[Torq]

Regarding getting the products serviced, it's no easy matter if you live in the US.

Wasn't any big deal for me.

I had the USB port fail on my DAVE a few years ago (when I lived in Seattle). I took it back to the dealer, who sent it to George Meyer AV in LA. Start to finish I think it took a week to get it resolved.

 

[sm60]

Wasn't any big deal for me.

I had the USB port fail on my DAVE a few years ago (when I lived in Seattle). I took it back to the dealer, who sent it to George Meyer AV in LA. Start to finish I think it took a week to get it resolved.

That’s great to hear. Do you know if that’s the Chord authorized service center on the west coast? I’m happy to send them my two units. Even if I decided later to sell my pair, I’d like the units to be serviced so the next owner doesn’t have to go through the same issues.

One of the greatest advances in high end audio has been the availability of high bit rate streaming services, like Qobuz, and playlist managers like Roon. It seems like magic to me that each evening I can select from thousands of recently recorded classical releases, most in 24-bit 96khz or 192khz, and play them back so easily. If you, however, go to the Roon newsgroup, you find plenty of people ranting about terrible Roon is, or how the latest 1.8 release has crashed their working system. I certainly went through my share of Roon woes, but after setting up a dedicated Roon server using an Intel NUC box, it has worked flawlessly. I even installed the fanless enclosure that you can get for the NUC on Amazon, which makes my Roon server noiseless.

Software driven products are notoriously unreliable initially and eventually through user feedback become much better. Tesla listens to all the gripes about their self-driving software and keeps improving it. The initial web browsers were simply awful and kept crashing. Playing video over the web in the early days was a nightmare. One of my academic colleagues revolutionized content distribution on the internet with his PhD thesis at Princeton on overlay networks. He went on to co-found Akamai, which today essentially runs a large part of the web.

Software designed products must be remotely upgradable. Would you buy a phone that could not be updated remotely? Hint: in the early days of phone service, that’s all we had. Rotary phones where you rotate the dial each time to input a number. Anyone seen one of these recently?

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...using Veronica to Telnet into use-groups on an Amiga via 96 baud modem. I really should use that ahk-uhh connection sound for a ring tone.

Back OT: I am on the record as saying I *really* like the Dave dac and the MScaler. But I do *not* think they are flawless. I have mine on DC4 ps and sending signal via USB into a Denefrips Gaia, then single SPDIF into Dave. I have to test adding HMS workflow this week. I have used the PGGB files via dual input too, but I'm doing this for now. I don't like fussing with batteries, or I'd be on those too.

Stock Dave is excellent. HAL9000 Dave is outta sight...IMO. IMO.

 

[Torq]

Do you know if that’s the Chord authorized service center on the west coast?

It was at the time.

I imagine it still is, unless something changed with regards to service when Chord changed from using Blue Bird as their Chord distributor.

 

[jlbrach]

Zero issues with my Blu Mk2/DAVE combination in the last 2 years (which is when I added the Blu Mk2). No drop outs, no distortion, no power on/off issues. Not that this means the same is necessarily true for anyone else. But if it was a systemic issue, rather than a unit-specific one, I'd expect to have encountered such a problem at least ONCE in that time.

If I was having such issues, each unit would have gotten one service visit each to get it sorted, and if that didn't resolve it I'd either be going after the dealer and/or the manufacturer for replacements or refunds. If not resolved at that point, I'd have gotten rid of them and replaced them with something different.

I was told the Blu Mk2 was discontinued because the drive mechanisms were no longer available, and no suitable replacement was available.

no problems for me,none knock on wood

 

[The Jester]

Depends on the design and implementation, I remember years ago reading about a major office update, new terminals, servers, cabling the lot,
One little Unix server was working fine but on following the cables it had inadvertently been bricked in during building renovations, it was quite happy purring away doing what it was designed for … how long would a modern unit with a constant stream of software updates fare in the same situation ?

 

[edwardsean]

...using Veronica to Telnet into use-groups on an Amiga via 96 baud modem. I really should use that ahk-uhh connection sound for a ring tone.

Back OT: I am on the record as saying I *really* like the Dave dac and the MScaler. But I do *not* think they are flawless. I have mine on DC4 ps and sending signal via USB into a Denefrips Gaia, then single SPDIF into Dave. I have to test adding HMS workflow this week. I have used the PGGB files via dual input too, but I'm doing this for now. I don't like fussing with batteries, or I'd be on those too.

Stock Dave is excellent. HAL9000 Dave is outta sight...IMO. IMO.

What are you using for the dual input for PGGB files?

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...I was testing the AudioWise box. There are a few good converter options for single-flow, but not for dual. It's against the grain, but I prefer single workflow to that box. I am waiting for a better dual-BNC converter to emerge.

I will test the HMS workflow with the Gaia this week, which would still allow by-passing the Amanero USB (in HMS), but add back some upscaling, with dual BNC from HMS to Dave.

