Chord Electronics - Blu Mk. 2 - The Official Thread
Jun 24, 2018 at 1:53 AM Post #3,601 of 4,904
I listened to a couple of my favourite tracks on a system similar to mine yesterday, but without the BLU MK2, and really missed it, it makes such a difference. I guess you soon get used to it, but take it out of the equation and straight away you realise what a huge difference it makes.
 
Jun 29, 2018 at 3:24 PM Post #3,604 of 4,904
Hi all

I am after some advice. I have a Blu II on loan for a very short period of time, less than 48 hours.

I have connected it to my Dave in dual BNC mode as recommended by the manual. No problems there, everything worked from the get-go.

I am playing a CD in excellent condition: 'The Age of Plastic' by the Buggles (apologies for my taste).

The Dave display shows the following:
- D Bnc 1
- 705.6kHz
- PCM Plus
- Phase Neg
- HF Fil Off
- Display 1
- CHORD DAVE Digital Pre

I am running an A/B test, switching between the CD replay and a Tidal stream of the same album, running from a Cocktail Audio Pro X100 media server connected via Toslink to the Dave.

When I switch from the Tidal stream to the CD stream, there is a drop-out after a second or so, but it is stable after that. The output of the CD stream seems to be 2-3 db lower. These aren't the problems.

The issue is that the CD output is underwhelming. The Tidal output through the Dave is alive, really good and strong. The CD replay on the other hand is a little flat, to the point where I don't even see the need to run any further demo of the unit.

My system should be resolving enough to highlight differences - the Dave is operating as a pre, with a pair of Quad II 80's feeding Kudos Titan T88 speakers.

I am using BNC inputs 1 and 2 on the Dave. I will try 3 and 4, but I don't see why that would make any difference.

All comments or suggestions appreciated.


edit: I've just done a second A/B test with Donald Fagen's The Nightfly with the same results. For the record, my missus describes the Tidal output through optical as '"more rich".
 
Jun 29, 2018 at 4:08 PM Post #3,605 of 4,904
It seems from what you say that you are playing the Tidal straight into Dave. In which case it is 3dB louder than anything through Blu2 so you must adjust the volume of Dave by 3dB. That volume difference can really affect what you think is better.

A cd on Blu2 wil knock Tidal into a cocked hat so you just need to find out what is preventing that with your system.

Just as an aside, I never got the best sound from Dave direct into a valve power amp. My favourite was a Music First silver wound TVC passive preamp. Without the preamp the bass was all fluffy and the mids and treble lacked definition.
 
Jun 29, 2018 at 4:14 PM Post #3,606 of 4,904
Hi all

I am after some advice. I have a Blup II on loan for a very short period of time, less than 48 hours.

I have connected it to my Dave in dual BNC mode as recommended by the manual. No problems there, everything worked from the get-go.

I am playing a CD in excellent condition: 'The Age of Plastic' by the Buggles (apologies for my taste).

The Dave display shows the following:
- D Bnc 1
- 705.6kHz
- PCM Plus
- Phase Neg
- HF Fil Off
- Display 1
- CHORD DAVE Digital Pre

I am running an A/B test, switching between the CD replay and a Tidal stream of the same album, running from a Cocktail Audio Pro X100 media server connected via Toslink to the Dave.

When I switch from the Tidal stream to the CD stream, there is a drop-out after a second or so, but it is stable after that. The output of the CD stream seems to be 2-3 db lower. These aren't the problems.

The issue is that the CD output is underwhelming. The Tidal output through the Dave is alive, really good and strong. The CD replay on the other hand is a little flat, to the point where I don't even see the need to run any further demo of the unit.

My system should be resolving enough to highlight differences - the Dave is operating as a pre, with a pair of Quad II 80's feeding Kudos Titan T88 speakers.

I am using BNC inputs 1 and 2 on the Dave. I will try 3 and 4, but I don't see why that would make any difference.

All comments or sugge.


The Phase setting must be set to POS, change that and re-test.
 
Jun 29, 2018 at 4:25 PM Post #3,607 of 4,904
Hi both,

Thanks for the responses.

Triode, yes I took the db difference into account, reducing the volume to match for the A/B test. You are right, that little extra bit of volume can affect expectations, but I am used to it with various previous A/B tests.

