[SwissBear]

Hi everyone,

A short contribution to mention that Diretta (www.diretta.link), which is a proprietary communication protocol offered as an option by GentooPlayer on the Holo Red, gives to listening with this machine a density and an implication into music which is exceptional IMHO.
I have tested this solution on an Holo Red which has been lent to me by a good friend, connected to my Holo May L2 via I2S.
Installation is flawless, and operation very easy. Just install the Diretta ASIO driver on your windows player or an ALSA driver in case you are on a Linux machine (GentooPlayer offers an easy way to do that on the server side as well).
On the Holo Red, the I2S interface is seen by the player as an USB output, driven by Diretta Target.
Highly recommended

 

[Qstik]

I'm thinking about ordering a red streamer. Has anyone compared this to the pi2aes from a couple of years ago?

Based on early positive subjective reviews and the fact that GoldenSound had measured the Holo Red to have approximately half the jitter levels of the Pi2AES and Mercury V1, I went ahead and ordered the Holo Red. I got it earlier this week and use it strictly in streamer mode with I2S output. Although I have immensely enjoyed my Pi2AES, early impressions are that my Holo Red is noticeably better than my Pi2AES/RPi4b combination - even when they were powered by a high-end Ferrum Hypsos PSU at 30v (yes, I tried lower voltages, but 30v is within allowable range and sounded best to me). I'm still burning in my Holo Red, so it should only continue to get smoother and more refined. Areas where I notice most improvement over my Pi2AES is in the definition and control of heavy bass notes and in the smoother and cleaner reproduction of difficult tracks with high level snare drum and cymbal passages. I'm hesitant to post further comments until my Holo Red has had a chance to finish burning in and I can sit down and comment on the A-B of specific tracks.

 

[NEXTLEVEL5]

Based on early positive subjective reviews and the fact that GoldenSound had measured the Holo Red to have approximately half the jitter levels of the Pi2AES and Mercury V1, I went ahead and ordered the Holo Red. I got it earlier this week and use it strictly in streamer mode with I2S output. Although I have immensely enjoyed my Pi2AES, early impressions are that my Holo Red is noticeably better than my Pi2AES/RPi4b combination - even when they were powered by a high-end Ferrum Hypsos PSU at 30v (yes, I tried lower voltages, but 30v is within allowable range and sounded best to me). I'm still burning in my Holo Red, so it should only continue to get smoother and more refined. Areas where I notice most improvement over my Pi2AES is in the definition and control of heavy bass notes and in the smoother and cleaner reproduction of difficult tracks with high level snare drum and cymbal passages. I'm hesitant to post further comments until my Holo Red has had a chance to finish burning in and I can sit down and comment on the A-B of specific tracks.

This was exactly what I was looking for. TY very much

 

[mr_derrick]

I received my Holo Red two days ago. I already packed my Zen Stream... This is a great little unit. Well actually it's bigger than I thought and much heavier. Built like a tank, like many has said before. It also plays much nicer together with my Spring 3 when used as HQP NAA. With Red in place, HQP doesn't lose the DAC connection as easily as it did with Zen Stream. I had to carefully turn on the equipment in correct order to make the DAC visible for HQP when I used ZS. With Red, there's no such problems. Also it sounds great, small but noticeable improvement over ZS.

I received my Holo Red two days ago. I already packed my Zen Stream... This is a great little unit. Well actually it's bigger than I thought and much heavier. Built like a tank, like many has said before. It also plays much nicer together with my Spring 3 when used as HQP NAA. With Red in place, HQP doesn't lose the DAC connection as easily as it did with Zen Stream. I had to carefully turn on the equipment in correct order to make the DAC visible for HQP when I used ZS. With Red, there's no such problems. Also it sounds great, small but noticeable improvement over ZS.

Patu,

Since you are running the Red as NAA, you may want to load Jussi's 4.4.0 NAA OS into the Red.
FYI, if you try it, the Red set up page is no longer accessible, flash an SD card with the OS, insert the card into the Red, power the Red on and wait for the LED to stabilize, you will then need to reload your HQPlayer configuration page for the Red NAA to appear, select it and hit apply and you should be good to go.

 

[Patu]

Patu,

Since you are running the Red as NAA, you may want to load Jussi's 4.4.0 NAA OS into the Red.
FYI, if you try it, the Red set up page is no longer accessible, flash an SD card with the OS, insert the card into the Red, power the Red on and wait for the LED to stabilize, you will then need to reload your HQPlayer configuration page for the Red NAA to appear, select it and hit apply and you should be good to go.

I’ve been running NAA OS for a few days already. It works great other than some mysterious dropouts I’ve been having randomly. Music just stops for a 4-5 seconds and then continues. It’s not a cpu spike or performance issue (cpu usage drops to 0 when the dropout occurs). I have no idea what’s the cause since I haven’t changed any other settings and this is not happening with Red OS.

