CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[Rob Watts]

  Rob, will you be at CanJam in southern California 19-20 March?

No 'fraid not, John will be though.
 
Rob

 

[Beolab]

Romaz, which specific options did you choose when navigating the DHC dropdown order menus for your DHC Silver Spore4 cable? Thanks.

Esau

 
A few different options to choose from, when it comes to contact plugs, so i have the same question what type of 3 pin xlr romaz is using ?

 

[Bonesy Jonesy]

  The power amp prototype has been stuck on my desk waiting for me to test it for a year now. So my priorities this year is the amp and Davina.
 
Combining Dave with the amp using the digital outputs, I am eagerly anticipating, as I expect a huge increase in transparency - in short, it will eliminate the sound of a power amp, you will be left with the equivalence of just the sound of Dave driving loudspeakers directly.
 
Rob

Fantastico Rob.   Hope the digital amp will be in the Choral range to match with the Dave !.

 

[bmichels]

  Yes the upgrade will mean it is better SQ when using the upsampler....
 
Rob

 
Rob, does this mean that when using the BLU with DAVE, this "BLU upgrade" won't make any SQ difference since all the up-sampling can be done in the DAVE anyway ?  
 
In other way, if I have DAVE, can I already buy the "old" BLU without having later to upgrade to the "new" PCB ?

 

[Kakki]

  The topology is new, and its scalable, in that I can create any power, so although the first product is 20W or 70W monoblock mode, I will be doing other power amps with different outputs.
 
The range is not decided yet.
 
Rob

 
Thank you Rob, for letting us know the latest status of the digital amplifier project!
 
I'm waiting for your 20w mono-blocks very much and would appreciate your further update.
(Next update would be ... a nice project name perhaps? Dean came to my mind as it is a digital amplifier! )

 

[Christer]

  The topology is new, and its scalable, in that I can create any power, so although the first product is 20W or 70W monoblock mode, I will be doing other power amps with different outputs.
 
The range is not decided yet.
 
Rob

What speakers would be efficient enough to be driven by only 20 watts, or even 70?
Table top computer speakers?
The only  real HI FI, full range speakers I can think of would be super efficient horn speakers. My current electrostatic speakers  need hundreds of watts per channel, to reproduce a symphony orchestra att full tilt  effortlessly.
With classical music there can be peaks and climaxes that demand a lot more than  a hundred watts from most speakers of any real quality I have heard.
My former  amp wasn't even close to the 500 watts per channel I have now and sounded very stressed by anything over ff not to mention fff.
Just joking a bit, but I hope you are not designing an amp for  solo acoustic guitar only?

 

[Christer]

it's out on the 11th March

I haven't read the comparison review ,but one of the things I was thinking of   when auditioning DAVE apart from  raw unedited DXD hi res and mic feed was direct cut LPs at their very best.
In spite of all the known limitations  of  vinyl there can be a sense of realism and flow that digital as had a hard time to capture and reproduce.
With direct cut LPs there is no sampling of  the analogue signal. It stays analogue all the way.
And yes, I am thinking of acoustic large scale symphonic music again. The only genre that will really sort the wheat from the chaff imho.
Sheffield Labs direct cuts of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Wagner are still on the list of R2D4.

 

[Rob Watts]

 
What speakers would be efficient enough to be driven by only 20 watts, or even 70?
Table top computer speakers?
The only  real HI FI, full range speakers I can think of would be super efficient horn speakers. My current electrostatic speakers  need hundreds of watts per channel, to reproduce a symphony orchestra att full tilt  effortlessly.
With classical music there can be peaks and climaxes that demand a lot more than  a hundred watts from most speakers of any real quality I have heard.
My former  amp wasn't even close to the 500 watts per channel I have now and sounded very stressed by anything over ff not to mention fff.
Just joking a bit, but I hope you are not designing an amp for  solo acoustic guitar only?

Its just the first model.
 