Ref. the valve amp comment, I have a good quality pair of solid state mono's which I may swap in for the testing. I also have a couple of pre-amps I could try. But I am very happy with the existing Tidal - Toslink - Dave - valve mono set-up.

Silvertone, I will flip the phase setting to POS and retest. As an aside, whilst I know it will change the sound a little, in what way will it make a difference to the A/B test?

Cheers.
 
Jun 29, 2018 at 8:01 PM Post #3,608 of 4,904
Hi all

I am after some advice. I have a Blu II on loan for a very short period of time, less than 48 hours.

I have connected it to my Dave in dual BNC mode as recommended by the manual. No problems there, everything worked from the get-go.

I am playing a CD in excellent condition: 'The Age of Plastic' by the Buggles (apologies for my taste).

The Dave display shows the following:
- D Bnc 1
- 705.6kHz
- PCM Plus
- Phase Neg
- HF Fil Off
- Display 1
- CHORD DAVE Digital Pre

I am running an A/B test, switching between the CD replay and a Tidal stream of the same album, running from a Cocktail Audio Pro X100 media server connected via Toslink to the Dave.

When I switch from the Tidal stream to the CD stream, there is a drop-out after a second or so, but it is stable after that. The output of the CD stream seems to be 2-3 db lower. These aren't the problems.

The issue is that the CD output is underwhelming. The Tidal output through the Dave is alive, really good and strong. The CD replay on the other hand is a little flat, to the point where I don't even see the need to run any further demo of the unit.

My system should be resolving enough to highlight differences - the Dave is operating as a pre, with a pair of Quad II 80's feeding Kudos Titan T88 speakers.

I am using BNC inputs 1 and 2 on the Dave. I will try 3 and 4, but I don't see why that would make any difference.

All comments or suggestions appreciated.


edit: I've just done a second A/B test with Donald Fagen's The Nightfly with the same results. For the record, my missus describes the Tidal output through optical as '"more rich".

Different masters between the CD and Tidal version? Could be a victim of the loudness wars with Tidal making it seem more ‘full’.
 
Jun 29, 2018 at 10:31 PM Post #3,609 of 4,904
I am after some advice. I have a Blu II on loan for a very short period of time, less than 48 hours. The Tidal output through the Dave is alive, really good and strong. The CD replay on the other hand is a little flat, to the point where I don't even see the need to run any further demo of the unit.
edit: I've just done a second A/B test with Donald Fagen's The Nightfly with the same results. For the record, my missus describes the Tidal output through optical as '"more rich".
There are several possibilities here. Some have already made the same comments but I'll try to be more specific...
1) Mastering issues: Tidal has two versions of Age of the Plastics (latter one being remastered). If your CD version is the original version and you're playing the remastered version on Tidal, the CD version would sound flat. I can hear it from the first track. Similarly, Tidal has two versions of Donald Fagen's The Nightfly, MQA 48/24 and 44/16 CD version. I found the CD version to be more accurate with the transients whereas the MQA version to blur the transients but it may sound "richer" to you, especially if that's what you've been listening to. So the proper way to really compare it is to rip your CDs to your Cocktail X100 and then compare instead of using Tidal. Or just play the disc using X100 instead of Blu2 (but then you won't be able to quickly A/B). I'm listening to the Tidal versions (remastered AgePlastics & 16/44 Nightfly) off my Blu2 and they sound great.
2) Volume issues: Because Blu2 turns 16/44 to 24/705 and it has to make sure the signal doesn't clip, the volume is reduced by like 2.6dB or 2.1dB per Rob Watts (I can't remember the exact number). It does make volume matching difficult. I'd listen Blu2 at 3dB louder than off DAVE.
3) RF noise into Blu2: is the USB input or coax input of Blu2 connected to something, like your Cocktail X100? Unfortunately, there is no galvanic isolation from the USB input and coax is always sensitive to RF noise. The noise filtering is at the dual BNC Blu2 output. The filtering is fantastic but some devices are sufficiently noisy that the Blu2 simply doesn't filter well enough. My dealer uses a Cocktail X40 which has a switching power supply that's not grounded and definitely injects too much noise via USB (even with DAVE being galvanically isolated) and coax. Even when you're listening to CDs, if noise is injected into Blu2 via coax/USB, I find it degrades the final audio output. I would unplug those connections when listening to CDs on Blu2 for now. If your long-term plan is to stream to Blu2 via USB, you may want a better streamer, or at least add an Audioquest Dragonfly to X100 USB output (which I've tried on my dealer's really noisy laptop into my Blu2 which made a night and day difference).
4) Blu2 settings: To get the most out of the Blu2, you should put the dither switch at the back to Up (Off/Normal). The Down position is if you want to feed a non-Chord DAC with a dithered signal. That's for playing CDs. For USB/coax playback, Up position is 1 million taps and Down is 2/3 million taps. Although the down position should still sound pretty good, the Up position just always sounds better. So you want to hear the most out of Blu2 in your short audition period.
48 hours is not a lot of time to audition. Good luck.
 
