Holo Audio Spring 3 KTE impressions

Listening for a few days NOS
Trying to describe what I'm hearing with the Holo, the leading edge of each note is very bright and sharp, it draws attention to it, the note after that goes flat and lacks the tonal character of the instrument. Maybe its the lack of density that I am hearing. I prefer fleshier, meatier, denser notes. The Gungnir is more balanced in its presentation, meatier/denser and rich sounding. The space is bigger, blacker with the Holo. So far I prefer the Gungnir MB in my system. Will continue to listen over the weekend. Using Naims playlist on Qobuz first 12 songs as my reference currently.

 

This was one of my complaints initially but it cleared up on day 6. It was just way too aggressive for me before that.

 

I think your getting the essential general character and differences. As far as warm up and change over several days, I did not notice this. Now I did not listen to it for the first 24 hours or so, just running music through it and checking that it 'made sound', and only critically listening on the 2nd day. Indeed, one of the things I really liked about this DAC is how it did not require extensive days long warm up to get to its characteristic sound, how the digital inputs were all equal (within placebo at least), SE vs. BAL, etc. It's true it takes some time for the brain/ears to adjust (in my case going from Schiit Yggdrasil to Holo), but I did not hear any essential changes during the 7 days (after the 24 hour warm up) I had it.

 

I have packed the Holo dac up to ship out. The Holo has very black background, sharp and clear attack, and a lot of space. Compared to Gungnir a2 with Gen 5 USB the Gungnir has denser notes, the presentation is balanced rather then focusing on the attack and the Gungnir has denser, meatier notes which I like better. With the Holo the tone and what follows after the attack of the note lacked depth and meat with my system. Thank you for arranging this Whitney I appreciate being able to hear this in my own system. I was sure that I would want this as I have always loved NOS dacs but its not the case with this one.
best,
Josh

 

Holo Spring 3 KTE vs Holo Spring 2 KTE
I was in the market for the Spring 2 when they went unavailable and Holo eventually came out with the Spring 3. As luck would have it, I was able to pick up a Spring2KTE from @Ksorota while waiting for the Spring 3 release... but I always wondered if I had missed out with the Spring 3... so this loaner was the ideal opportunity to put them H2H.

Thanks @rhythmdevils for coordinating, and Holo for providing.

Spoiler: Playlist

Anner Bylsma Prélude to Bach’s Suite for solo cello No. 1 in G major
The 5 Browns Malagueña from Andalucia Suite
Pamela Frank/Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra Mozart’s Serenade No. 7 for orchestra in D major
John Williams/John Etheridge Extra Time for 2 Guitars
Duplessy & The Violins of the World Kung Fu
Kaki King Ingots
The Beatles Norwegian Wood
Eagles Hotel California (from Hell Freezes Over)
Carl Anderson Heaven on their Minds
James Brown It’s a New Day, Pts. 1-2
Earth Wind & Fire Shining Star
Los Lonely Boys I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love (Live at Blue Cat Blues)
Tool Chocolate Chip Trip
Daft Punk Giorgio by Moroder
Ben Harper & The Blind Boys of Alabama Take My Hand
Horace Silver Quintet Finger Poppin’
Maynard Ferguson Birdland
Phil Woods Rain Dance (Live from the Showboat)
Bill Evans Trio Detour Ahead [Take 2]
Ray Charles/Count Basie Orchestra Oh, What a Beautiful Morning
Macy Gray Redemption Song
Joni Mitchell California

Pi2AES -> i2s -> Spring 2 KTE / Spring 3 KTE -> EC Studio B /ECP 3F -> ZMF Auteur (Cocobolo w/ Eikon Lamb)
My office setup runs HQPlayer embedded on the Pi, upsampling Qobuz to 176/192 to the Spring2/3. Both Springs are in NOS mode and both have been on/playing music for over a week before listening (they were trapped at my office when it hard closed due to a covid outbreak).

