HoloAudio – CYAN – Balanced R2R Ladder DAC / Pre / Headphone Amplifier (DSD, DxD, XMOS USB)

REVIEW HEADPHONE.COM

Cyan – PCM Edition

PCM Module (Balanced) has full function Balanced headphone amplifier that is capable to power most any headphone and sensitive IEM. Has high and low gain settings to fine tune the amp for whatever pair of headphones you may have. 28bit pure PCM module with digital volume control.

Cyan – DAC Only Edition

Pure DAC Only Unit (Balanced) – No Headphone Amplifier output – no internal amp. External knob and headphone out connectors are still visible but have no purpose. This is a DSD Dac only.

Cyan – Joy PCM & DSD Edition

Comes shipped with PCM Module with Head-amp and DSD Module (firmware to disable head-amp when in use). The firmware on the dac module will automatically disable the onboard head-amp to prevent any damage to hearing or headphones.

INPUTS

USB
RCA coaxial
BNC coaxial
AES/EBU
Toslink Optical
I2S (HDMI)

* All digital input interface supports DSD (DOP mode).

OUTPUTS

Fully balanced/bridged XLR and RCA output
Balanced headphone output using 4 pin xlr

• Offers oversampling and non oversampling modes
• Compact chassis 260×281*55mm (WxLxH)
• The new fully balanced headphone circuit capable of powering most headphone easily
• Ability to select either low impedance or high impedance for the headphones
• Includes high quality aluminum remote control – functions include: Mute, Volume, low & high gain for Output, Input Selection, Display Brightness, OS/NOS mode

Cyan PCM Edition

For those who choose the PCM module version you will be able to enjoy the balanced headphone amplifier. However if you choose the DSD module version then you will not be able to use the headphone amplifier. For those who know DSD well, they will know that pure DSD does not allow for volume control. In fact if a DSD dac claims to have volume control then you will know that it’s first converted to PCM internally to achieve this. We released the pure DSD module version for those looking to have a unique and high performance Discrete resistor ladder dac DSD solution. We have highly optimized the architecture of our resistor network to have an incredible sounding DSD dac. if the Amp was enabled it would be at 100% volume and put your ears and headphones at risk. Also the DSD version will have a “headphone delete” and not contain the components on the motherboard for the head-amp. However there will still be a volume control knob and headphone outputs on the front panel that will not function.

Cyan DAC ONLY Edition

DSD is natively supported on this Discrete Resistor Ladder DAC
Holo Audio is the world’s first to support DSD natively on Resistor Ladder DAC. This is not the DSD converted to PCM before digital-analog converter, but directly by the discrete components of the DSD digital to analog converter. Supported currently on MAC (DOP)and Linux (DOP), and Windows/PC (Direct Native and DOP). Please note, the word ‘R2R’ is the name of a kind of architecture of resistor ladders. This architecture requires less resistors yet still is capable to deliver more than acceptable performance. Most DACs in the industry use this architecture. The DSD module of Cyan does not use R2R architecture for the DSD, more specifically it uses a very specific architecture which is optimized to perform DSD to analog. So to be entirely accurate the DSD module of the Cyan is using resistor ladders, not R2R.