[sm60]

To make money! There is no way a pre-amp, pair of interconnects, power cord etc. can sound as good as Dave direct to a power amp in a loudspeaker system imho.

That’s your opinion and you are certainly entitled to it. I can only speak from my 30+ years of experience listening to digital equipment, starting from the earliest CD playback equipment. As a EE Masters engineer and PhD in CS, when Sony introduced its first Discman portable CD player in the late 1980s, I bought one naively thinking that if the published specs were right, the high end audio problem was solved, at least in terms of the source. When I hooked it up to my grad school audio system, which even then had a very good Spendor SP1 speakers and a Well Tempered turntable, the Sony portable CD player sounded like crap, weak and emaciated. I realized that all the published specs about distortion were just meaningless. Since then I never had cause to doubt my initial impressions. I have lost track of how many high end audio DACs I have used, but in every case, straight through connections to power amplifiers never produced the best sound. When you digitally reduce the volume down by -30 to -40 dB, you throw away a lot of bits and all this talk of transparency goes out the window. Don’t get fooled by published specs in digital audio. Most of the time it is heavily compressed.

I’d love to get rid of all my analog equipment and stream direct digitally to my loudspeakers. Theoretically that should produce the best sound. In practice it doesn’t. I even purchased a pair of Devialet Phantom Gold digital speakers, which are the world’s highest rated loudspeakers in terms of their published specs. They each have a 5000 watt digital amplifier in them and go as low as 15 Hz and can play up to 120dB with vanishingly low distortion. Guess what? They don’t sound anywhere as good as my old antique pair of bookshelf Spendor S3/5, which are derived from the legendary BBC LS3/5s.

The ear is not easily fooled. Published specs like total harmonic distortion seem to have little correlation with how something sounds to our ears. My only reference is the sound of live music. Does a loudspeaker sound in any way like a real concert? Does a voice sound like a real person speaking? Does a piano sound like it does live? Or a guitar? Most high end audio sounds like crap compared to live music. Each day I listen to high bit rate records on Qobuz, and each day I wonder why high end audio systems sound so terrible compared to the live sound.

The only designer who called it as he saw it was the legendary Peter Walker, who designed the Quad electro stats. When asked what he thought of his speakers, he said they were pretty terrible. And this is the lowest distortion speakers you can get on the market even today. We are far from getting anywhere in terms of accurate reproduction of sound. Specs mean very little, sadly. I wish that were not the case. Harbeth designer Alan Shaw used his ears to design his legendary Monitor 40 because every cone material he tried sounded awful to his ears. He finally got a grant from the British government and teamed up with a local university to understand how to measure coloration in loudspeakers. It took several years, but they finally figured out why all the standard measuring tools were all wrong snd designed a new way to measure loudspeakers. This explains why Harbeth outsells every other company in its price range. Their speakers sell for considerably more than anyone else who makes similar speakers. You are paying for all the years of research into loudspeaker coloration. On voices they are simply unparalleled. But if you measure them in terms of total harmonic distortion, they don’t measure better than Quads. But play a voice through them or strings from an orchestra and watch your jaw hit the floor. Mr Shaw had the courage to question conventional wisdom and think afresh. That’s what we need.

 

[jlbrach]

My view is based on such comparisons.
Dave direct vs Dave and headphone amplifier (Ive also made similar comparisons using TT 1 directly driving power amplifier vs TT1 using preamp between an power amp also with hugo2 and Dave but in different systems). And there was noticable difference. Some people would say it was small some would say it was big. That always a personal thing. To me the choice was fairly obvious I prefer headphones to be directly driven by the Dave.
When I state my opinion I always make sure that it's based on my experience not on some deluded information heard on the internet. (If I don't have personal experience I'll always try to mark that)

Oh and one more thing I'm not telling that everybody should like the same things that I like. But the statement that the difference is negligible is just plain false.

agreed, assuming the HP you are using can be driven properly by the dave...since I use the susvara and the abyss TC I have no choice but to use an external amp but when I used the utopia focal and went straight out of the dave

 

[Ragnar-BY]

When you digitally reduce the volume down by -30 to -40 dB, you throw away a lot of bits and all this talk of transparency goes out the window.

