Holo Audio Red

Aren’t we just talking about asynchronous USB here? Pretty bog standard stuff for USB DAC’s post 2011 or so.

 

Yes. I was completely wrong at this point. See my post over in the streamers thread.

 

Do people in this thread who have heard the RED with the Yggdrasil agree with this post by @Woland that there is no benefit to better streamers past something like a Pi2AES because the Yggdrasil reclocks the AES signal anyways? I don't really understand that completely (or want to) but I'm curious if users hear a difference with the RED and Yggdrasil over the Pi2AES.

 

I don't agree with that post. RED is an improvement over PI2AES using AES, in my opinion. Even the USB implementation is excellent with Yiggy, but AES still sounds best with Yiggy to me, and better than PI2AES.

 

As a general rule, any statement of the form "There's no point in doing X with Y, because Y is designed to be immune to X" is false. With smart design Y will be moderately tolerant of small changes to X. You should still try improving X because despite everything Y will probably sound better.

 

FYI - the usb interface absolutely has to recover the bit clock. The dac might use another internal clock to perform overdampling, and if so,

Would you mind telling us how you had to set up for the Pi2aes? What software were you running, how were you powering the unit? It would be interesting to hear. The new Pi2aes 2.0 makes it easier to use an external linear and that could possibly close the gap that you are hearing. Again, all of this is great feedback.

 

I thought that info was in the original post. PI2AES as a ROON Bridge using AES. PI2AES using noise nuke and meanwell power supply. I've also owned a $300 Ifi elite power supply and a handful of other linear power supplies with PI2AES. None sounded as good as RED. Again, a matter of percentages and personal preferences. Very very small differences at this point.

I haven't heard the Mercury or PI2AES 2.0 or lite. Very cool that power options should be easier with it! I still think PI2AES for the money is a lot of sound quality and 99 percent of people should stop there if looking for a streamer.

 

Well, the May USB interface does have to deal with the clock coming into it's USB port...but, the May uses USB Audio Asynchronous mode and thus it's internal clock is used instead of any other clock upstream, OS mode or NOS mode. This is why the PLL locking time issue of the May does not come into play when using USB like it does with I2S or AES or SPDIF.

These are well known facts....

 

I disagree especially after trying out some higher end Lumin streamers recently.

It's not just the sound but the user interface and ease of use also.

 

Yes. Red did nothing to me personally so i felt there was no point in that investment and back it went. I am not going to try 100x different power supplies or cables when i am already satisfied with the way my system sounds right now so it would've had to be a significant improvement, which is not, so i decided to use my money for higher purposes aka plane tickets (well part of the €).

 

Dude, I may have to report you to the Audiophool Society of Standards. How dare you be satisfied with what you’ve got!

 

Is there any reason not to use this Ethernet to Wifi adapter? It takes an ethernet cable as input, so the RED wouldn't even know it was there. But are there other concerns I should note?

Separately, since everyone says to use the RED. software included on the SD card, what happens if the SD card gets corrupted, which is bound to happen eventually? Does Holo have the software available to download now on their website?

Oh, also a noob question, getting a short ethernet cable from Blue Jeans- I want the CAT 6a right? To go from the RED to the ethernet adapter linked above?

I just got one of these used on USAM! So excited about it! Only 1 week old.

Thanks!

 

That adapter should be just fine. If you feel anal you can put it into one of those optical splitters first and then back to ethernet, but I doubt you would notice.

The software is available for download a few places. It's annoying to find but it's out there on a few of the sites where Holo stuff is sold. There are also links to the software on headfi. I actually asked for software from kitsune via email after buying my Red and it having issues. They sent me a download link asap.

Enjoy! I still very much love my Red. I have yet to find a better sounding source.

 

I don’t know about these optical spitters can you explain? I’m really internet tech un-savvy

 

Some folks use a 10Gteck device to turn ethernet into an optical data stream, then a second 10Gteck to turn it back into an ethernet data stream to reduce "noise" on the ethernet line.

I can't comment if it helps, but it's pretty cheap and easy to do.

There are some threads here and on headfi if you want to go down that rabbit hole.

Buy this or a similar Multi-mode or Single-mode converter and then get an LC to LC Fiber patch cable to go between them.

A Pair of 1.25G/s Bidi Gigabit Multi-Mode Fiber Ethernet Media Converter with 2PCS Bidi SFP LC Dual Transceiver Module Included, 10/100/1000Base-Tx to 1000Base-SX SMF RJ45 to SFP Slot up to 550M https://a.co/d/9lFc5RH



Ethernet from router or modem goes into one converter, sends it down the fiber patch cable to the other converter, then use an ethernet out of that converter to your device.

Now, is it worth doing? Meh, idk. I have this setup but can't say I noticed anything different using Red.

 

In this case, the distance between the RED and the ethernet to wifi adapter is only 3 feet of ethernet cable. The shortest ethernet cable I can get is 1 foot. So I'd still have 1 foot of ethernet cable before the converter and 1 foot of ethernet cable after the converter.

Is this one of those things like power cables where having the data run through an optical cable "purifies the signal" and somehow sounds better? I do notice a subtle improvement with Pangea power cables, and have no idea why for obvious reasons discussed ad nauseam.

But if this is a matter of a cleaner way to transmit data over distance, this doesn't seem to make sense since the wifi adapter is 3 feet away from the RED, so I'm only shortening the ethernet cable by 1 foot, from 3 feet to 2 one foot pieces.

 

Idk if YouTube links are allowed, but Small Green Computer made a short video explaining how to do it and the alleged benefits of doing so a while ago when used with a Sonore streamer. I've also used a solution like this in the past until I switched to an EtherREGEN which I think does a better job at isolating than this solution. But as always YMMV and hey, at least its a pretty cheap solution if you want to try it out.

Fiber Media Converter Review

Edit: looks like they have a second video explaining it here as well. Hope this helps!

 

Well, remember you can go full weedtard on these media converters by using a (custom) LPS for both ends.

 

It occurs to me: Ethernet to optical to laser to have a better point-to-point wireless system?

I don't have the luxury of running wires in this location. And Wifi works poorly as everything is solid stone.

 

So, I don't want to dampen enthusiasm for complex network wiring schemes, but:

1. If you can run vanilla Cat 6 cable, just do that
2. If you have cable coax in the walls of your habitation, MoCA is your friend
3. If you don't have/can't run cables in the walls, flat Cat 6 nailed against baseboards and door frames doesn't look horrible