• Studio B - Before the Spring2, I was pretty disappointed with the Studio B... I had tried pairing it with multiple DACS (BF2, Amethyst, SFD-1) and thought it was a pretty boring listen, but the amp comes absolutely alive with the Spring2.

To my ears, the Spring 3 takes the Studio B up another 1/10th level. The tone of both dacs sounds exactly the same to me, but the transients on the Spring 3 are a little sharper... which helps and continues to improve the somewhat soft Studio B.​

• 3F - Where the Studio B is helped, to me the 3F is hurt by the sharper transients... like a photo that has been oversharpened, on the 3F the Spring 3 is just a little too much and sound slightly unnatural to me. Otherwise, my ears couldn't tell the difference between the two dacs.

Non-listening thoughts:
I expected the aesthetics of the two dacs to be basically identical, but there are enough differences that I figured I would mention:

• display of the Spring 3 is easier to read... Spring 2 is noticeably dimmer
• Spring 3 buttons are much oranger than the Spring 2... spring 2 is like a new copper penny (which I like), but I suppose the Spring 3 does a better job matching the side panels
• brushed face on the Spring 2 is "courser" than the spring 3 - think of the old brushed face vs the new brushed face on Schiit products.

Aside from the display, I prefer the look of the Spring 2.

Conclusion
I probably overstated the sonic differences between the two dacs - they are really subtle. I'm glad I didn't spend the extra money on the Spring 3 (although if I needed the preamp function that could change my mind)...

Again, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this loaner.

------edit------
spelling

 

Intro

Kudos to @rhythmdevils and Holo Audio for making this loaner tour happen. I recall how the audio landscape changed when the first generation of KTE was released and went head-to-head against the first generation of Yggdrasil. I was interested to have another focused listening session with a modern perspective. Holo Audio took care then to ensure the best possible audio experience, which was both good and bad. They forced all participants to have access to some form of I2S. It meant they cared about their product, but it also meant their product was a little less flexible than maybe it should have been, sounding its best only through I2S.

Forward to today and that problem is solved. Basically all the inputs and outputs are good. In my brief re-introduction to the Holo Audio experience, it sounds like a straightforward, easy to set up, high-resolution DAC. You only need the space and a little time for warm up (I did not hear anything after 24-hours that I did not already hear after the first 30-minutes). Nor did I hear anything extra-special when I moved from a USB setup to a dedicated transport with AES.

Footprint matches the Wavelight, which made my first A/B simple. NOS is recommended, so that is the mode I used. Both DACs I used for comparison were run OS, but this did not present any blockers for me. My past listening experience includes Metrum NOS - that is a completely different sound. This sound, from Holo Audio, is one I don’t think most listeners will have trouble with - I will try to explain later. For the intro, this DAC is basically a plug it in and press play, no nonsense, no nervosa source.

However, there is one background topic I would like to touch on, which is that my perspective on all things audio has changed recently. In the weeks before I had this, and during my loaner week, I spent 95% of my time listening to dongles. Whereas I would have likely had far more to suggest or to say about the DAC, I actually have very little to say today. And I’m starting to realize how DAC comparisons are almost all a little silly. The DAC will either work (synergize) with your setup, or it will not.

Take for example the two DACs I used for comparison. I purchased a Wavelight with the intent to replace my Yggdrasil A2. I listened to the Wavelight in the first setup for multiple weeks hoping it would suffice as the solution for the things about the Yggdrasil that I disliked. The Yggdrasil ultimately went back into the first setup (ZDS > Utopia), where it remains today. The Wavelight was moved to another setup (Copenhagen > HD650), where it synergized far better than any other DAC I owned. A year or so later, I had the opportunity to purchase a Yggdrasil LIM at a reasonable price. This time the intent was to replace the Wavelight, and LIM worked well in that setup. I listened again for several weeks, enjoying what I heard - a slight relief from the thin highs of the Wavelight. I believe I mentioned to the seller that it was like coming back home, to a familiar sound. But when I proceeded toward selling, I put the Wavelight back into the synergistic setup, and it was still slightly better in terms of impact at the critical moments in the music.