Depends on DAC. I've heard a lot of gear where digital volume regulation was affecting sound. Digital attenuation can sound compressed, but not in the case DAVE. I specifically tested the difference between the analog attenuator of the two integrated amplifiers and DAVE's digital adjustment. Each time DAVE was either better, or at least not worse. Same story was with TT2 - Rob's volume regulation implementation seems to be lossless.

 

[Currawong]

Yes I also prefer the sound of TT2 in DAC mode vs amp mode. My amp can handel the TT2's output thou.

Does changing the input level attenuation have any effect on the headphone performance and will it void the warranty? Also, why are XLR outputs on DAVE better? Can I leave the speakers connected via XLR and also keep the Amp connected via RCA out? Does the amp sound any better with XLR vs RCA??

Thanks for your help.

Talking about interconnects, to all the Dave owners pairing with balanced amplifier, do you prefer XLR or RCA connection to amp? From reading both Dave and WA33, I see Rob Watts of Chord recommending RCA out and Woo Audio recommending XLR in for WA33 due to balanced design.

I did some testing with the WA33 in my own setup, and I prefer the RCA connection. While I feel XLR provides slightly bigger soundstage / space, there is bit of harshness introduced somehow to my ears and sounds less engaging. Not an expert in all the audiophile terms so that's my impression. Also have to say it's not a fair apples to apples test, as the RCA cables I have on hand is 3x the retail price of the XLR. But they are all below USD <$1000. So not talking crazy cables.

Would be keen to get other's experience!

The problem, I think, is how the amplifier is set-up. Most amplifiers attenuate on input -- that is, the volume control is connected to the inputs. Thus, it doesn't matter what the DAVE is set to, as the only thing it will affect is the range of volume that can be set for ideal output on the amplifier.

However, some amplifiers have the attenuation between gain stages, sometimes as a current-to-voltage converter if they use current gain (Audio-gd is a good example as they use current-mode transmission between components, so the volume can't be on the voltage input, but has to be on the output of the current gain stage). With these amps, you can overload the input stage with too high a voltage, such as the DAVE outputs in "DAC" mode.

Then there's the issue of balanced amps. If I use the example of the Luxman P-750u I have here, it is a balanced amp, but (IIRC) it uses an opamp to provide SE to BAL conversion internally, so the SE inputs will be a bit poorer (as they were on the old P-1u). Thus, the XLR outputs of the DAVE might be the better option here.

 

[sm60]

Depends on DAC. I've heard a lot of gear where digital volume regulation was affecting sound. Digital attenuation can sound compressed, but not in the case DAVE. I specifically tested the difference between the analog attenuator of the two integrated amplifiers and DAVE's digital adjustment. Each time DAVE was either better, or at least not worse. Same story was with TT2 - Rob's volume regulation implementation seems to be lossless.

I just came out of a two week listening session with the Dave in preamp mode hooked up to a pair of solid state amplifiers into my Quads 2905. Sounded fine, but I was beginning to find my listening sessions were not enjoyable as I found myself irritated by something or another on many recordings. Switching to my ARC Reference preamp with the Dave in DAC mode completely transformed the sound. The sound stage expanded vertically and horizontally, each instrument just blossomed forth seemingly billowing like they do in a concert (a single oboe in a large concert hall can sound shockingly large, something you almost never hear on a recording). Again, it’s not surprising and it is exactly what I found when I compared the preamp mode on my dCS Elgar 25 years ago with a previous generation ARC Ref tube preamp.