Jun 29, 2018 at 11:57 PM Post #3,610 of 4,904
most tidal recordings if not all are the more recent remastered versions...i have on my hard drive copies of cd versions which were the older no remastered versions or in some cases mofi flat masterings...the tidal recordings always sound more dynamic
 
Jun 30, 2018 at 1:47 AM Post #3,611 of 4,904
Hi both,

Thanks for the responses.

Triode, yes I took the db difference into account, reducing the volume to match for the A/B test. You are right, that little extra bit of volume can affect expectations, but I am used to it with various previous A/B tests.

Ref. the valve amp comment, I have a good quality pair of solid state mono's which I may swap in for the testing. I also have a couple of pre-amps I could try. But I am very happy with the existing Tidal - Toslink - Dave - valve mono set-up.

Silvertone, I will flip the phase setting to POS and retest. As an aside, whilst I know it will change the sound a little, in what way will it make a difference to the A/B test?

Cheers.

On reflection I am not quite sure what you are trying to achieve.

If your objective is to assess the Blu2 with MScaler why not compare cd replay via that and then cd replay on the Blu2 but just using it as a normal cd transport.

If your objective is to compare cd versus Tidal then why not feed Tidal into the Blu2 usb?
 
Jun 30, 2018 at 4:06 AM Post #3,612 of 4,904
Unfortunately, there is no galvanic isolation from the USB input and coax is always sensitive to RF noise. The noise filtering is at the dual BNC Blu2 output. The filtering is fantastic but some devices are sufficiently noisy that the Blu2 simply doesn't filter well enough. My dealer uses a Cocktail X40 which has a switching power supply that's not grounded and definitely injects too much noise via USB (even with DAVE being galvanically isolated) and coax.

Just to be clear, are you saying the USB input to the Blu2 is not galvanically isolated? I thought Rob had said that it was, same as the Dave
 
Jun 30, 2018 at 5:17 AM Post #3,613 of 4,904
Just to be clear, are you saying the USB input to the Blu2 is not galvanically isolated? I thought Rob had said that it was, same as the Dave
The USB input of Blu2 is not galvanically isolated because the dual BNC output is galvanically isolated. From what I can hear, I think the isolation done this way using the Blu2 is superior to DAVE’s USB input galvanic isolation. I think when Rob Watts initially tested DAVE’s USB galvanic isolation, he thought it was good enough that there is no audible difference with various sources but I think the degree of RF noise various sources can Inject into DAVE or Blu2 can vary a lot and the cost of the source seems to have no correlation with the amount of RF noise. I usually say that if your source sounds better than or the same as your newest iPad/iPhone as a source, you’re probably good. Of course, you’d need a lightning to USB adaptor to test that... with all my current USB sources, I can’t really hear a difference amongst them with Blu2/DAVE.
 
Jun 30, 2018 at 5:30 AM Post #3,614 of 4,904
Just to be clear, are you saying the USB input to the Blu2 is not galvanically isolated? I thought Rob had said that it was, same as the Dave

I also thought I recalled @Rob Watts saying that the usb input to Blu2 is galvanically isolated.
 
Jun 30, 2018 at 5:40 AM Post #3,615 of 4,904
It isn't the bnc galv isolation compensates. AFAIK.
 

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