So what I planned to use for descriptive comparison were my two current setups, where I have basically hit an upgrade wall. I know what I like and dislike about each of these, and I have not heard a DAC perform well enough in the like column to sway me away from the dislikes of each. And, on top of that, I’m 95% more interested in listening to dongles these days. In short, I may not be the best source as a reviewer. But I can tell you briefly what I heard.

Main

I did mention that this was going to be brief. The sound reminds me of the moment when a light bulb is turned on in a dark room. Instant on, instant good - the sound absolutely jumps out from a pitch black background. But this is not how music works. Once your eyes adjust to the room, some rooms are still dimly lit. Some rooms are bright. Some rooms have a lot of stuff going on. Some rooms are sparse and empty. The music is not wholly encompassed in the moment the sound first hits, but also in the trailing decay of all the other little subtle nuances. It is the material in the instruments and the acoustic materials in the walls of the venue. It is the decay of the sound, and how much space there is between the decay and the next note, and how hard the next note is struck, and how hard the next note is struck in relation to the previous note (is the percussion going up or down in intensity, is the the rhythm changing, or is there a sway to the sound).

Hands down, the initial “turn on the light” moment was far easier to “process” through the KTE than through the Wavelight. I suggest, though, that only part of this was the NOS sound - the easy. The sound was always easier to hear, requiring far less effort and less need for the audience to be bound to the music. This is basically how much the sound can actually cause pain or fatigue, in parallel with the attribute of being forcefully engaged to the music. The Wavelight is the most fatiguing DAC that I own. But it engages with dynamics and nuances, letting other DACs be more subtle. I think the NOS in the KTE is a reasonable balance of detail and smoothness. And the first strike sound details are excellent! But the trailing decay created an overall sound which was blanched to my ears.

I let it run for 24-hours and did not hear anything differently the next day. I powered it off briefly, only to move it to the setup in the other room. There, I did the same comparison between it and the Yggddrasil A2. And I basically heard the same effect. The KTE had a lovely, clear, immediate sound that I wanted to love. But then it did not hold onto the note for long enough to keep me in that state of disbelief - the whole concept of audio playback, to me, is to allow my imagination to reassemble a sound recorded at some point in time. Even for electronic music, if something is thrown in the mix that was actually recorded, I lose the sense of “real” in the sound output from the KTE.

However, one additional thing happened when I went back to the Yggdrasil A2 for verification. The Yggdrasil was very, very gray. Moving from KTE back to Wavelight, I only had to accept some level of physical discomfort - the NOS in the KTE was comfy. But switching KTE back to Yggdrasil required longer to sift through the lack of pitch black around the notes. Each note did not start as pure as the KTE, or apparently the Wavelight.

Outro

KTE does NOS in a way that I think is safe, and middle of the road. I don’t think the NOS will cause too many problems for people who enjoy OS or traditional NOS. But the reason you must listen to KTE for yourself is to hear what it does well, and what it does in a way that may bother some listeners like myself. The initial start of each sound is lovely, clear, and very easy to process. But then the decay of each sound is abrupt and strange. It sounded processed to my ears, and would not allow me to focus on the acoustic sound signature that I would expect to hear in an analog space. Other than that, all inputs and outputs are great - you would not be sacrificing anything in your specific setup regardless of the I/O used. Warmup time was not very long either. Solid build, inky blacks, and a moderate sound that would fit well into many setups is how I would describe the KTE. But it is a sound you will likely need to hear for yourself.

 

This was exactly my experience as well but with the May which is basically a supercharged Spring 3 KTE . I loved the blackground and fast start of notes, how they jump out of that blackness and I loved the detail retrieval but I couldn’t stand the lack of decay, notes just had no follow through they vanished like they were being cut off, like there was some kind of processing to get that blackness that wound up cutting notes short. It sounded extremely dry to me because of this. Parched.

 

Maybe bad synergy with orthos? Have you tried them with electrodynamics or slow orthos?