The preamp mode is a nice freebie to have with Dave as it is with other DACs, as well as the headphone mode. Neither of these will ever displace the need for a great preamp or headphone amplifier. It depends on your system and listening preferences. But on a truly high end reference speaker like the Quad 2905, the differences between DAC mode and preamp mode are shockingly obvious. I think that’s the primary reason no high end audio company that makes electronics does not offer a preamp. For my money I’d rather spend my money on a high end preamp than an external power supply for the Dave. I don’t find the digital volume control on the Dave ”lossless”. That would be a theoretical impossibility in the world of digital signal processing. One thing often forgotten is how misleading distortion specifications are in the digital world. A distortion measurement on a CD player or DAC only makes sense with respect to the signal level. For example, in the 16 bit case of CD replay, distortion is specified as -96dB, which sounds impressive, but it is with respect to 0 dB full signal level. Say you are recording Mahler Symphony No 8, a huge piece for 200 instruments and hundreds of singers. The crescendos are massive, so to avoid overloading, which is disastrous in digital audio, you record at a relatively low level. A single oboe might be recorded at -40 dB or even -50dB from 0dB. At such low levels distortion is much much higher. The resolution is also very low, a few bits at most capturing the oboe and other woodwinds. No wonder that on my several thousand orchestral recordings that I own, the woodwinds sound weak and emancipated compared to what you hear live.

Our ears are highly nonlinear and the resolution is dynamically adjusted with respect to background level. It’s like the spatial variable resolution foveation in our eyes, which work completely differently from digital cameras, where a tiny center in the retina has a massive number of receptors. We use auditory attention to focus on a soft sound like on oboe. In digital audio, where everything is linear, oboes in an orchestra are reproduced really poorly because at -40dB down, the resolution really suffers. At least, that’s my rationalization for why digital audio still sucks. I think a redesigned digital system based on how our hearing works will sound much better, but that’s not likely to happen, anymore than the chance that digital cameras are going to be redesigned to work like our eyes (incidentally, digital cameras don’t see color, since the CCD array only responds to grayscale, and digital cameras use the Bayer color filter array to “guess” what the true color is by comparing neighboring elements, thus throwing away 3/4 of the signal, which is why no digital camera on earth sees as well as the human eye in either low light or gets the colors right).

 

[Triode User]

I just came out of a two week listening session with the Dave in preamp mode hooked up to a pair of solid state amplifiers into my Quads 2905. Sounded fine, but I was beginning to find my listening sessions were not enjoyable as I found myself irritated by something or another on many recordings. Switching to my ARC Reference preamp with the Dave in DAC mode completely transformed the sound. The sound stage expanded vertically and horizontally, each instrument just blossomed forth seemingly billowing like they do in a concert (a single oboe in a large concert hall can sound shockingly large, something you almost never hear on a recording). Again, it’s not surprising and it is exactly what I found when I compared the preamp mode on my dCS Elgar 25 years ago with a previous generation ARC Ref tube preamp.

The preamp mode is a nice freebie to have with Dave as it is with other DACs, as well as the headphone mode. Neither of these will ever displace the need for a great preamp or headphone amplifier. It depends on your system and listening preferences. But on a truly high end reference speaker like the Quad 2905, the differences between DAC mode and preamp mode are shockingly obvious. I think that’s the primary reason no high end audio company that makes electronics does not offer a preamp. For my money I’d rather spend my money on a high end preamp than an external power supply for the Dave. I don’t find the digital volume control on the Dave ”lossless”. That would be a theoretical impossibility in the world of digital signal processing. One thing often forgotten is how misleading distortion specifications are in the digital world. A distortion measurement on a CD player or DAC only makes sense with respect to the signal level. For example, in the 16 bit case of CD replay, distortion is specified as -96dB, which sounds impressive, but it is with respect to 0 dB full signal level. Say you are recording Mahler Symphony No 8, a huge piece for 200 instruments and hundreds of singers. The crescendos are massive, so to avoid overloading, which is disastrous in digital audio, you record at a relatively low level. A single oboe might be recorded at -40 dB or even -50dB from 0dB. At such low levels distortion is much much higher. The resolution is also very low, a few bits at most capturing the oboe and other woodwinds. No wonder that on my several thousand orchestral recordings that I own, the woodwinds sound weak and emancipated compared to what you hear live.

Our ears are highly nonlinear and the resolution is dynamically adjusted with respect to background level. It’s like the spatial variable resolution foveation in our eyes, which work completely differently from digital cameras, where a tiny center in the retina has a massive number of receptors. We use auditory attention to focus on a soft sound like on oboe. In digital audio, where everything is linear, oboes in an orchestra are reproduced really poorly because at -40dB down, the resolution really suffers. At least, that’s my rationalization for why digital audio still sucks. I think a redesigned digital system based on how our hearing works will sound much better, but that’s not likely to happen, anymore than the chance that digital cameras are going to be redesigned to work like our eyes (incidentally, digital cameras don’t see color, since the CCD array only responds to grayscale, and digital cameras use the Bayer color filter array to “guess” what the true color is by comparing neighboring elements, thus throwing away 3/4 of the signal, which is why no digital camera on earth sees as well as the human eye in either low light or gets the colors right).