Power is fine for near field monitoring, and its transportable, only a bit bigger than Hugo, so applications are are for office, hotel, small room, TV, and when headphones need enormous power.
 
Other amps will become available at much larger power as I said earlier.
 
Rob

 

[Mavwong]

I suppose to sleep but I heard headphones! Yes I am interested! Sorry violectric, I will have to wait for Rob's new amp for headphones!

Its just the first model.

Power is fine for near field monitoring, and its transportable, only a bit bigger than Hugo, so applications are are for office, hotel, small room, TV, and when headphones need enormous power.

Other amps will become available at much larger power as I said earlier.

Rob

 

[Sonic77]

Hopefully they will be relatively affordable.

 

[ubs28]

Its just the first model.

Power is fine for near field monitoring, and its transportable, only a bit bigger than Hugo, so applications are are for office, hotel, small room, TV, and when headphones need enormous power.

Other amps will become available at much larger power as I said earlier.

Rob

Sounds interesting. Do you need a pre amplifier with the amplifiers that offer more power?

(I could use a Chord Hugo / Dave --> Chord Amp --> high end loudspeakers? )

 

[Beolab]

I haven't seen or heard the new amps ( sound will most likely be like a powerfull DAVE on steroids ) , but i think i stick with in my oppinion over the top good sound, i havent heard anything better so far, and i have listen to many systems So this is a keeper rig and waithing for MQA and Rob's DAVIDINA recordings.
Then the amps is not intended / dedicated headphone amps for higher impedance .

 

[Hiyono]

Found a Japanese post on Dave.

http://comiccune.jugem.jp/?eid=22&PHPSESSID=g64658gubcc32v2bc6k4imtbu5

 

[Beolab]

Had an extensive listening, comparing my HeadTrip's sound vs Dave's headphone output:



The DAVE hang on good down to volume 11 = normal listening level, and then it get more stressed out on vol 7-5 , so when it comes to the more bass dynamic heavy parts in the song DAVE does break some svett, but on lower levels like vol 12-17 with the Abyss, it sounding so smooth with details appering that i dont even think the mastering producer have ever heard before. You also find the technical miss outs flaws, unwanted distortion in the song from the studio.



But i do find you need a separate amp if you want listen to more dynamic music , classical music with high DR on little higher than mid-high level .

You loose just a slight bit transparency but in the same time it sounds more muscular , where the voices and bass guitar are deeper.

Compared to Hugo , DAVE is more calm and smooth in the presentation so you can hear DAVE is more powerful than the Hugo, and it is a fairly big difference in btw!

So a separate amp if you own the Abyss or He-6 is my recommendation, but you would be happy with only the DAVE alone also!

And in the same time you have two different sound tones from the same DAC, so you can just pick and choose depending on the material and your own mood.

The deep fluid bass , perspective , timing , detail resolution spaciousness, musicallity , dept and 3D is mentally good, and are the leading key words that describes the sound of DAVE, or we can use one word:
Ultra Transparency .

With cross-feed filter set to on 1,2 or 3:

Here i find great reduction in resolution and spaciousness when you activate cross feed filtering, i do not like it so much, maybe with other headphones but not with the Abyss.

Just on some tracks i find it to be usefull, but most of the time i have it set to off.

Without cross-feed filtering i can easy pinpoint where diffrent instruments are located in the studio or in the concert hall, which is impossible with croos-feed when everything is placed in the center of the soundstage.

World best DAC at the moment, and i hope for a good time to come.

 

[JaZZ]

Beolab, don't be so quick with your crossfeed judgement! I understand that it may sound like a loss of detail at first, but it's detail (signals) of a kind that wouldn't appear in real life. I have occupied extensively with crossfeed, and to my ears good crossfeed actually enables even better instrument localization. It needs some getting used to, though.
 
DAVE's crossfeed is very good to my ears. Slightly different from the Hugo's, as it seems to me.