Mar 2, 2023 at 1:55 PM Post #24,061 of 27,088
Not really no. Linearity groups together all sorts of issues and you can address specific types of nonlinearity such as harmonic distortion (or to go down further, specific types/orders of harmonic distortion but not others) but in doing so suffer tradeoffs in other areas like noise or how certain behaviours become signal correlated.
Pretty much all modern DACs are multibit, there are very few true 1-bit DACs remaining as the challenges associated with it are significant. But even on absolutely identical hardware, just changing how the modulator works in order to prioritise different things will change the behaviour of the DAC. Delta-sigma is a maths-driven process and you really can't tell much about a DAC just by looking at the hardware, or even by static measurements. More dynamic testing or exploration of the theory is required.

dCS, Chord, ESS, AKM, and just about everyone else is doing multibit and are taking different approaches to address the issues they feel are important, but they're not all taking the same approach and they all have different advantages and tradeoffs.

For example dCS seeks to reduce signal-correlated behaviour, potentially at the expense of increasing random noise/error.
ESS seeks to reduce some specific types of signal-correlated behaviour, they've gone to great lengths to eliminate changes in performance vs DC offset for example. But at the expense seemingly of increased higher order harmonics.
Chord aims to prioritise transient reconstruction/timing and they do that very well, but potentially at the expense of higher 2nd order harmonic distortion for example compared to some other designs.

dCS doesn't provide too much info about their underlying processes unfortunately, though Rob luckily goes into significant detail both on head-fi and in talks and interviews. (I will be posting his DAC topology talk on YT soon, it has a lot of content relating to this discussion and the challenges facing certain types of DAC topology).
There is no perfect DAC, and there is no free lunch in terms of how you make one to reduce various issues. You have to make tradeoffs and have to pick the things you feel are important. As a result, different DAC manufacturers have DACs that behave and sound different because they're all doing things very differently even if on the surface the hardware might look similar, but under the hood the maths is incredibly different. Hell just ask people how much of a difference the 'V2' dCS mapper made to their DAC.

I should add that for transparency, I don't own a DAVE, but personally I think Chord is doing a better job than others in many ways, primarily because Rob isn't letting available compute power get in the way of the designs. Other manufacturers are seemingly not as willing to use more powerful (and more expensive) FPGAs and ASICs to allow for higher performance processing. But Chord are. And at the end of the day, whilst you can't have a perfect DAC, more processing power does mean that you can sacrifice less in sound quality or objective results.
These are all patch work solutions to solve multi bit delta sigma problems. The actual answer (IMO) is to go back to DSD and have a dynamic noise shaper - possibly in the future this can be controlled by some ML chip so it would apply different noise shapers based on actual signals. I think Emm Labs and PBD all have their own versions of the dynamic noise shaper, but I don't know more than that.
 
Mar 2, 2023 at 1:58 PM Post #24,062 of 27,088
In any case, Dave's problem is not its digital processing, it's the $10 PSU and meh analog design.
 
Mar 2, 2023 at 1:59 PM Post #24,063 of 27,088
These are all patch work solutions to solve multi bit delta sigma problems. The actual answer (IMO) is to go back to DSD and have a dynamic noise shaper - possibly in the future this can be controlled by some ML chip so it would apply different noise shapers based on actual signals. I think Emm Labs and PBD all have their own versions of the dynamic noise shaper, but I don't know more than that.
I love DSD, but it also has serious issues and the noise shaper no matter how dynamic will not be able to solve it all.
 
Mar 2, 2023 at 2:02 PM Post #24,064 of 27,088
I love DSD, but it also has serious issues and the noise shaper no matter how dynamic will not be able to solve it all.
I am not talking about DSD as a format.
 