Thanks for the post.

I have also did a similar experiment s few years ago with my Dave and then again more recently. Similar but not the same because rather than use an active preamp I was using a Music First Audio transformer volume control passive pre amp.

With the experiment a few years ago I used a MFA Classic Silver Wound V2 which at the time was the best that I could find. The beauty of using a TVC (transformer volume control) is that they effectively do not add anything to the signal and they take away very very little in terms of quality, transparency etc. For the experiment I set the Dave in preamp mode to a comfortable listening volume say -32dB and then compared the sound quality of that to when I introduced the MFA preamp into the circuit and set Dave to 0dB and the preamp the same volume -32dB. The sound was almost the same but with a slight loss of bass depth and detail and also a slight loss of transparency in the mid range.

I tried the same experiment this year but this time I was using a new MFA Baby Ref V2 TVC passive which has bigger transformers, an improved transformer core and improved winding method. This time the Dave in preamp volume control role and then using the MFA Baby Ref for volume control was the same as near as makes no real difference to my ears. It was the same thing at lower listening levels as well. That in my definition is a great preamp, ie it makes no difference to the sound quality. I have of course gone back to using the Dave for volume control and the MFA is used in a system with a Qutest which does not have volume control.

@Rob Watts has posted at least once and probably more times explaining why his method of digital volume control does not result in audible (or actual?) loss of sound quality but I am happy that to my ears I cannot find any loss of quality when using it and I am happy that I have proved that to my own satisfaction.

If I may be so bold I suggest that what you are hearing with your ‘great’ active preamp is a colouring of the sound which appeals to your ears. In your mind this is more accurate but I would suggest this is perhaps more accurate to the sound you want to hear and not more accurate in absolute terms. I have had valve preamps of various sorts over the last 40 years and I loved the sound which was always glorious and could sound wonderful. But it was not what I would call properly accurate and of late I have grown to prefer the Dave being used for volume control into my Pass Labs XA60.8 mono blocks.

Just to mention as well that you dismiss using a third party power supply for the Dave and yet you have not heard one. I think I recall you saying that this was because you wanted to use the Dave sounding as the designer intended it to sound rather than altering the sound by using the third party power supply and yet you are recommending fundamentally altering the sound of the Dave by adding an active tube preamp.

I have tried my Dave with preamps from Pass Labs, Icon Audio and others, some with tubes and some ss so I know what they can do and so I do see why some people like them. Before you dismiss the third party power supply route for the Dave I think you ought to at least hear one. To me ears it just takes what the Dave does and allows it to be a bit more ‘Dave’ in its sound. I use the Sean Jacobs DC4, soon to be upgraded to the ARC6 version, I really could only go back to the stock Dave with great difficulty.

It will probably be that in the end you and I will have to agree to disagree on this and that you will continue to use your ARC Reference preamp and I will continue to use my DC4 power supply and we will both be happy. So thanks for your post but at least hopefully you will understand why I do not use an active preamp with my Dave.

 

[Sampajanna]

Thanks for the post.

I have also did a similar experiment s few years ago with my Dave and then again more recently. Similar but not the same because rather than use an active preamp I was using a Music First Audio transformer volume control passive pre amp.

With the experiment a few years ago I used a MFA Classic Silver Wound V2 which at the time was the best that I could find. The beauty of using a TVC (transformer volume control) is that they effectively do not add anything to the signal and they take away very very little in terms of quality, transparency etc. For the experiment I set the Dave in preamp mode to a comfortable listening volume say -32dB and then compared the sound quality of that to when I introduced the MFA preamp into the circuit and set Dave to 0dB and the preamp the same volume -32dB. The sound was almost the same but with a slight loss of bass depth and detail and also a slight loss of transparency in the mid range.

