[Amberlamps]

You are closed minded, you’ve been. Demonstrating that. It’s what happens to men as they get old.

I thought an enlarged prostrate was what happens to men when they get old, if it’s true, then I must have one, as I keep dribbling after taken the piss.

c wut i did there

 

[AndrewOld]

I thought an enlarged prostrate was what happens to men when they get old, if it’s true, then I must have one, as I keep dribbling after taken the piss.

c wut i did there

Every time you post, the increase in internet traffic makes everyone’s hifi sound worse. Potentially. Did you hear what I just did?

 

[Amberlamps]

Every time you post, the increase in internet traffic makes everyone’s hifi sound worse. Potentially. Did you hear what I just did?

I‘m sorry if my internet usage causes SQ problems, I was going to say that I shall stop, but.......having just got pure 1gigabit fibre to the premises broadband, I shall commence with operation roon remote post haste x 900mbit.

 

[miketlse]

Every time you post, the increase in internet traffic makes everyone’s hifi sound worse. Potentially. Did you hear what I just did?

It was potentially a 'night and day' impact, but I didn't have my hifi switched on at the time.

I will perform a different but related test tonight.
For years I have listened to various internet radio shows, and simultaneously followed the show facebook page, and commented every few minutes. At the same time I have been reading and posting on head-fi.
Listening with the Hugo 2, plus Aeon Flow Closed headphones (or sometimes Koss electrostats), I usually consider the internet radio is transmitting a near CD quality stream.
I shall listen as normal, but then try closing the browser, and just listening to the music stream.
This will test the claim that reducing the PC workload, will improve the music sound quality.

Of course following the principle of reductio ad absurdum and reducing the PC workload to zero, by switching the PC off, should then result in an infinitely large increase in sound quality.

 

[AndrewOld]

It was potentially a 'night and day' impact, but I didn't have my hifi switched on at the time.

I will perform a different but related test tonight.
For years I have listened to various internet radio shows, and simultaneously followed the show facebook page, and commented every few minutes. At the same time I have been reading and posting on head-fi.
Listening with the Hugo 2, plus Aeon Flow Closed headphones (or sometimes Koss electrostats), I usually consider the internet radio is transmitting a near CD quality stream.
I shall listen as normal, but then try closing the browser, and just listening to the music stream.
This will test the claim that reducing the PC workload, will improve the music sound quality.

Of course following the principle of reductio ad absurdum and reducing the PC workload to zero, by switching the PC off, should then result in an infinitely large increase in sound quality.

It maybe that closing as many things as possible will firstly reduce the processing load on your brain, and allow you to become completely absorbed in the music.

 

[miketlse]

It maybe that closing as many things as possible will firstly reduce the processing load on your brain, and allow you to become completely absorbed in the music.

Yes, quite possible.

I rarely listen to music on its own - usually it is background music whilst i am on the PC, or reading etc.
Inevitably this means that my focus is rarely 100% on the music.

 

[Lgn3]

I rarely listen to music on its own - usually it is background music whilst i am on the PC, or reading etc.
Inevitably this means that my focus is rarely 100% on the music.
[/QUOTE]

I hope you all realise that someone out there has been reading all this banter and is now planning how to design and sell some ludicrously expensive products which address this "issue" !

 

[miketlse]

I rarely listen to music on its own - usually it is background music whilst i am on the PC, or reading etc.
Inevitably this means that my focus is rarely 100% on the music.

I hope you all realise that someone out there has been reading all this banter and is now planning how to design and sell some ludicrously expensive products which address this "issue" !
[/QUOTE]
They wouldn't need to do much design. Just a short program that makes a button appear on the PC screen.
When the button is pressed, it does nothing, but expectation bias will cause owners to claim all sorts of 'night and day' improvements.
High rollers will happily spend $3k on the software, and then tell skeptics, that they are not open-minded.

Just this morning I was thinking of researching the realms of the placebo response, by designing a spoof expensive (say $5k) interconnect cable, and giving it the brand name of Placebo, and counting how many high rollers also claimed 'night and day' improvements.

 

[Bonesy Jonesy]

Has anybody had their DAVE (with and without an M Scaler) XLR balance connected to a Headamp GSX MK2 in order to use difficult to drive headphones like the Susvara and Abyss 1266's. And if so, how did they sound ?. Did you loose any of the DAVE's fantastic transparency and other great characters when using the GSX MK2 ?

