Holo Cyan 2

33 minutes ago, dericchan1 said:

It even managed to make bad recordings sound pretty decent!!!

Hahaha. Honestly, was listening a lot tonight and this was my takeaway as well!! 

An example: while not a "bad" recording per se, "Kyrie" by Mr. Mister is one of my favorite songs of all-time, but I don't love listening to it on my system because it always sounded rather thin and flat. My last DAC did it no favors. But after noticing that the Cyan 2 was injecting some organic mojo into almost everything I was throwing at it, I threw "Kyrie" on again to see how it sounded, and WOW. This was quite different. The instruments felt more separated and the synths had a more textural finish. And there was a bit more body to everything, which is an impressive feat for a lot of 80's pop recordings. It made me very happy. 

1 minute ago, lukeslens said:

Hahaha. Honestly, was listening a lot tonight and this was my takeaway as well!! 

An example: while not a "bad" recording per se, "Kyrie" by Mr. Mister is one of my favorite songs of all-time, but I don't love listening to it on my system because it always sounded rather thin and flat. My last DAC did it no favors. But after noticing that the Cyan 2 was injecting some organic mojo into almost everything I was throwing at it, I threw "Kyrie" on again to see how it sounded, and WOW. This was quite different. The instruments felt more separated and the synths had a more textural finish. And there was a bit more body to everything, which is an impressive feat for a lot of 80's pop recordings. It made me very happy. 

I wholeheartedly agree. Those pop/rock from the 80s are the worst to listen to and the cyan 2 has injected some life to them, something I felt even my ifi idsd pro with the tube mode on might not be able to achieve !!! There are so much great music out there that were recoded badly!!!

On 2/1/2024 at 11:50 AM, dericchan1 said:

I am about 75 hours into burning in with the Cyan 2.

 

My impression remains the same as day 1.

 

Overall it's detailed, but not as detailed as say the chord mojo 2. The mojo 2 sound a bit better with great recording like jazz, and classical music with sharper transient, instrument more separate ... 

 

with the Cyan 2, it may be a touch not as detailed as the mojo2, but it’s all about organic, natural, coherency …..

 

It even managed to make bad recordings sound pretty decent!!! Last night I was playing some old school cantopop from the 90s in MP3s and honestly none of any of my other dacs sounded good with these but the Cyan 2 really sing well with these bad recordings !!!

 

it also has a much deeper soundstage compared to the mojo 2.

 

The mojo 2, while sounds great with really good recording, makes even half decent recordings sound really bad!!!

btw my set up is as follows: 

 

Hqplayer 5 -> rpi 4 NAA -> usb to intona -> cyan 2 -> Synthesis Soprano class A int amp -> focal Aria 906 and Sony dual 10” seal sub (30 years old!!)

 

dsd256x48

7EC super 

 

or 

 

pcm 20/1536 

lns15

1x gauss long 

nx gauss lp hires

 

 

Howdy! I'm a fellow Chord Mojo 2 user and new Holo Audio Cyan 2 owner. Currently as I am writing, the Cyan 2 has undergone more than 250 hours of burn-in and differences between the two DACs are more apparent every day.

The A-B comparisons made throughout this period were a mixed bag. At times, I swore by the Mojo 2 yet sometimes I am more inclined to the Cyan 2's presentation during the listening sessions. My audio gear is 2 decades old comprising the Audiolab 8000S integrated amplifier, Rotel RCD-971 HDCD player, B&Ws DM 602 bookshelves & 603 floorstanders - besides a newly acquired Musical Paradise MP-301 Mk III integrated tube amplifier last November. Music played varies from vocals to k-pop to jazz and blues... basically anything under the sun I can throw at the audio system since Apple Music is a godsend together with my beloved Tidal streaming out of a M2 Mac Mini via USB.