 

I only own orthos

but I don’t think a DAC could have bad synergy with orthos in general. I think it’s just the HOLO sound and you either like it or not.

 

As I think I said when we discussed the May, I think there's a parallel here with different live performance spaces. Holo DACs in pure NOS are closer to a space like SFJAZZ's Miner Auditorium than to, say, the Paramount in Oakland, which has much longer decays. I much prefer Miner and small club venues like the Village Vanguard, but that's likely because I mostly listen to small ensemble jazz and modern classical, which IMO benefit from that contained decay, rather than from the expansive decays of the gold age of big concert halls. However, I've now combined my Holo DACs with HQPlayer (DSD256 with a specific choice of digital upsampling and modulator) and that opens up the decays somewhat without messing up the rest. After this, my OG Yggdrasil has been getting very little play.

 

It's not just orthos. I noted the same phenomenon in my review vs. LIM using dynamic cans. Trailing decays of instruments are mostly missing... there is some general acoustic reverb in a macro sense, but the micro decays were practically undetectable to me. It was very obvious vs. LIM... and that DAC does not even have as much plankton as Gungnir Multibit A2.

 

Yeah I remember I was just butting in in this thread too . I'm glad you posted your impressions as well.

 

Which FW are you on on the Wavelight?
Anything after 1.07 was too aggressive for me.

 

Looks like it is 1.36 (v1.04.01.36). I'm not a person who needs slam (just good dynamics) or treble (air and space are good, but there's a lot of audible information also in the lower frequencies). The balance of the KTE is good in this regard. The balance of the LIM was tilted down, as everyone has said in perhaps a good way. The balance of A2 is tilted up, but I feel the tubes in my ZDS compensate somewhat for this. Still the upper frequencies and general aggressiveness of the Wavelight did not work for my taste on ZDS. It made the sound exhausting, rather than the system I could listen to at the end of a stressful day. KTE worked well in this regard.

 

When I had my May on coax or I2S from Pi2AES, I turned off Dynamic Audio Power Mgt and USB Auto Suspend, and that would avoid the long PLL delay until either side was power cycled again, when the first track after power-on would have the delay. The Spring 3 has the same aggressive PLL. Turning it off does not make an audible difference if the source has good clocking, which the Pi2AES has and I think the DigiOne has too.

I never had to mess with Roon resync delay.

These days, I drive my May via USB from an HQPlayer NAA endpoint, so I have none of those issues. Since Spring 2 KTE (which I also own for a different system), Holo's USB has been very good and arguably the way to go rather than any of the other inputs.

 

Currently listening to the May straight from a laptop USB port and shit sounds awesome, so can confirm.

 

Holo Spring 3 KTE Loaner Impressions

I’d like to thank Holo Audio for generously lending us this DAC, @rhythmdevils for organizing the tour and kindly letting me participate in it, and SBAF for letting us have these wonderful opportunities to audition gear. I’m really grateful.

I need to state at the outset that I’ve had next to no experience with high-end DACs. This is my seventh year in the hobby and my DAC experience thus far has been a steep ascent from the Fulla 2 to the Airist RDAC and now the Bifrost 2 (this last one for the past 18 months). I’ve been satisfied with the Bifrost 2 but am interested in seeing where potential upgrades may lead, if anywhere. I’ve heard the Yggdrasil A2 a few times but seldom for long, nor in ideal environments, and never in my own system, and the week before the Spring arrived I had the good fortune of checking out the Yggdrasil LiM on another SBAF loaner.


Setups
Mac Mini M1 with Roon (Qobuz, ALAC/FLAC files) via USB –> Bifrost 2 vs. Spring 3 KTE (both single-ended) –> Stratus –> Atrium (solid mesh), Vérité, and HD 800 SDR.

I also tried the Spring with a Liquid Gold X –> LCD-4 and from a Jot R –> Raal SR1a. (I purchased both these setups used to see if I might like to assemble a second system around them. Full disclosure: I’m not sure either is for me. Also, the Atrium’s not mine; I got to borrow it briefly, so I’ll only offer a few brief comments about it).