 

[jlbrach]

the loss of transparency is more than made up for by the increased soundstage and grunt

 

[miketlse]

It maybe that closing as many things as possible will firstly reduce the processing load on your brain, and allow you to become completely absorbed in the music.

I didn't notice any change in sound quality, so maybe an interesting test will be to listen to the show again via mixcloud.
Certainly I posted tonight that one of the tracks had very good timbre on the double bass, so any improvement because of reduced CPU processing, has a high baseline to improve upon.

 

[Amberlamps]

I didn't notice any change in sound quality, so maybe an interesting test will be to listen to the show again via mixcloud.
Certainly I posted tonight that one of the tracks had very good timbre on the double bass, so any improvement because of reduced CPU processing, has a high baseline to improve upon.

There is a audio latency program for audio, I think it was called dpc latency checker os something like it. It tested the latency aspect of how fast your pc was at sending and receiving data and it showed you the results in a easy to read gui.

I found it, its Roon Remote Killed my Schiit

Anything in green is good.

 

[penguin69]

@Rob Watts

Have you recently changed any of the components within the Daves you are currently shipping? Perhaps Chord changed to a different type of BNC input connectors?

Here’s my issue....

I sold my Dave and BluMK2 a while back and bought a TT2 and HMS. A few months later I was missing Dave’s amazing transparency so bought another Dave and HMS for a different room. I’ll quickly summarize what was actually countless hours of trouble shooting. BNC input 1 and 2 are horrible. The music cuts in and out and there is a constant crackling noise that sounds more like direct contact electrical interference. With Input 3 and 4 it’s much better, but there is a popping / clicking noise in the right channel that can occur every few seconds, every 30 seconds, and it’s even disappeared for a few mins at times. It’s completely silent when the music is paused. When you start the music the noise begins in the right channel. Pause the music again and the pops and clicks continue for a couple seconds. It almost sounds like there’s a short or a charge is being released. My dealer was kind enough to send me his personal Dave which is fairly old (with the curved glass over the screen vs the flat glass on the new models). Dropping his Dave in place the problem went away. Dropping my TT2 in place the problem went away. I received another new Dave but the exact same problem was there again. Horrible on 1 and 2, better but still not acceptable with 3 and 4. I’ve taking every step you imagine to isolate the problem. From cutting power to unused circuits in my house, to moving the system to other rooms and testing each component in the chain. With HMS in bypass mode there are no issues. The same goes when I upsample to 176. As soon as it goes into DBNC the problem appears (just in the right channel) I’ve used the stock cables which exaggerated the issue. Pulse AG cables which helped but just a little, and I used the Wave BNC cables with the same results. I finally brought my AudioWise OPTO DX into the mix and the problem goes away. So now I have a working Dave, but I shouldn’t have to spend on OPTO DX and two UpTone LPS 1.2’s just to get HMS and Dave working. I tend to rotate my gear fairly quickly so now I am concerned about resell. It’s working for me, but as is I couldn’t sell it to someone without disclosing the issue.

Has anyone else experienced this problem with a new Dave? I suspect Chord changed something and Dave is simply more sensitive than TT2. The fact that an older Dave works and two new Daves have the same problem is quite telling. However, I really do not want to send it off to be repaired. This process has taken nearly two months and I’m tired of either going without music, or only being able to partially upsample the music. Dave on it’s own works just fine. The problem only arises when in dual BNC mode.

Thoughts will be appreciated....

(Edit - making a long post even longer - Even with the OPTO DX in place, I still hear an occasional pop/click in the right channel (and no, it’s not the HP or cable))

Hi all,

Resurrecting this one.

I have a similar problem, which has re-occurred after a routine unplugging and replugging the cables as part of a slight repositioning of my rig (I'm expecting a new amp next week).

The problem is this: I get either a fairly quiet or a very loud pop (it varies) every few minutes when listening to dual BNC, either via an optical feed from my TV or an optical feed from Chromecast. If I plug the optical cable direct into the Dave, the problem goes way. For the record, the cables are good quality QED Toslinks.

I have surmised that my Dave or my M-Scaler seems extremely sensitive to cable positioning, but I have not got any further than that.

