In this case, the Dave is the problem, not the headphones. I have the Sennheisser 800S. On my Sony TA-ZH1ES (an infinitely better headphone amplifier than the Dave), the 800S sounds very good with minimal if any brightness. It sounds in fact liquid in the midrange. The Sony weighs probably twice...

I have a Blu2 with the Dave DAC in a nice Choral stand. Sonically, they’re great, operationally a disaster. I had endless issues with the Blu2 and the Dave. Finally sent it in to Chord’s service center here in the US in Connecticut. They gave me the run around initially but finally decided to...

To me, neither digital — at any resolution or bit depth — nor vinyl sounds anything like live music. When I want to hear what real instruments sound like, I attend a concert of the San Francisco symphony orchestra or take in an opera, or even a chamber music performance. I was on an extended...

Just curious. If you copy a file to your USB drive with your fancy cable vs. a vanilla cable, would you expect the copies to be different?

I think this statement applies broadly to all of audio. One can easily spend $100K on a turntable, a preamplifier or amplifier, and Magico here in the San Francisco Bay Area has just released their latest Q9 speaker that costs almost a million dollars. As the saying goes, if you have to ask for...

Keep in mind that a good chunk of London real estate is owned by Russian oligarchs, the so-called “London-grad” district. $100K DACs will be bought by these folks to go into their huge yachts. Chord is trying to keep up with the Joneses, as the saying goes. Naim has a $100K preamp, and so Chord...

Comparisons of DACs is like comparing wines — I live in wine country in the San Francisco Bay Area! You’ll never get two people to agree on their best choice of wines in Northern California. With thousands of wineries to choose from, there’s choice to spare. In my own little town, we have at...

Celebrating Christmas Eve here in the Bay Area sipping some Hennessy cognac, listening to some beautiful west coast jazz played back on my Blu2/Dave, shown here in its fetching Chord stand. The album is Gerry Mulligan’s Dream a Little Dream on Telarc. Fabulous recording made late in his career...

I have the same ARC Ref 3 preamp. In my (30+ years) experience, no DAC at whatever price point you care to explore can project a soundstage like a top of the line balanced tube preamp can. I tried comparing my Blu2/Dave direct into a variety of power amplifiers vs. going into the Ref 3. There’s...

Fans of the M-Scaler might “enjoy“ reading its review on ASR. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/chord-m-scaler-review-upsampler.35498/ Review summary: “Conclusions I was very disappointed to see high noise levels and jitter on Coax outputs of such an expensive...

I have about 6 DACs at home, a mixture of solid state and tube, stand alone vs integrated with a CD player or a digital amplifier, at price points separated by three orders of magnitude. I find system matching crucial with DACs, as with any other component. There’s no absolute best DAC, and...

Another DAC to consider, designed here in California, although it is quite a bit pricier than the Dave. https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/the-digital-director-a-new-msb-product-improving-everything-from-the-source-to-the-output.34897/page-11

I think you’d be surprised by how many respectable audio designers of notable products, as well as professionals in the audio recording industry, believe that most of high end audio is, to use a phrase first used by the legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz: “high phooey and hystereo”. For example...

That’s your subjective opinion and you are certainly entitled to it. It’s your money and you can choose to spend it however you see fit. However, the issue at hand is not subjective opinion, but objective measurements. If you’re going to make outlandish technical claims about -300dB S/N ratio...

It’s worth pointing out that all the issues raised by the ASR review were brought out in other previous reviews (e.g., Stereophile) and the relatively lackluster measurements of the Dave pointed out in the ASR review have been confirmed in many other reviews. It’s lackluster headphone...

Interesting. I’ve never once felt digital captured the dynamic range of an orchestra. Having been to thousands of concerts over the past 35 years, and owning several thousand CDs and SACDs in my house, if there’s a digital recording that captures the sound of an oboe in a concert hall, I haven’t...

I tried going pure digital and solid state for a few years, no vinyl and no tubes. Partly it was because I moved from the east coast to the San Francisco Bay Area and first ended up in a small apartment in the city. Then I bought a much larger 3500 sq ft house an hour south of the city in pretty...

The UK will get over this, I’m sure (although I hear Boris might be back, like the famous Roman general Cincinatus who he quoted on his way out of Number 10). I am listening now to a lovely Harmonia MundI recording of a 16th century Flemish composer, sung by Stile Antico, one of my favorite...

Being in my early 60s, I can relate. My first high end system was purchased in 1987, 35 years ago. My hearing was far better then. 😄 But I’ve been careful with volume settings. Never listen louder than low 80 dBs, average around mid 70 dB. I can still hear the nuances of different components...

I was tempted to get one of the MSB DACs, as they’re also highly regarded, but their pricing for their high end models is stratospheric. Once prices get beyond 15-20 grand, I start to lose interest. It’s not that I can’t afford to get one, but digital technology moves quickly and has poor resale...

I owned the dCS stack 25 odd years ago — it was the Verdi transport, the Purcell clock and the Elgar Plus ring DAC. At that time, dCS DACs were clearly superior since they practically invented the high end DAC market and popularized upsampling as well. They also had real cred as DAC hardware...

I figured you guys would be offended by that hard hitting review of the Dave, but nothing he said surprised me. He mentioned serious RF noise issues in the Dave. I’ve posted here multiple times on that issue. I had no end of trouble getting my Blu2 to work with my Dave. Finally, I sent both in...

Hope it performs better than the Dave, which got (rightly) slammed on audioscience.com for a disappointing set of measurements. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/chord-dave-review-dac-hp-amp.35974/ The reviewer said there are $150 DACs that measure better than the...

Ugh, no thanks. I find the sound of the Dave a bit too clinical to use with typical solid state gear with even warm sounding speakers, such as my Harbeth Monitor 40.1s or Quad 2905s. I use the Dave now with a pair of Quad 2905s in my dining room where the Dave feeds into a 20 watt JJ 322 300B...

Since I got my Lampi Pacific, my Blu2/Dave hardly get any use. 😀 I can’t bring myself to sell them yet, so they sit in a corner. The Dave is a good DAC, but depending on your budget and sonic preferences, there are better DACs. The Pacific gets you into a different sonic class (for a price)...