I tried the same experiment this year but this time I was using a new MFA Baby Ref V2 TVC passive which has bigger transformers, an improved transformer core and improved winding method. This time the Dave in preamp volume control role and then using the MFA Baby Ref for volume control was the same as near as makes no real difference to my ears. It was the same thing at lower listening levels as well. That in my definition is a great preamp, ie it makes no difference to the sound quality. I have of course gone back to using the Dave for volume control and the MFA is used in a system with a Qutest which does not have volume control.

@Rob Watts has posted at least once and probably more times explaining why his method of digital volume control does not result in audible (or actual?) loss of sound quality but I am happy that to my ears I cannot find any loss of quality when using it and I am happy that I have proved that to my own satisfaction.

If I may be so bold I suggest that what you are hearing with your ‘great’ active preamp is a colouring of the sound which appeals to your ears. In your mind this is more accurate but I would suggest this is perhaps more accurate to the sound you want to hear and not more accurate in absolute terms. I have had valve preamps of various sorts over the last 40 years and I loved the sound which was always glorious and could sound wonderful. But it was not what I would call properly accurate and of late I have grown to prefer the Dave being used for volume control into my Pass Labs XA60.8 mono blocks.

Just to mention as well that you dismiss using a third party power supply for the Dave and yet you have not heard one. I think I recall you saying that this was because you wanted to use the Dave sounding as the designer intended it to sound rather than altering the sound by using the third party power supply and yet you are recommending fundamentally altering the sound of the Dave by adding an active tube preamp.

I have tried my Dave with tube preamps from Pass Labs, Icon Audio and others so I know what they can do and so I do see why some people like them. Before you dismiss the third party power supply route for the Dave I think you ought to at least hear one. To me ears it just takes what the Dave does and allows it to be a bit more ‘Dave’ in its sound. I use the Sean Jacobs DC4, soon to be upgraded to the ARC6 version, I really could only go back to the stock Dave with great difficulty.

It will probably be that in the end you and I will have to agree to disagree on this and that you will continue to use your ARC Reference preamp and I will continue to use my DC4 power supply and we will both be happy. So thanks for your post but at least hopefully you will understand why I do not use an active preamp with my Dave.

Amen to no preamp and to DC4s… I tried the PS Audio BHK preamp. It opened the soundstage at the expense of glare and a loss of transparency, cohesiveness and dynamics. It was less musical. That said, there really is something to finding “your sound.” For me that came with the AVM flagship monos, which do have a tube input stage that adds ever so slight spice with no loss of transparency. They compete solidly with far more expensive amps! As for the DC4, I would honestly think about selling my Dave without the DC4…

 

[alxw0w]

f I may be so bold I suggest that what you are hearing with your ‘great’ active preamp is a colouring of the sound which appeals to your ears. In your mind this is more accurate but I would suggest this is perhaps more accurate to the sound you want to hear and not more accurate in absolute terms.

This, I couldn't express this better myself.

 

[Triode User]

Amen to no preamp and to DC4s… I tried the PS Audio BHK preamp. It opened the soundstage at the expense of glare and a loss of transparency, cohesiveness and dynamics. It was less musical. That said, there really is something to finding “your sound.” For me that came with the AVM flagship monos, which do have a tube input stage that adds ever so slight spice with no loss of transparency. They compete solidly with far more expensive amps! As for the DC4, I would honestly think about selling my Dave without the DC4…

Wait for the ARC6 DC4. I am listening to a pre-production one at the moment that Sean has loaned to me and asked what I think compared to the 'normal' DC4.

It is a big grins morning here!!

 

[x RELIC x]

I just came out of a two week listening session with the Dave in preamp mode hooked up to a pair of solid state amplifiers into my Quads 2905. Sounded fine, but I was beginning to find my listening sessions were not enjoyable as I found myself irritated by something or another on many recordings. Switching to my ARC Reference preamp with the Dave in DAC mode completely transformed the sound. The sound stage expanded vertically and horizontally, each instrument just blossomed forth seemingly billowing like they do in a concert (a single oboe in a large concert hall can sound shockingly large, something you almost never hear on a recording). Again, it’s not surprising and it is exactly what I found when I compared the preamp mode on my dCS Elgar 25 years ago with a previous generation ARC Ref tube preamp.