The problem first occurred when I got my M-Scaler (over a year ago), and I initially blamed it on the quality of the BNC cables that shipped with the M-Scaler. So I swapped that out this year for the Opto DX. I have had long periods where the new configuration works, so it's definitely not the Opto. Changing the dual BNC input on the Dave from 1+2 to 3+4 seemed to give a little bit of improvement, but I can't be sure of that and in any event it doesn't cure the problem entirely.

It's very, very frustrating to have $10K+ worth of kit from the same manufacturer which does not seem to inter-work consistently well.

Any thoughts or advice greatly appreciated, it's driving me nuts!

Thanks in advance.

 

[ecwl]

I have a similar problem, which has re-occurred after a routine unplugging and replugging the cables as part of a slight repositioning of my rig (I'm expecting a new amp next week).

The problem is this: I get either a fairly quiet or a very loud pop (it varies) every few minutes when listening to dual BNC, either via an optical feed from my TV or an optical feed from Chromecast. If I plug the optical cable direct into the Dave, the problem goes way. For the record, the cables are good quality QED Toslinks.

I have surmised that my Dave or my M-Scaler seems extremely sensitive to cable positioning, but I have not got any further than that.

The problem first occurred when I got my M-Scaler (over a year ago), and I initially blamed it on the quality of the BNC cables that shipped with the M-Scaler. So I swapped that out this year for the Opto DX. I have had long periods where the new configuration works, so it's definitely not the Opto. Changing the dual BNC input on the Dave from 1+2 to 3+4 seemed to give a little bit of improvement, but I can't be sure of that and in any event it doesn't cure the problem entirely.

It's very, very frustrating to have $10K+ worth of kit from the same manufacturer which does not seem to inter-work consistently well.

Any thoughts or advice greatly appreciated, it's driving me nuts!

Thanks in advance.

Yeah... Troubleshooting this sucks because there are often multiple possibilities. And I’ve run into these issues before even if the previous hookup works perfectly. I sometimes take my DAVE to Head-Fi meet so when I bring it back and re-hook it up, issues sometimes crop up.
1. You might have switched BNC 1&2/3&4 when you connect M-Scaler to DAVE. You need a channel test to make sure left is left and right is right
2. The Toslink plug of M-Scaler and DAVE are very small so sometimes finicky. It’s possible your Toslink cable wasn’t 100% into the M-Scaler socket and by chance it was 100% in the DAVE socket.
3. Do you have another source (non-optical) plugged into M-Scaler? It’s possible that with the re-positioning of the system, your USB or S/PDIF source has created a new ground loop that’s going into the M-Scaler so even when you’re listening to Toslink, the ground loop noise is causing pops the M-Scaler
4. It’s possible your Opto DX is the device creating the ground loop because the receiver end still has an electrical power supply that can be causing the pops
5. This is the worst one to trouble shoot because you need another Chord DAC... It is possible that M-Scaler is actually broken and is causing the pops. However, if you had the problems before and then it went completely away, and now the problem came back, it would be highly unlikely the problem is with the M-Scaler.

At least these are all the possibilities I have personally run into. That said, once I’ve troubleshooted them, I can always get the M-Scaler running 100% trouble-free for months if not years. But yes, the setup is a chore.

 

[penguin69]

Hey ecwl

Many thanks for the tips.

Regarding 5: Good suggestion, I will try my dealer. In the past though, they have only had Dave's and HMS's come into the shop to order, so probably no dice here.
Regarding 4: I will switch Opto DX Receiver to a battery supply and retest. Great suggestion.
Regarding 3: No, the only sources I have plugged into the M-Scaler are optical sources.
Regarding 2: I've reconnected the optical cables multiple times at both ends, and tried 3 different cables - 2 high quality, one standard. It doesn't appear to make any difference.
Regarding 1: I wasn't aware that L and R channel was of importance. Could you perhaps provide a little more info here?

For the record, I have run some more tests this morning, feeding the M-Scaler with a low-res classical music source (240p Youtube) from the TV, just to rule out any concerns over source system bandwidth. The TV is connected to the router via an Ethernet cable, so wifi can't be the culprit. The results are the same, a quiet pop or alternatively a very loud pop, usually once every 10-20 minutes, but with no obvious pattern.

Cheers and thanks again for taking the time out to respond.

penguin69