB range).
Questionable what the audible difference will be there but that is an objective improvement in the amount of data the DAC can resolve.
As much as I hate paying yet another subscription, Roon makes using HQPlayer SO MUCH nicer. Don't have to use the HQPlayer client anymore and can use Tidal/Qobuz/local that way as well and not just Qobuz/local.
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Just FYI, I am sure it's not perfect, but I utilize Virtual Audio Cable to run my PC audio through HQP - so basically I can just use the streaming platform directly without needing roon or having to use HQP's UI. I use Deezer personally.
SolarCetacean
500+ Head-Fier
Huh, I'll try that out. I've been using the HQPlayer plugin for MusicBee that someone developed a few years back, and as usual with MusicBee plugins, it kind of works, but with plenty of issues. If I can use regular WASAPI output into VAC and then VAC into HQPlayer, that might avoid some of those problems.
Thanks for the tip. Can virtual audio cable send it through untouched without resampling it? Or in other words, can it run in exclusive mode where the sample rate Windows outputs is always locked to the sample rate of the song? That's usually the issue with letting anything in Windows touch the sound path.
Also I think this would only work using a windows output like USB, it wouldn't work over LAN (which typically has better sound quality than USB), unless I'm missing something.
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I'm not 100% but I'm pretty sure it will bypass Windows stack fine with a bit-perfect player like Tidal or Qobuz as you can select the VAC line directly as an exclusive output (which then routes straight to HQP and out). However, I haven't figured out how to have it automatically switch sample rates (setting a range through VAC just gives you a bunch of sample rate options in HQP that you have to manually select. For me I'm just streaming 44.1/16 so it's fine, but not as ideal if you're listening to a range of sample rates. I'm also unsure of the LAN thing as I'm just using USB out. I'm sure some folks over in the HQP thread probably know of better solutions.
Oh crap didn't know that's an option. Is this it?
https://www.getmusicbee.com/addons/plugins/265/musicbee-hqplayer/
SolarCetacean
500+ Head-Fier
Yes.
Now at least on my machine it's very buggy if you want to do anything other than play a song from start to finish. Changing tracks works fine, but MusicBee lags behind for a while. It often takes 2 minutes for MB to start rendering the progress bar after changing tracks (though HQplayer is playing the whole time). And trying to seek in a track will seek on HQplayer, but it locks up MusicBee.
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