The preamp mode is a nice freebie to have with Dave as it is with other DACs, as well as the headphone mode. Neither of these will ever displace the need for a great preamp or headphone amplifier. It depends on your system and listening preferences. But on a truly high end reference speaker like the Quad 2905, the differences between DAC mode and preamp mode are shockingly obvious. I think that’s the primary reason no high end audio company that makes electronics does not offer a preamp. For my money I’d rather spend my money on a high end preamp than an external power supply for the Dave. I don’t find the digital volume control on the Dave ”lossless”. That would be a theoretical impossibility in the world of digital signal processing. One thing often forgotten is how misleading distortion specifications are in the digital world. A distortion measurement on a CD player or DAC only makes sense with respect to the signal level. For example, in the 16 bit case of CD replay, distortion is specified as -96dB, which sounds impressive, but it is with respect to 0 dB full signal level. Say you are recording Mahler Symphony No 8, a huge piece for 200 instruments and hundreds of singers. The crescendos are massive, so to avoid overloading, which is disastrous in digital audio, you record at a relatively low level. A single oboe might be recorded at -40 dB or even -50dB from 0dB. At such low levels distortion is much much higher. The resolution is also very low, a few bits at most capturing the oboe and other woodwinds. No wonder that on my several thousand orchestral recordings that I own, the woodwinds sound weak and emancipated compared to what you hear live.

Our ears are highly nonlinear and the resolution is dynamically adjusted with respect to background level. It’s like the spatial variable resolution foveation in our eyes, which work completely differently from digital cameras, where a tiny center in the retina has a massive number of receptors. We use auditory attention to focus on a soft sound like on oboe. In digital audio, where everything is linear, oboes in an orchestra are reproduced really poorly because at -40dB down, the resolution really suffers. At least, that’s my rationalization for why digital audio still sucks. I think a redesigned digital system based on how our hearing works will sound much better, but that’s not likely to happen, anymore than the chance that digital cameras are going to be redesigned to work like our eyes (incidentally, digital cameras don’t see color, since the CCD array only responds to grayscale, and digital cameras use the Bayer color filter array to “guess” what the true color is by comparing neighboring elements, thus throwing away 3/4 of the signal, which is why no digital camera on earth sees as well as the human eye in either low light or gets the colors right).

Have you volume matched pre-amp mode to the -3dB level of the DAC mode? It’s the only reason I can think of why you hear such a difference because nothing is bypassed in DAC mode. It’s literally just a preset volume level.

Side note (off topic): Regarding camera sensors, have you heard of the Foveon camera sensor? In simple terms, it responds to light passing through three colour tuned stacked layers for red, green, or blue wavelengths. Each layer records their wavelength tuned colour on the entire sensor surface, so theoretically it can capture every single colour at every pixel simultaneously with the stacked RGB layer information. It was supposed to be the bayer pattern killer long ago (1997-ish), invented by Carver Mead. Then Sigma bought the tech and they haven’t progressed it very far. Ironically, red colour accuracy is a bit of an issue, similar to the earlier days of OLED displays and the colour blue.

 

[number1sixerfan]

If I may be so bold I suggest that what you are hearing with your ‘great’ active preamp is a colouring of the sound which appeals to your ears. In your mind this is more accurate but I would suggest this is perhaps more accurate to the sound you want to hear and not more accurate in absolute terms. I have had valve preamps of various sorts over the last 40 years and I loved the sound which was always glorious and could sound wonderful. But it was not what I would call properly accurate and of late I have grown to prefer the Dave being used for volume control into my Pass Labs XA60.8 mono blocks.

Or... it can also be superior pre-amplification, which again is the tradeoff anyone* has to consider when adding a premp with speakers and similarly headphone amps with headphones. To simply reduce this to an absolute affinity for a 'coloring of sound' is a bit of an off base analysis--especially given that the pre-amplification and headphone amplification features of the Dave are not absolute TOTL performance wise. (also, not pointing at what you or I believe, just pointing to a simple issue with that specific line of logic/suggestion)

 

[sm60]

Thanks for the post.

