Holo Audio Red

not surprising, the current tariff situation makes them uncompetitive... but they probably need to adjust their website and take down the big huge pictures of the Holo May, Cyan 2, etc from the front page

 

Well, there is a world beyond the US.

 

There is a slot to put the 250V fuse but it is so hard to open that I am afraid to break anything

 

but isn't Kitsune the US distributor? I'm not sure they handle other countries
---edit---
and even if they do ship to other countries, they have to import to the US to do the mods and then ship to the other countries. The only way to avoid the tariffs would be for kitsune to relocate their operations

 

Holo audio, the manufacturer, is out of China

 

also, there is currently a carve out for the China tariffs for Electronics. It's possible there may be other underlying reasons that they are no longer importing them.

they are calling the pause temporary, so perhaps they will start up again

 

True, but Kitsune is a separate "distributor" serving U.S. market and no other...unless they serve Canada & Mexico as well.

 

In the meantime, if you need a streamer that is on the level of a Holo Red, buy American and support Pi 2 Design.

Buy here: https://www.pi2design.com/store/p29/Mercury_V3_DAC.html

Here is my side-by-side comparison
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...amer-dac-impressions.14848/page-3#post-440176

 

Here's what I see from my Vancouver (Canada) IP when I go to the Kitsune website (that's a scrolling banner at the top):



Americans wanting to buy Holo in the near term will need a remote postbox.

As the happy owner of a Pi2AES I'd be happy to further support Pi 2 Design, but for me their products have now become more expensive. Like many people in the US, I'd wish to be able to buy the product of my choice without having to pay arbitrarily-imposed extra taxes.

 

Interesting... I assumed that they did the modifications to make them kitsune L1 thru L3 were done in the US, meaning they had to import to make the mods (and then export them to Canada, Mexico, etc... adding even further tariffs).

But maybe the come modded direct from China or maybe they discontinued the various "levels"

 

The mods were done in China for my 3 KTE items (May, Serene, Bliss). They were shipped directly from there.

 

Great information, thanks for reaching out to Kitsuni and sharing here.
Just bought a May KTE and Holo REd, was wondering to go USB or i2s

 

We had a DAC meet in Austin awhile back and posted our findings on this site. I believe we universally found I2S from Red to May KTE (and to Cyan 2 as well) to be superior to USB.

 

I don't understand how Holo managed to make such rock solid software for the RED while they are not even a software company and meanwhile Volumio, RopieeXL, MoOde are exclusiveliy RPI software companies and their software is buggy beyond belief. the RED has never, not once stopped working on me in like 8 months. Every Pi2AES or RPI I have stops working very frequently no matter which of those 3 I use. I just don't quite get it.

(no fault of the Pi2AES, it's the software)

 

Like I said on the other thread, Red OS is extremely light. It has only what they thought one would want or need. No, it does not have a player to play local files like Volumio, but even foobar2000 has a UPnP plugin.

So it is not just the Red, it is the actual Red OS because you can run all of those OSs on the Red if one chooses.

 

Fun fact: Red OS is not a greenfield project by Holo. It's a re-skinned Pure (kind of an anti-searchable branding. Pure OS is entierly different thing) port originating from Russian-speaking forums.
The lead developer has a strong opinion that Raspberry Pi hardware isn't worth the hassle. Their reference target of choice is BeagleBone Black.