Mar 2, 2023 at 2:42 PM Post #24,065 of 27,088
In any case, Dave's problem is not its digital processing, it's the $10 PSU and meh analog design.
All Emm Labs and Meitner DACs uses SMPS power suplays…Before Holo May, Denafrips Venus II and Ayon CD3s I owned Emm Labs DAC2 SE.. Comparing to Holo Spring 3 KTE, Denafrips Venus II and Ayon CD3s Emm Labs sounds very flat, boring, with much worse soundstage. In addition, I had problems with the Emm Labs DAC 2 freezing and when I repeatedly contacted Emm Labs by email, I didn’t receive any response. After that I lost any interests for Emm Labs and Meitner products
 
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Mar 2, 2023 at 2:55 PM Post #24,066 of 27,088
All Emm Labs and Meitner DACs uses SMPS power suplays…Before Holo May and Ayon CD3s I owned Emm Labs DAC2 SE.. Comparing to Holo Spring 3 KTE, Denafrips Venus II and Ayon CD3s Emm Labs sounds very flat, boring, with much worse soundstage. In addition, I had problems with the Emm Labs DAC 2 freezing and when I repeatedly contacted Emm Labs by email, I didn’t receive any response. After that I lost any interests for Emm Labs and Meitner products
Wow.
 
Mar 2, 2023 at 3:24 PM Post #24,067 of 27,088
Dave's problem is not its digital processing, it's the $10 PSU
Unlike other DACs, the DAVE doesn't need a fancy expensive power supply due to the pulse-array design. That's the beauty of it, it's designed that way.
 
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Mar 2, 2023 at 3:57 PM Post #24,069 of 27,088
Unlike other DACs, the DAVE doesn't need a fancy expensive power supply due to the pulse-array design. That's the beauty of it, it's designed that way.
You are getting marketed to and fleeced and you don’t even know it.
 
Mar 2, 2023 at 4:00 PM Post #24,070 of 27,088
You are getting marketed to and fleeced and you don’t even know it.
Quite the opposite in fact. You and I should actually be more impressed with the Chord tech. than we are based on their marketing.

Look at the power supply inside the DAVE. Does all that really look like just a $10 part to you? If you say yes, it's clear you have no idea what you're talking about.


Chord-DAVE-D75_9935.jpg
 
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Mar 2, 2023 at 4:10 PM Post #24,071 of 27,088
Mar 2, 2023 at 4:17 PM Post #24,072 of 27,088
Mar 2, 2023 at 4:17 PM Post #24,073 of 27,088
Quite the opposite in fact. You and I should actually be more impressed with the Chord tech. than we are based on their marketing.

Look at the power supply inside the DAVE. Does all that really look like just a $10 part to you?


to be fair, that exact power supply costs about $40-50 dollars dependng on the source, so I think if one were ordering mass quantities direct from the factory in china, then yeah close to ten dollars would be possible. Its just a generic medical grade smps.
 
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Mar 2, 2023 at 4:20 PM Post #24,074 of 27,088
to be fair, that exact power supply costs about $40-50 dollars dependng on the source, so I think if one were ordering mass quantities, then yeah close to ten dollars would be possible. Its just a generic medical grade smps.

Nope, even at higher quantities it's still like a $60 wholesale piece instead of $70., nowhere near $10.

But it's all vitriol anyways since that is not likely as high quality as what's in the DAVE.
 
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Mar 2, 2023 at 4:31 PM Post #24,075 of 27,088
Nope, even at higher quantities it's still like a $60 wholesale piece instead of $70., nowhere near $10.

But it's all vitriol anyways since that is not likely as high quality as what's in the DAVE.
To be clear, I'm not hating on the DAVE or its power supply, I'm just sharing info about it. I own the DAVE, I don't hate it, why would I buy something I hate.

Theres a difference between buying from mouser (or any electronic supply store in the west) in 50 piece or even a hundred piece type quantites and ordering literally thousands from the Factory in China directly. So, ok maybe not $10, but $25? Very very likely.

And yes, thats the exact power supply in the DAVE.

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...s-with-dc-power-for-chord-dave-and-blu-mk-ii/

"The stock SMPS I had extracted from the DAVE (see photo) had the -15V line rated at 0.5A, and I'd expect there would be a substantial safety margin on that."

Screen Shot 2023-03-02 at 9.29.07 PM.png
 

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