I have also did a similar experiment s few years ago with my Dave and then again more recently. Similar but not the same because rather than use an active preamp I was using a Music First Audio transformer volume control passive pre amp.

With the experiment a few years ago I used a MFA Classic Silver Wound V2 which at the time was the best that I could find. The beauty of using a TVC (transformer volume control) is that they effectively do not add anything to the signal and they take away very very little in terms of quality, transparency etc. For the experiment I set the Dave in preamp mode to a comfortable listening volume say -32dB and then compared the sound quality of that to when I introduced the MFA preamp into the circuit and set Dave to 0dB and the preamp the same volume -32dB. The sound was almost the same but with a slight loss of bass depth and detail and also a slight loss of transparency in the mid range.

I tried the same experiment this year but this time I was using a new MFA Baby Ref V2 TVC passive which has bigger transformers, an improved transformer core and improved winding method. This time the Dave in preamp volume control role and then using the MFA Baby Ref for volume control was the same as near as makes no real difference to my ears. It was the same thing at lower listening levels as well. That in my definition is a great preamp, ie it makes no difference to the sound quality. I have of course gone back to using the Dave for volume control and the MFA is used in a system with a Qutest which does not have volume control.

@Rob Watts has posted at least once and probably more times explaining why his method of digital volume control does not result in audible (or actual?) loss of sound quality but I am happy that to my ears I cannot find any loss of quality when using it and I am happy that I have proved that to my own satisfaction.

If I may be so bold I suggest that what you are hearing with your ‘great’ active preamp is a colouring of the sound which appeals to your ears. In your mind this is more accurate but I would suggest this is perhaps more accurate to the sound you want to hear and not more accurate in absolute terms. I have had valve preamps of various sorts over the last 40 years and I loved the sound which was always glorious and could sound wonderful. But it was not what I would call properly accurate and of late I have grown to prefer the Dave being used for volume control into my Pass Labs XA60.8 mono blocks.

Just to mention as well that you dismiss using a third party power supply for the Dave and yet you have not heard one. I think I recall you saying that this was because you wanted to use the Dave sounding as the designer intended it to sound rather than altering the sound by using the third party power supply and yet you are recommending fundamentally altering the sound of the Dave by adding an active tube preamp.

I have tried my Dave with preamps from Pass Labs, Icon Audio and others, some with tubes and some ss so I know what they can do and so I do see why some people like them. Before you dismiss the third party power supply route for the Dave I think you ought to at least hear one. To me ears it just takes what the Dave does and allows it to be a bit more ‘Dave’ in its sound. I use the Sean Jacobs DC4, soon to be upgraded to the ARC6 version, I really could only go back to the stock Dave with great difficulty.

It will probably be that in the end you and I will have to agree to disagree on this and that you will continue to use your ARC Reference preamp and I will continue to use my DC4 power supply and we will both be happy. So thanks for your post but at least hopefully you will understand why I do not use an active preamp with my Dave.

Again, it comes back to what is more “accurate“. If you think digital truncation of bits is more “accurate”, more power to you. I don’t, knowing the inherent trade offs involved in DSP, and having taken grad level courses in DSP. You need to look at signal to noise ratio of digital audio not w.r.t. 0 dB, which is meaningless, but at the signal level in question. If I truncate the output of Dave to -40dB, the idea that it maintains the same S/N ratio that it does at -3dB or 0dB is absolute poppycock. You haven’t understood how digital audio works then. I suggest reading Alan Oppenheim’s books on DSP or similar grad level textbooks. There’s no free lunch in digital audio. If you believe that, their marketing propaganda has worked. Pay close attention to how distortion rises sharply in digital audio as signal level drops.