Most of my listening until day 8 was done with 44.1 kHz content through NOS. I very much liked the Spring except for an unpleasant sharpness that was noticeable in the upper-mid frequencies and above, especially with such instruments as violins, electric guitars, trumpets, and alto saxes. The sharpness made the tonality of these instruments sound off. It also took me out of the music and highlighted the artificiality of the presentation.

The sharpness, then, would have been a dealbreaker were it not for the benefits of up-sampling. I’m especially grateful to @crenca for posting the up-sampling he used because it made a significant difference. Being a neophyte with such things, on days 8-10 I simply deferred to his wisdom and copied his settings for my auditions: up-sampling 44.1/48 kHz content to 176.4/192 and using Roon's precise linear phase filter. The sharpness disappeared completely with all of the headphones apart from the LCD-4, and the overall sound became much more pleasant and more correct when it came to timbre.


Impressions, NOS with up-sampling
My impressions of the Spring line up well with most of those posted above. @crazychile nailed it when he described the Spring’s sound as “vivid.” I also heard the differences between the LiM and the Spring in much the same way as @ColtMrFire did, although I’m more favorably inclined toward the Spring after trying up-sampling. I also agree with him that the Spring settles in after 6 days of warmup, at which point it became a bit less incisive and aggressive.

The Spring certainly makes for a striking and exciting first impression. It’s very resolving. It has an incredibly black background. It also sounds very fast, thanks to the snappy leading edges of notes. Its presentation is clean and clear, very precise and tight. The first listen is much like marveling at a stunning vista, with much to take in and to process, the mind flitting from one outstanding feature to the next. After some time, that vividness settles down into a coherent whole and the overall sound begins to make better sense. But even as I assimilated the sound soon enough, it never ceased to be dramatic, and I found myself still marveling at all the subtle details I could make out.

The tuning’s well balanced. It’s less warm and more neutral than the Bifrost 2 and the Less is More Yggdrasil. Part of this has to do with the Spring’s better treble extension, which makes it come across as closer to neutral while still retaining some pleasant overall warmth, thanks to there being plenty of bass emphasis. The bass is tight and well-defined and strong, without being quite as forward as it is with the BF2 and the LiM. The more precise, tight bass helps give the Spring a lighter touch than the bloomier, boomier BF2.

I mentioned already the sharpness of the sound without using up-sampling. I’d like to add that when it’s fixed, the sound of the DAC doesn’t just benefit from being free of that sharpness. It also becomes a bit more mellow. The best thing is that it also takes on a sweeter tone; the treble becomes really quite lovely.

Up-sampling also affords other advantages besides the tonal shift. Extension at both ends of the frequency range improves. Trumpets in a selection of jazz recordings become more piercing, as they should be, and triangles and flutes can be heard more distinctly in orchestral works. At the other end of the spectrum, the bass is also better defined, with richer textures and excellent timbre for double basses. There’s also more sub-bass depth and, with it, more rumble. With that extra bass heft, there’s also more slam. Taken together, these improvements make for a more dynamic and open sound, one that, when it comes to imaging, has plenty of space in which to locate instruments precisely.

The Spring has a lighter – as in less weighty – sound than the Schiits. In other words, it’s less full or thick. Part of this may be that the Spring is less wet than they are, although it isn’t dry. The lighter touch also owes something to better inner space between and around instruments than the Schiit DACs. I suspect the onyx blackground further helps individual instruments and notes to stand out distinctly.

The vividness of the sound, as others have noted, owes something to notes popping out of the blackground and from the snappy transients as well as the precise imaging. Cymbals stand out for being nice and crisp, and zippier than with the Bifrost 2. Piano strikes, in particular, are very quick and clean. I listened to some Schubert sonatas with the Raal SR1a and I have never heard pianos reproduced so well. It was as though, in a void, there was nothing but a piano being played right in front of me. It was thrilling and utterly absorbing. I can’t say I’m particularly fond of the SR1a – I’ve owned it for a few weeks and have mixed feelings about it – but if I were to become a billionaire, I’d say bollocks to getting a yacht and would instead splurge on this setup solely for listening to solo piano pieces.

