Holo Audio Cyan 2

Yes, in order to get the best sound out of it, it needs to be left on 24/7.

 

Anyone tried running dsd out of a SACD player into the Cyan 2?

 

It was recommended by the distributor whom I bought it from to keep it on 24/7. And I have been doing just that until in recent weeks, i bought a new preamp and had to be turning the cyan 2 on and off pretty often, to incorporate the subs and connecting other components to the preamp…

it really doesn’t make that much of a difference vs 24/7 on…

having said that I still keep it 24/7 now that I am done with the preamp setup

 

My only concern is longevity. Will the DAC "ware out" faster if I leave it on vice only turn it on when I want to use it.

 

So, I returned the Yggdrasil and have a Cyan2 on order. It sounds like they take a bit of time to make/ship them. So, for now, I will be using my Bifrost 2 with NOS.

 

That’s a good old argument whether turning it on/off will yield longer life span vs leaving it consistently on.

Only god knows the answer to this one

I know I will be selling mine in a few months so I won’t be able to witness that

 

Got myself one of these to try and it is really an excellent DAC for the price!

I tried I2S out of my excellent Rockna WDNET server… but ultimately preferred the sound of USB off the same streamer! Go figure…

I didn’t get to do any critical comparison with the Gungnir 2, as they are both in my work setup, but I feel like the Cyan 2 can hang out with the G2 and not be embarrassed, which I wasn’t expecting given how good the G2 is!

Haven’t played with upsampling yet, as I really don’t have much free time for this kind of stuff nowadays.

While it still has some thickness and darkness to it, it is nowhere near as thick and ‘dark chocolatey’ as the spring 1 was!

 

@Clemmaster Give it some time to warm up. In my experience, it takes longer than a Yggdrasil to stabilize.

 

Had my Holo Cyan 2 since mid-February

Its by far and away the best-sounding DAC I have had and all my music lover friends agree

One "drawback" if I can describe it as that, is that there is no input selection and if a USB cable is inserted, nothing else is available

A work-around to this is to disable the 5V volt line from the USB-A plug. A simple way is to attach a thin tape over pin 4 (viewed from the front). Pins D+. D- and ground are still connected, so the audio signal is present

Removing the 5V line makes the Cyan see the USB input as a co-ax device. Then, using the output selector on the output device (in my case a Lumin U2) you can quickly compare USB and co-ax. Since the Lumin cancels the output not selected

Experimenting with different cables made me realise that a Furutech GT2-pro B provided the best results

I tried inakustik, Audioquest Diamond, Audioquest Carbon and the cable that came with the Cyan. All very small differences. The Furutech gave slightly less bass and softer volume but much better mid and treble quality

As far as co-ax is concerned, a vdHul Digicoupler worked best for me

 

So, for a stupid reason I’ve been listening to my Cyan 2 playing un-upsampled redbook all evening. And it’s fabulous. Very different than the dsd256/512 I’ve been playing through it for the last 2 weeks that I’ve had it. Richer, more timbral, not as ethereal - can’t say if it’s that the midrange texture is much better or that the high extension just isn’t as artificial. Anyways me like it. Glad to know it can be a friend of non-HQPlayer streams too.

Oh yeah, the stupid reason? Have been experimenting with using a RooControl to turn the power on and off on my amps (auto-shut-down a must for me, 30 minutes of no playing music, turn those Aegir’s and that Freya+ n the F off ftw). Diggin’ it.

 

I leave the Cyan 2 on but the Lumin turns off after 30 mins