First impression at 0 hours burn-in of the Cyan 2 was its expansiveness in soundstaging laterally (width) and a natural and somewhat dry midrange with a very deep and low controlled bassline - sounds totally different to the Mojo 2 which always offers a rich and sweet midrange tonally with a punchy and taut bass. Let's talk about bass again as the burn-in progressed towards the desired 300 hours mark. There is greater refinement and control such that the lowest registers are audible and not just felt - if I can oppose to the general consensus that low frequencies cannot be heard but felt. Literally, I have NEVER experienced such bass from my entry-level speakers (which raises my curiosity of how it would sound playing on higher quality speakers!). I pulled out another audio gear - a Mirage Nano Sub just to join in the fun. Boy was I in bass heaven! You can just literally follow every beat and rhythm whenever there is presence of a bassline in the music grooving in audiophile nirvana!

I will leave it as that for now because a review at this point may do no justice to the Cyan 2 as it is still realising its full potential.  I hope you will find this short sharing drool-worthy enough to go grab one Cyan 2 immediately!

1 hour ago, LoryWiv said:

Would using Holo Red as a DDC output IIS to Cyan 2 add anything to the performance of Cyan 2 with HQ Player? I use a DDC in my current setup (see signature) for additional (galvanic) isolation and on the view that IIS input may be inherently superior to USB, but unsure if those potential advantages holds true with Cyan 2 and warrant the additional expense / complexity. Thoughts?

IIRC Cyan 2 has galvanically isolated digital inputs. IMO Holo Red seems to be redundant in this case. USB input is superior to I2S from jitter point of view since USB is asynchronous protocol. USB data flow is controlled from DAC side by its USB receiver circuit (often XMOS chip, I don't know what is used in Cyan2) and buffered. Reading data from that buffer is then fully controlled by DAC clock. So timing of digital signal incoming to DAC chip does not depend on accuracy of USB transfer. Other situation is with I2S where data transfer is controlled by external clock and that clock is transferred over potentially long I2S connection. Any noise influence on the I2S connection may affect external clock accuracy at DAC side. DAC clock needs to adapt to the external clock. See Miska's explanation: https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/65961-holo-dac-i2s-pll-issues/?do=findComment&comment=1200497

Other aspect, what could make one better than the other, is noise rejection. I mean galvanic isolation and EMI/RFI rejection. If it is on the same level and if DAC clock is accurate, I2S should not bring any advantage. @Miska knows to explain it better ...

I guess if budget permits wouldn’t hurt to try the red or whatever ddc and their i2s as long as you have the expectation it won’t make a difference or could be potentially worse 

time and again, Miska would advise you don’t need audiophile usb cables, or the holo dac usb implementation is top notch you won’t need an intona isolation.

i still fed 2 Supra Excalibur usb cables and an intona to the cyan 2. Did it make any differences? absolutely not!!! At least I tried and found out myself 

Holo Red with just USB output and NAA OS is still very nice NAA with built-in LPS. No need to necessarily use the DDC. But the DDC is nice for people using for example AES to DSP equipped active speakers, etc.

Of course, Red is relatively expensive NAA compared to Cyan 2 price. So one could as well go with stock RPi4 in a steel case, like the ones from HifiBerry, or passive cooled aluminium cases.

55 minutes ago, skipspence said:

In fact the manual for Cyan2 has very sparse description other than that: "The Altera MAX II CPLD chip in CYAN 2 is used to process the clock signal and optimize the quality of the digital audio signal by significantly reducing jitter"...  and Altera as seen is exactly on USB receiver, which seems just like very standard... 

That is one of the three I spot here. One on the USB interface, one next to the other inputs (probably PLL for the S/PDIF and I2S) and one on the converter board:

But overall, Cyan 2 jitter performance using USB input is usual Holo Audio quality, absolutely excellent!

8 hours ago, Zauurx said:

And I've seen some I2S measurements from a Spring... identical in quality to the USB.

With PLL disabled in Spring 3, the quality is much worse than USB. With PLL enabled, the quality is only slightly worse than USB. With the PLL active, down side is that the lock time is rather lengthy.

Problem with I2S is that the clock as at the wrong side of the connection...

Well, took the Cyan 2 down to my main system, but my Freya + tube stage went dead on me. Anyway, passive preamp mode and solid state mode still works. Probably a better idea to use the passive mode anyway so I am listening more of the cyan 2.

For the first time compared the Cyan 2 with and without the intona in the chain. I will be lying if I tell you I can hear any differences. Really the first time I did not think I need an intona in the chain out of any other dacs I have used in any of my systems!!!!