Macrodynamics are fine but not particularly noteworthy. Slam’s much the same. The headstage is likewise fine, neither being especially spacious nor too cramped or congested. It’s more expansive than the BF2 and less so than the LiM. But none of these DACs offer much of a sense of air or spaciousness. These aren’t ethereal presentations. I guess what I’m trying to convey here is that the staging sounds right and that, like the macrodynamics and slam, it just gets out of the way.


Uncertain Impressions
For all its fine qualities, I’m not entirely sold on the Spring. I can’t say that it’s the most engrossing, mellifluous presentation. There’s something vague, almost intangible about the Spring’s presentation that doesn’t quite work for me, especially when compared with the Bifrost 2 and the LiM. I’d like to say the Spring doesn’t sound as analogue as them. I suspect this limitation of the Spring might have something to do with harmonic richness. I don’t know. I also suspect it has something to do with a bit of lack of engagement. I realize this is a controversial term, one I ought to try to define. What I’m referring to here are a tactile, textured quality to notes, and the rhythmic ebb and flow of music—and I really need to emphasize that I’m straining at the outer limits of my audio experience and acuity.

What I hear with the Bifrost 2 and the LiM is a slightly more textured sound. I don’t mean timbre, such as the richness of the reverberations of a cello's strings as a bow passes over them. I’m thinking more in terms of a tactile quality surrounding notes, a hint of fuzziness or reverberation or grain on or around them that makes it easier to grasp hold of the music, to latch onto it, and to gain a more tangible feeling of it. The Spring is to smooth glass as the LiM is to polished stone or well-sanded wood, with just a bit more resistance and a minute amount of roughness. Ok, at the risk of descending further into nonsense, what I also mean by engagement is something like the experience of what in jazz music gets called “swing,” which is to say those moments when musicians get into a groove and the music takes on an absorbing flow. The term “swing,” then, has to do with rhythm, and the Schiit DACs seem to do really well at this.

There’s also something of a gentler, more laidback quality to the sound with the two Schiit DACs when it comes to transients. I don’t mean laidback in the sense of “recessed upper mids and sometimes treble,” as the sound signatures of laidback transducers are described. Instead, the Schiit DACs seems to present music in a gentler, more inviting way. I don’t know – again, I’m straining at the limits of comprehension. Okay, back to more tangible things, then…


Comparisons
with Bifrost 2 (direct) and Yggdrasil LiM (from recent memory, and triangulating via the BF2)

Before offering a few unflattering comparisons, I should state that I love my Bifrost 2. Compared to the Spring – and in and of itself – the BF2’s bass, while strong, is too poorly defined and muffled (or muddled); the BF2 suffers from congestion in the low end and into the mids, and its treble isn’t the smoothest. I’d also like better resolution. When I heard the BF2 after spending time with the Spring, it came across as a bit too woolly and bassy, without enough clarity, as though there’s almost a veil over the music compared to the Spring. While timbre is nice and is often as good as the Spring’s, the latter offers more space around instruments, and it has better separation and less congestion.

The LiM offers an appreciable improvement over the BF2 across the board. Its bass emphasis is too strong, though, for my tastes, whereas the Spring’s isn’t. I had hoped for greater improvements with the LiM over the BF2, though. The law of diminishing returns kicked in pretty hard. If the LiM failed to live up to expectations, which were too high to begin with, the Spring, however, does not. At the end of my time with the loaner unit I was still amazed by the Spring’s qualities notwithstanding the enduring sense that it was somehow lacking engagement.

