I spy a Puma Cat. :)

https://www.audioaficionado.org/atta...1&d=1634441722

Completely understand that you are just "breaking it in" for a friend. It is going to change a bit more but I didn't find it to be radical though I may have missed a lot of it as I put it in a spare room connected to an old OPPO 970 and an unused and unpowered preamp and let it run 24/7 for 21 days. I listened to it for about six hours out of the box and while it wasn't bad you could tell it needed seasoning. When I had the transformer mod done on my Directstream Sr. a few months back it got the same treatment. I don't think it will ultimately change which DAC's presentation you prefer at all. It's like when Ted Smith told everyone about upgrading the transformers in the Directstream the first group that did it talked about how it made it "a completely different DAC." Well it didn't. It made it a better version of itself and what Ted intended to start with but it still doesn't play on the same field with the May or the Aqua La Voce S3. The La Voce being a similar concept DAC as the Directstream with 7 years newer technology and better parts.

Ha! Yeah, that's a little "Puma Cat" that I use to store some small audio-related bits, e.g. Shunyata Ethernet plug covers, etc. I've moved him off of there now as I have a small little stainless steel doorstop on top now, functioning to provide some mass to the EtherREGEN to help its coupling to the Herbie's Tenderfeet.

The little Puma Cat is now resting comfortably on my E.A.R. 324 phonostage. ;)

BTW, Ivan, I bought some used Stillpoint UltraMinis from kennyb123 a while back, and they provide a nice improvement to my little Pass AmpCamp amps, which now that they are run in, sound glorious (I run them as a pair of bridged monoblocks). Frickin' Nelson Pass is a genius, I tell ya what...:thumbsup:

I'll post a pic tomorrow when I have some light in the room.

Well, I bit the bullet, pulled the trigger and all that and put in my order for a May DAC. I currently have a Holo Audio Spring 1 KTE DAC that I took a chance on a few years ago and have been very happy with. However, I upgraded speakers to Dynaudio Heritage Specials a few months ago and it seemed time to do a bit of upgrading and see what they can really do. I was planning on doing some auditioning of different options but two things changed that. First, at least for me, once you’ve listened to a good R2R Ladder DAC it is very addicting. Even more relevant though, is that I discovered that Kitsune HiFi, the US arm or Holo Audio has an upgrade program and I was able to trade in my Spring dac for what I paid for it less 15% so right off the bat I saved about $2K. That would let me buy the May for about 3.5K. And a nice little feature of the trade-in program is that you keep the Spring until you receive the May so I’m not left without a dac for 5 or 6 weeks (although I have Bryston BDA-2 as a back-up that clearly doesn’t suck). I’ll update when the May arrives.

I'm guessing you will be VERY happy in about 4 months (2 to get the May and 2 to burn it in).

Fortunately, I still have the Spring to get me through the first half of that.