Holo May KTE vs Meitner MA3

Please do not flame me, this is only my thoughts formed over the last month and a half.

I was not like this before, but now I do think about things like the following: the Meitner audio gear is designed and manufactured by our Canadian brothers and sisters.  Many of the other DACs that are being discussed as fantastic are designed and manufactured in China and it would probably not be an exaggeration are one more thing ultimately funding the Communist Party.  

I realize that half of what we buy is from China, but maybe we need to start thinking differently when purchasing big ticket items from Communist countries.  I think we are seeing a vivid demonstration of ultimately what they would love to do to us.

If anyone objects to this post I will gladly delete it, maybe I am the only one who is thinking this way.

Calling China a communist country is laughable. They are "communists" when it suits them but in reality they are one of the most capitalist countries in the world, raw unbridled capitalism.

Unfortunately the economic systems they choose are overshadowed by totalitarianism which is why I prefer to send my money elsewhere when I have a choice.

You’re welcome Branislav. I wanna stress these are really preliminary thoughts based on a couple of listening sessions so far with headphone set up only, so keep that in mind. As for the price differential, as you know the MA3 is a three-in-one unit-- dac/streamer/preamp, so I guess it isnt really a pure 9500 dollar dac against a pure 5600 dollar dac (though I recall reading the MA3 dac portion is heavily based on or very similar to their super pricey DV2 dac) but once you are playing in the league of the May and the MA3, I dont think there’s a bad choice-- probably just preferences for this or that tonality or synergy. I actually bought the MA3 at the behest of an audiophile friend (who loves his) to use as a preamp with my amp due to a scarcity on the used market of matching preamps for it, so that’s why I cant directly A/B the May against MA3 into my amp and speakers right now-- I dont currently have a preamp to hook up to the May!

So for now-- headphones will have to do. The ALO studio six is a great head amp for such testing, because it accepts like three (or is it 4?) sources and also isnt too ’tubey’ sonically-- pretty even handed with a bit of warmth. Wish the ALO were balanced also, but just single-ended.

So it’s easy to hook up, say, the May and the MA3, match the volumes with the MA3 volume knob, and play the same track through both and simply switch the input knob back and forth on the ALO. When I queued up some Mozart (the well recorded piano/violin Mozart Palatine sonatas on Quobuz and the Leif Ove Andsnes album titled ’1784’ on same), similar spaciousness, tonality, delicacy/decays and separation were in evidence via both the May and the MA3. Same goes for the Bill Evans trio stuff I tried.

I also preliminarily think the internal streamer in the MA3 may have a slightly warmer tonality than when I play the same tracks via AES input from my Lumin U1 mini streamer (a great streamer which I just sold after acquiring the MA3 in the hopes I could reduce the box count:) Of course, that could be down to the AES input on the MA3 or the nature of the Lumin itself-- not sure.

I’ll confess I have always loved Audirvana software via my mac mini sonically, and via USB into the May, with no cleaners/converters etc, it really does turn in a ’streamer level’ (or close to it) performance. Perhaps that owes to the May’s excellent jitter reduction/PLL circuitry and other such things beyond my comprehension. But nonetheless there it is sonically.

So Mac mini/May vs. MA3 (with internal streamer) doesn’t in my ear, handicap the May too much at all. Until I got the Lumin, that was my favorite setup.

It may still be-- hopefully will get a chance this week for a few more hours of headphone A/B’ing with different genres (ambient/jazz-- even Diana Krall!?? No! etc) and I can then report back if you like, either just how wrong my initial impressions were and what was I smoking -- or that I’ve confirmed them to myself ;)

@lordmelton 

Big ol +1 for understanding what DJT tried to do. Not many I know have a clue. And now we have a pedo friendly SCJ: SO SAD