 

[griff500]

Software designed products must be remotely upgradable.

I understand where you are coming from in principle but, in reality, what exactly would you want to be updated in the DAVE?

It's also a commercial consideration - it's a significant undertaking to create and roll out updates and, again, I really can't imagine what needs to be improved with the DAVE and I cannot see what software features need to be added. It seems perfectly fine to me.

 

[edwardsean]

...I was testing the AudioWise box. There are a few good converter options for single-flow, but not for dual. It's against the grain, but I prefer single workflow to that box. I am waiting for a better dual-BNC converter to emerge.

It's such a specific application. I'm not sure another dual-BNC converter will emerge.

Can I clarify, are you are saying that PGGB upscaled to 384KHz into a single BNC via Gaia is superior, to your ears, than PGGB upscaled to 768KHz into dual BNC via SRC-DX?

I understand where you are coming from in principle but, in reality, what exactly would you want to be updated in the DAVE?

It's also a commercial consideration - it's a significant undertaking to create and roll out updates and, again, I really can't imagine what needs to be improved with the DAVE and I cannot see what software features need to be added. It seems perfectly fine to me.

It is "perfectly fine" of course, but I'm sure you are quite familiar with how this all goes. At a certain point, it's always perfectly fine... until you hear the thing that makes you feel like it's not perfectly fine, not fine at all, nothing is fine, nothing in the whole wide world is fine until you obtain that thing.

I'm sorry... maybe that's just me. Also, you were probably speaking more specifically to Dave being fine as it is.

It's just that, at some point, Rob Watt's will release his next creation. And, all of us who love Dave will be tossed into that bracing whirlwind of excitement and turmoil as our entire systems are sucked up and upended.

[edit: To start, I would like I2S and 32fs 1536 in a future product]

 

[Glossator]

That’s great to hear. Do you know if that’s the Chord authorized service center on the west coast? I’m happy to send them my two units. Even if I decided later to sell my pair, I’d like the units to be serviced so the next owner doesn’t have to go through the same issues.

One of the greatest advances in high end audio has been the availability of high bit rate streaming services, like Qobuz, and playlist managers like Roon. It seems like magic to me that each evening I can select from thousands of recently recorded classical releases, most in 24-bit 96khz or 192khz, and play them back so easily. If you, however, go to the Roon newsgroup, you find plenty of people ranting about terrible Roon is, or how the latest 1.8 release has crashed their working system. I certainly went through my share of Roon woes, but after setting up a dedicated Roon server using an Intel NUC box, it has worked flawlessly. I even installed the fanless enclosure that you can get for the NUC on Amazon, which makes my Roon server noiseless.

Software driven products are notoriously unreliable initially and eventually through user feedback become much better. Tesla listens to all the gripes about their self-driving software and keeps improving it. The initial web browsers were simply awful and kept crashing. Playing video over the web in the early days was a nightmare. One of my academic colleagues revolutionized content distribution on the internet with his PhD thesis at Princeton on overlay networks. He went on to co-found Akamai, which today essentially runs a large part of the web.

Software designed products must be remotely upgradable. Would you buy a phone that could not be updated remotely? Hint: in the early days of phone service, that’s all we had. Rotary phones where you rotate the dial each time to input a number. Anyone seen one of these recently?

The software model, where as you say things do not work initially, is truly best avoided where possible (granted, in some situations it cannot be).

Heaven forfend that Chord would go that route!

A product (at least a product with a particular close-ended purpose - e.g. a washing machine or a DAC) should work - period (thankfully my Chord products do, flawlessly). An iPhone, by contrast, is not 'closed ended' (even within the confines of Apple's walled garden).

The impression I get is that RW's DACs are intended on release to do what he designs them to do, which given the state of available hardware and his own knowledge at the time, is as good as he feels is feasible within the constraints of what is practicable technically and commercially.

There is a straight dealing about that which I much prefer to approaching a hardware product on the basis that it is, in a sense, not entirely finished on release (as is the case with a software model).

Where my argument breaks down, I appreciate, is where the software is key and that that software can be improved (as, I get the impression, the likes of Taiko and Innuos are showing with respectively TAS and Innuos 2.0). But the question that leads to whether there is any element of a DAVE's FGPA that could be helpfully optimised by firmware tinkering - the simple fact that Chord has not released a successor to DAVE suggests that RW feels that the answer to that is 'no' (or, pending DAVINA related research, not yet).

Also, although sometimes software solutions offer upgradability, the often future proofing tends to be illusory. Take, for example, people's gripes about the Amarero chipset - surely that would not be fixable by means of software .... ? The incompability of Windows 11 with older Intel chips feels like a case in point ...

 

[Glossator]

no problems for me,none knock on wood

I had a Blu Mk1 for about 14 years. After about 12 years the little plastic puck fractured. I gather this is not unusual - the plastic breaks down over time. Chord sent me a replacement, free, by return. Way out of guarantee. Couldn't really ask for more than that.

