Interesting. Yet another reason for me to look forward to getting the upgraded Oladra . . .
I have been listening to the upgraded K50, from version II, for a day. I believe the upgrade was worth it. I would say it sounds more “punchy “. In other words, a lower noise floor, improved dynamics but still very organic and more life like sounding. Individual instruments appear better separated within the soundstage. I use the AES/EBU output.
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I’ve been listening to my upgraded K50 through the new USB while I’m waiting for the digital output repair. I always listened through AES previously but I will say that the sound through the new USB is outstanding. Very nice upgrade
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I was expecting some better look inside. Better organized and “cleaner” cable routing/component organization on a multi thousand USD$ audio device.
Components may be great, and sound really well, but better to not take a peek inside. 
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Could someone who upgraded K50 post internal pictures ? I would like really appreciate that
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Hi Mark (and others),
I am really interested in the sonic differences between the old K50 (I) and version 3. This as I did not like the Oladra at all. A lot of detail, quiet, relaxed, but missing “weight”, “momentum”, “tension”, “presence” (do not know how to describe it, but this what I clearly heard on a.o. piano, RHCP and Deep Purple. So I do not want my K50 to loose these qualities.
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I never heard the K50 version 1. I believe the change in the power supplies impacts the sound. The sound of version 3 is still organic but there is a more natural flow to the music than V2. Can you demo V3 before upgrading?
I contacted my Dutch dealer/importer for this, but it appeared that antipodes had dished them in favor of the french distributor. So, so far no Dutch dealers anymore…
We have a new Dutch dealer in the works, If you require anything contact Sound and Colours in France or VeryFineSolutions in Belgium until we name the new Dutch dealer.
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Any chance of a future dealer in Ireland /Northern Ireland ?
Hi Jeff
, I haven’t heard the new one yet but as soon as we have a demo available, I’ll be more than hapy to demonstrate the new, to compare to the old.
please be patient… should come soon.
Frank very Fine Solutions
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We will participate at the DAE Event 7&8 Oktober, in Room 64. Mr Boselli from Sound & Colors will be present to answer your questions.
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Any update on this…mid-September…
We have or are in the process of completing OLADRA upgrades that used the upgrade form on our website.
We have fulfilled paid OLADRA orders.
OLADRA is again Sold Out, The next shipment along with any further upgrades will be ready to perform/ship in early October.
I think I am one of the lucky ones to have been at the front of the upgrade list and it is possible that I have one of the first upgraded versions of the Oladra in my system.
No doubt people will be interested to know what I think about the Oladra upgrade having had it now for just over a day.
Straight off I can say I am more than pleased with the sound of the upgrade.
So far I am not using the new USB output. I did briefly compare the new USB to BNC and whilst the new USB is much better than before I still prefer BNC from the Oladra to the Mscaler. I suspect this is more to do with the Mscaler inputs than with the Oladra USB output.
I thought the upgraded Oladra was going to be relabelled the Oladra 2 but it appears it is still called the Oladra 1, or at least that is what is on my Oladra’s label.
The main difference in the sound is a much more organic delivery with a lovely richness and body to the notes. I had thought that the original Oladra whilst excellent in all respects it could still have a certain incessant quality to some tracks, mostly in the upper frequencies. The new updated Oladra is super smooth and has lost that possibilty of tending towards very slight edge to some notes.
Perhaps I can use one track to illustrate what I mean.
This has a plucked double bass note underpinning the track and with the upgrade this has more body and character. The guitar with the original Oldra always sounded great but with the upgrade it is more balanced with the rest of the instruments. Pre upgrade I always felt the guitar was a tad more strident than it needed to be. Only a tad but a tad is sometimes enough to draw too much attention to the notes of one instrument.
Half way through the track everything gets more busy to the point where previously I might be tempted to turn the volume down a bit. Not so with the upgraded Oladra.
This is only one track but I have been roaming through my playlists with delight since receiving the upgraded Oladra with similar improvements all through my library of stored tracks.
So all in all I am very happy indeed with the Oladra upgrade. It has definitely been worthwhile.
(Just a note to say all listening was done with the Oladra set to Squeeze + Squeeze and I was playing through a Chord Mscaler to a DAVE dac and ATC 150 active speakers. The Mscaler and Dave are powered by Sean Jacobs ARC6 power supplies.)
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Thanks for your overview @NickBacon
Keep us updated as burn in continues, it will only get better 
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I have had my upgraded Kala K50 plugged in a streaming continuously for 6 days. Using the AES/EBU output into my DAC, I also use ROON server and Squeeze Player.
The most obvious change from this upgrade is the increased vividness inside the soundstage. It’s the dynamics inside the music that have improved. It makes the stage seem more realistic. As if each instrument is a light source and their individual scales of vividness have expanded.
The overall stage has not changed. I am still in the same seat in the concert hall, the tone has not changed, the low end has tightened up but that could because I am not listening as loud, benefiting from the increase in musical density.
It’s a home run for me. Next to adding my PreAmp this spring, this is the most impactful addition I have made this year.
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Hi Mark, I have had my Oladra 2 playing continuous music (locally stored files) for 5 days now and all is getting even better as you suggested.
One thing that has been a welcome surprise to me is that with the Oladra 2 upgrade I think the SQ gap between Squeeze + Squeeze and Roon + Squeeze has diminished to the point where it is possible that there is no difference between them.
Mark, this would be an amazing wow factor it it turns out to be real. Have you recently tried the comparison with an Oladra 2?
My listening was with locally stored files so far, I have not yet connected my Qobuz account. Also it is using the BNC Digital output from the Oladra connected to the Mscaler with one of my RF filtering WAVE Storm bnc cables.
I want to do more comparisons with more tracks but this has been curtailed this morning because changing back to Squeeze + Squeeze from Roon + Squeeze eventually stopped playing music. It says it is playing but no music comes out. Hey ho, the experiment will continue when I have sorted this.
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@JJJS I think it was you who posted that you had tried an Oladra 1 and that you “did not like the Oladra at all”. If you get the chance you should try an Oladra 2 because to my ears it is a completely different animal to the Oladra 1. I also had a K50mk1 before working my way from that to K50mk2 and then Oladra Mk1. A friend of mine recently said that he preferred my system with the K50Mk1 out of all of those including the OladraMk1 and I know what he means when he says that. However the OladraMk2 has now clearly set itself as being head and shoulders above all of them.
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Just a follow up update on this as I had a friend around this morning to listen to my Oladra 2 and we took the opportunity to compare Roon + Squeeze to Squeeze + Squeeze because I had been gradually losing my conviction that they were getting near to sounding the same.
I played the two play back methods blind to my friend, swopping between them as requested by him as many times as needed for him to be able to make a sure and without doubt decision as to which he preferred.
Unfortunately he confirmed what I was beginning to suspect, ie that Roon + Squeeze is not as good as Squeeze + Squeeze on the Oladra 2. Roon + Squeeze was sounding good but after due deliberation he confirmed that it sounds somewhat smeared compared to Squeeze + Squeeze and the bass is not as deep or detailed, also many details in the music are swamped by the smearing with some notes or subtle instruments missing altogether.
Oh well, I guess it was a big ask and perhaps I was just getting a bit carried away.
I would like to try HQP to do some initial upsampling (say 4x upsampling) prior to Roon similar perhaps to the upsampling that the MU1 does in conjunction with Roon. My Mscaler would then do the remaining upsampling and apply filters. Unfortunately my experiments with that are foundering at the moment because I’m struggling to get the HQ Player to output to the Oladra BNC output (it only gives USB output as a choice in the HQP configuration).
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