In many respects, then, the Spring is significantly different from the BF2 and the LiM – better even – but I can’t say that, taken together, the Spring’s qualities amount to an absolute or unequivocal step up from them. Here’s how I’d rate the three DACs according to a bunch of criteria, with “engagement” referring to the qualities I prattled on about previously. I should add that differences are often very, very small:



I should note a couple of things for the above chart:

• bass quality has to do with textures, pitch differentiation, tightness, resolution, and the timbre of double basses and deeper brass instruments.
• lack of congestion means something distinct from a small soundstage. It’s more to do with instruments crowding against each other, overlapping too much, getting smeared over or muddled together.
• transient attack: this isn't simply a rating of how fast the attacks are; rather, it's how nice the attacks make the music sound, which means that here the Spring isn't ideal for me as it's too snappy.
• transient decay: I can't say I'm very confident about these ratings; I need to get better at appreciating the qualities of decay.

Synergies – or not
With up-sampling, I very much liked the sound of the Atrium, Vérité, and HD 800 SDR out of the Stratus. I suspect the Stratus took the edge off the excitement and incisiveness of the DAC. The Stratus retained its rounded, slightly warm and wet qualities and, as a result, kept the sound from being too aggressive. Still, I’m not sure the amp and DAC pairing are synergistic; I have a sense of the two components working against each other, creating a kind of tension, and negating some of their respective qualities. Neither lets the other be truly free.

The SR1a, and similarly the HD 800 SDR, both worked well with the Spring. I’d wondered if the fast transient attacks of the Spring and the two headphones would be too much, like throwing a ball while at full sprint. Surprisingly, this wasn’t the case. It was as though the Spring’s fast transient attacks simply fell into step with the lightning fast attack of the SR1a. The same could be said, more or less, for the HD 800 SDR; the transients didn’t seem to become overdone. Beyond transients, the SR1a’s presentation, like that of the HD 800 SDR, remained much the same with the Spring, benefiting mainly from the extra resolution and better imaging, layering, and separation. I didn’t notice a marked shift in tonality.

The LAuX –> LCD-4 pairing was poor insofar as the sharpness I mentioned previously didn’t go away, even with up-sampling. The already unconventional tuning of the LCD-4 – irrespective of Audeze EQ presets – now had another dimension of difference with the DAC’s sharpness. Whereas the LCD-4 usually makes for a pleasant, relaxing listen with my BF2, now it was slightly fatiguing and unpleasant.


Conclusion
With its outstanding resolution and clarity, its slightly warm sound, which has a hint of sweetness, and with its fine separation, layering, and imaging, the Spring makes for an exciting, analytical listen, one that’s also perfectly enjoyable and pleasant. In a word, it’s impressive.

For all that, I’m not entirely sure if it’s for me (or for my gear). I’d like something that sounds a bit more analogue and that’s just a bit more mellow and engaging. Maybe this is just wishful thinking – something that can’t be done without tradeoffs affecting what I like so much about the Spring. Again, let me reiterate that I have little experience with high-end DACs.

What I’ve learnt from the LiM and the Spring loaners is that I need more experience before saving up thousands of dollars for a DAC that would be a meaningful upgrade to my Bifrost 2. The Spring hints at qualities I might prefer in a DAC upgrade, and I wonder if the Gungnir A2 might be the way forward. Finally, I can’t make a decision about future DACs without hearing the Yggdrasil A2 properly in my own system. Only then will I know if the Spring offers the best compromise for what I want from my music.

Thank you again, SBAF, for the opportunity to hear the LiM and the Spring. Were it not for this opportunity, I’d be lost, flailing around, and even more uncertain about what I’d like my setup to sound like.

 

I also owned the Bifrost 2. I purchased a LIM which I found with my rig to be clearer with blacker background to not be as engaging or analogue sounding to me, I found the same with the Holo dac. I now own a Gungnir MB with unison usb and I prefer it to both of the two other dacs, to me its more engaging, has me tapping my feet and bobbing my head with the music. Its not as clear (air is less) and the density to me is more engaging and enjoyable. I listen mailny with my speakers and also with my Utopias. On both the LIM and the Holo sounded kind of "fake" to clean and pure. The dac I want to hear now is the Burl b2. Your write up is great.
best,
Josh