I also gave RoPieeeXL a try but it seems like the heaviest OS out of the three and I see no reason to use it over Red OS.

This might sound crazy but to my ears, NAA OS sounds slightly better than Red and RoPieee. So I hope I can fix those random dropouts somehow. They happen 1-2 times every hour. I just reflashed the NAA OS microSD card with different software to see if it helps, fingers crossed.

 

[NEXTLEVEL5]

Sorry, this is my last question regarding comparables. Has anyone compared the red streamer with any of the hifi rose products? I love how the rose looks but I definitely do not want to sacrifice any sound quality.

 

[mr_derrick]

Patu,

I believe that Red OS still runs 4.2.3 NAA vs Jussi's 4.4.0, that my be the SQ difference that you are hearing, I prefer 4.4.0.
My Sonore Sig Rendu SE suffers with hiccups that I can't figure out, the Red runs 100% for me.

 

[Patu]

Patu,

I believe that Red OS still runs 4.2.3 NAA vs Jussi's 4.4.0, that my be the SQ difference that you are hearing, I prefer 4.4.0.
My Sonore Sig Rendu SE suffers with hiccups that I can't figure out, the Red runs 100% for me.

Red OS was last updated 15.4.2023, so it should have pretty new NAA version. Not sure about the exact version though.

 

[mr_derrick]

Red OS was last updated 15.4.2023, so it should have pretty new NAA version. Not sure about the exact version though.

Patu,

You can check in your HQP log to see which NAA version is running if you are using the Red OS.
I checked after the last update and I believe it was still 4.2.3.
Sonore is behind on NAA updates also, they are still running 4.2.5.
Sometimes I wonder if that is why my playback hiccups occur with the Sig Rendu SE.

EDIT:

Reloaded Red OS just to check, latest Red update still runs HQP 4.2.3 NAA

 

[Patu]

Patu,

You can check in your HQP log to see which NAA version is running if you are using the Red OS.
I checked after the last update and I believe it was still 4.2.3.
Sonore is behind on NAA updates also, they are still running 4.2.5.
Sometimes I wonder if that is why my playback hiccups occur with the Sig Rendu SE.

EDIT:

Reloaded Red OS just to check, latest Red update still runs HQP 4.2.3 NAA

Thanks for confirming this.

I need to check which version RoPieee uses. They released new version 23.4. and change log mentions update to HQP NAA.

 

[rocky500]

Will picore player run on the Red? I’d love to have a super high quality LMS server/player?

I tried it quickly but could not get it to play as a stand alone player with my music on my other PC.
I found MoOde just works with very little config and enabled me to use the i2S out.
It seems to have quite a bit built into MoOde that just works straight up. I see Squeezelite (LMS) is listed in the features.
I use it mainly as a stand alone player for my music files and some DIFM Radio stations that I have a subscription to.

 

[brillo]

Hi everyone,

A short contribution to mention that Diretta (www.diretta.link), which is a proprietary communication protocol offered as an option by GentooPlayer on the Holo Red, gives to listening with this machine a density and an implication into music which is exceptional IMHO.
I have tested this solution on an Holo Red which has been lent to me by a good friend, connected to my Holo May L2 via I2S.
Installation is flawless, and operation very easy. Just install the Diretta ASIO driver on your windows player or an ALSA driver in case you are on a Linux machine (GentooPlayer offers an easy way to do that on the server side as well).
On the Holo Red, the I2S interface is seen by the player as an USB output, driven by Diretta Target.
Highly recommended

I completely agree with what SwissBear said.

I use Diretta too, with GentooPlayer running on my Holo Red (Diretta Target) and also on my music server (an x86 machine), which is the Diretta Host.

I mostly use the USB output on the Red, but I have other devices that are Diretta Targets too, and they work perfectly using I2S and AES outputs.

Love the audio quality.

 

[Patu]

Thanks for confirming this.

I need to check which version RoPieee uses. They released new version 23.4. and change log mentions update to HQP NAA.

To answer my own question, the newest version of RoPieeeXL uses the newest version of HQP NAA (4.4.0).

Since I still get the dropouts with HQP NAA OS, I'll use RoPieee until it gets solved.

EDIT:

After playing about one hour, the dropout occurs with RoPieeeXL also.

EDIT2:

It seems that these dropouts are a network problem in my LAN. The RaspBi4 based Red is more sensitive to correct network conditions than my previous Zen Stream was. Tuning the advanced NIC settings on my server machine has helped.

 

[shoubhik]

Which I2S input do we connect the Holo Red to the May Dac (i2s1 or i2s2)? I haven't changed anything with the dip switches.

 

[NEXTLEVEL5]

Is there a way to cast youtube from a pc over to the streamer? I know this can be cast via a phone but not from desktop chrome app on RoPieeeXL (pi2aes)