 

[Currawong]

@rob,
With ever increasing small signal accuracy giving better depth perception and our own ability to perceive relative distances in sound, similar to the way we perceive direction from minor timing differences from ear to ear ?
Is it possible that this is caused by more and more reflected vs direct sound reaching our ears at minute differences in level and timing as the distance increases, and the more accurate those signals are replayed the better we hear depth in recordings ?

My subjective impression of using the MScaler vs. not with the DAVE seems to align with this. My impression is that the sound between instruments increased, and I was hearing more reflected sounds.

If you, however, go to the Roon newsgroup, you find plenty of people ranting about terrible Roon is, or how the latest 1.8 release has crashed their working system.

Statistically (and this pre-dates the internet) people are at least twice as likely to complain about bad service or a bad product as they are a good one. I think this is because if something is working, we don't tend to think about it, whereas if it isn't, we tend to get emotional. Thus, forums tend to have more people complaining about a product than praising it, though there are plenty of people who want to share their positive experiences as well.

 

[ecwl]

That’s great to hear. Do you know if that’s the Chord authorized service center on the west coast? I’m happy to send them my two units. Even if I decided later to sell my pair, I’d like the units to be serviced so the next owner doesn’t have to go through the same issues.

At some level, I understand your struggles. When I first got my Blu2 in 2017, my dealer and I struggled to get a good working unit for a few months and had to send the units back to Chord until one works perfectly. And it’s been working perfectly fine since then. But that was from their initial production run and we suspect the shipping from UK to Canada was sometimes rough but we weren’t sure. I never publicly posted this because I really haven’t seen a lot of people complain about this problem on the forums here. Possibly one person per year max, probably less. I have personally contacted them via PM’s and eventually their problems got resolved. So I don’t think there is a massive failure rate for Blu2.

And Blu2 is definitely a little more sensitive to RF noise so I have found it can be finicky if you’re using the S/PDIF or USB inputs of Blu2 depending on your USB or S/PDIF source.

And I have to admit, because even with multiple USB source upgrades, I can’t completely get rid of the RF source noise (unless I run the system off my iPad which I didn’t want to), I ended up switching to an M-Scaler and eventually to feeding the M-Scaler Toslink.

Unfortunately, this is where my sympathy ends. You’ve said in your previous posts, you bought the Blu2 used, instead of M-Scaler as recommended by your dealer. Mostly you did it for aesthetic reasons (Iike I did as I kept my Blu2 till 2020 for the same reasons when I finally decided to switch to M-Scaler even though I never use the CD transport).

To me, it’s not even clear that Blu2 or DAVE is not working properly. It sounds like you’ve said if you use your sources directly with DAVE or if you feed a non-USB source to Blu2 via S/PDIF and play through DAVE, it works fine. I can’t figure out from your posts how the CD transport is broken. Usually BNC1/2 or BNC3/4 would work consistently, you just need to find which one and use that (I use my BNC3/4 because BNC1/2 is not as reliable). I guess you can call it a “defective” product. But if it runs 100% of the time BNC3/4, I’m fine with it.

To me, if you have nothing plugged into Blu2 and you just use the Blu2 as a CD transport into DAVE with a functioning BNC1/2 or BNC3/4 using the stock BNC cables and if it consistently runs normally, your Blu2 is not broken. Maybe there is something wrong with your USB source. It’s not a software issue. It’s your USB source RF noise issue.

On the other hand, if you plug your battery-powered iPad into the USB source and once in a while, there is distortion to the audio, or if you play CDs and once in a while, the CD skips because of the transport or the CD seems to play fine but the DAVE has audio distortions, then yes, your Blu2 is 100% broken. But Chord has 5-year warranty that’s transferable from original owner to new owner as long as you have the original owner’s receipt. So to me, you can just get the warranty. Unless you didn’t ask the original owner to provide you with his original receipt. But that’s not really a Chord problem. That’s a “I bought a used product” problem. Heck, maybe the person who sold you the Blu2 knew it was broken. Maybe the person who sold you the Blu2 broke the Blu2. You seem pretty confident it’s Chord and its “software” problem.

I totally understand that your bad experience has soured you on Chord products. I was equally frustrated the first few months in 2017 with the Blu2. But eventually Chord sorted the product out. So far, I have never heard you say what happened when you actually try to get the Blu2 into warranty repair in the UK. I’m just hearing that you want Chord to open a West Coast repair shop which we all know is not going to happen. I’m sorry that you have a bad experience with a used product. I think it’s reasonable to vent and see if somebody in this forum can help you out. But taking out all your frustrations in this thread with repeated posts doesn’t actually fix your product problems.

Anyway, best wishes with the warranty repair.

 

[jlbrach]

I hope I dont jinx myself but my blu2 has been flawless but I dont use it for playing cd's FWIIW