The idea that a balanced tube preamplifier with distortion levels around 0.001% is obviously coloring the sound is a bit far fetched. Take a look at the distortion measurements of any recent ARC Reference tube preamp in Stereophile. Or look at McIntosh’s latest model 1100 two chassis tube preamplifier. Their previous generation 1000 preamp came in both solid state and tube versions. For the 1100, they decided to only release the tube version, because, and I’m quoting here, “it is the quietest preamplifier McIntosh has ever designed”. Check out its specs on their web page.

if you think running Dave in preamp mode is the most accurate, I strongly disagree and challenge you to produce measurements that back up your claim (i.e., show me the Dave at -40dB maintains the same S/N ratio it does at 0dB). If you say I like the sound of Dave as a preamp, I can’t argue with you. That’s your personal choice and we are all entitled our choice. Just don’t claim it’s because it’s more accurate. That I’d like to see a proof for.

Regarding the use of external power supplies for Dave, that’s again your choice whether you want to plonk down 10 grand for an external power supply for a DAC that’s already hugely overpriced (The Topping DAC decodes more formats than the Dave, measures better, and costs 1/10th the price, just in case you think the Dave is priced reasonably). But it’s your decision and your money. Once again, I have seen no measurements of any kind that support using the external power supply for the Dave. Does it improve the S/N ratio? Can you measure the improvement? It’s a risky business in any case. If it blows up the Dave, you’re out of not only the money spent on the Dave, but the power supply as well. At least in the case of Naim, they design their products for external power supplies and support it in case something bad happens. Here you are completely screwed if there’s a power glitch and the Dave fries (don’t forget DSP chips are notoriously fickle about static and they are very sensitive to even slight glitches in a power supply).

 

[Sampajanna]

why aren’t you using a Topping then?

 

[sm60]

why aren’t you using a Topping then?

Great question! One I ask myself every week. . Each time I look at the clunky setup with the Blu Mk2 and the Dave, which my wife refers to as “the spaceship”, I view it as another of my insanities. Originally I got the Blu Mk2 with the Dave because I liked its compact form factor, its ability to be used as a preamp and to drive a pair of headphones. If I downsize my setup, which is a bit excessive, I thought the Blu/Dave would be great to have since they would fit in a small space. But the Blu proved so unreliable as a transport, the Dave is so underwhelming as a headphone amplifier and the software so glitchy that it produces a blast of digital noise every time I power down the Blu or the Dave that I realized the idiocy of owning this overpriced combo! If I told my colleagues I have a digital playback device that costs over 15 grand and is very unreliable, they’d suggest I urgently seek psychiatric help!

 

[Sampajanna]

Have u listened to a Topping? Or done A/B with a Dave? Measurements don’t mean much. We don’t eat chemical goop based on some lab report of what is nutritional. You cannot measure something when the quality itself in the end is mostly subjective. You can’t do crowd based statistical research either, because it doesn’t matter what percentage of the crowd says chocolate tastes better if my mouth always says different. Even if measurements of brain waves said that strawberry was worse and 99% of people agreed, decreasing production of strawberry ice cream and making it more expenisive, it would still be worth it to me if I got more joy out of eating it. Joy is end game here, not solid measurements. Enjoyment! That is the only standard worth anything. If engineering measurements help that, great. If they don’t, then they don’t matter. The variety of products out there in terms of engineering methods shows that there is no golden standard that can correlate measurements with human enjoyment across the board. We are too different from one another, listening to different music and looking for different things in that music/experience. If measurements are a part of what brings you joy and offers pride of ownership or a feeling that it was money well spent, then good for you. Manufacturers offer specs, so you can use them to map your way. I have no issue with that and even do it myself. But the measurement crowd is always gaslighting—always trying to tell me what I am experiencing and that my enjoyment isn’t real. Some of the subjective crowd do as well. But gaslighting people’s harmless enjoyment is being a partypooper, a bummer, a downer… if we are going to offer opinions here, it should be of the stuff we actually tried. We should discuss what we heard and why we liked it better. Why it was more enjoyable. That contributes something meaningful and helps me make better decisions about what to try myself…that’s my two cents.

IMHO the unreliability u r experiencing is maybe a good enough reason to look elsewhere. I understand budget. Everybody has to face that, or most of us at least. We are lucky that there are good products at almost any price range these days. I don’t think the Dave Is overpriced though. A lot more went into it than a Topping DAC, in a different county with way different overhead, research and development processes and corporate structure. It contains intellectual property beyond the materials, in other words. It also can compete with dacs way beyond it in price, especially if you add a DC4