Bitstream realms: The “May” DAC by HoloAudio
In contrast to phono cartridges and analog tape recorders, digital audio converters distinguish themselves by the fact that they can be fashioned in an almost infinite number of ways. Therefore, the odds against two manufacturers’ DACs or ADCs sounding exactly the same are extremely large. Nevertheless, I’ve heard countless audiophiles say that “bits are bits” and that today’s digital-to-analog converters sound mostly the same. Some go as far as to declare today’s DACs blameless—neutral—when debating issues of audio-system sound quality.
In my view, such opinions deny the likelihood that widely varied methods for reclocking, format conversion, oversampling, interpolation, currentto-voltage conversion, and reconstruction filtering affect the sound character of the music files being rendered.
My experience suggests that many budget DACs do sound the same: slightly blunt, unsupple, noisy, processed. A lot of DACs, no matter the type or price, make music sound processed, as if all the spinach in my cream-of-spinach soup had been chopped by a machine into pieces of exactly the same size and shape. Once I noticed this blenderization effect, I declared it a coloration.
I didn’t realize it existed—this coloration—until I experienced digital without it in several of my friend’s systems, all of which use expensive R–2R (or other ladder-DAC) converters made by companies like Totaldac, Denafrips, or MSB. Listening to those systems prepared me for my discovery of HoloAudio’s modestly priced Spring DAC at Capital Audiofest’s CanMania in 2017.1 The minute I heard the Spring, I knew: This $1698–$2698 DAC was recovering music via some sort of silent, un–digital-sounding channel, just like my friend’s DACs.
Three years later, I am auditioning HoloAudio’s newest, most expensive converter, the $3798–$4998 “May,” and wondering: could this DAC sound as natural as
