[miketlse]

Well, not really. The permitted range in the UK is 230V -6% +10% which is 216V to 253V. In reality the permitted range was just a fudge to bring the UK more or less in line with the voltages in the EU but without actually altering the actual voltages historically generated in the UK. My voltage here in rural Leicestershire is normally 250V week in week out but wavering up to 253V in times of low usage.

You have reminded me of some posts I read a few days ago, about DIY power supplies for tube amps. Experienced DIYers pointing out simple designs that look perfect at the nominal 240V, start producing all sorts of mischief if the mains voltage is at the top end of the permitted range, eg your 250V+.

 

[thePhones]

I don’t know how much change the different voltages even make in terms of sq because it is very stable at my place, but I noticed that my Dave sounds better with HF-filter on when my dishwasher is working. So there seems to be some residual sensitivity in terms of noise in the mains. The difference is not big but noticeable enough for me to not use the dishwasher when listening with headphones.

 

[Playtron]

sweet mother of god.... just hooked up a GRIMM MU1 to my Dave.... incredible... destroys the MSCALER.... my hearing is not that great... separation and holographic sound on another level.... this is legit... not a small lift... huge. shocking.

if the DC4 takes this up another notch would be astonishing.

officially selling my scaler now!

Listening to a ton of stuff.... I do not remember being mesmerized by music like this before via headphones... never.

Listening via LCD4Z.

 

[Triode User]

sweet mother of god.... just hooked up a GRIMM MU1 to my Dave.... incredible... destroys the MSCALER.... my hearing is not that great... separation and holographic sound on another level.... this is legit... not a small lift... huge. shocking.

if the DC4 takes this up another notch would be astonishing.

officially selling my scaler now!

Hmmn, I guess that you were prompted to try the MU1 and Dave without the mscaler because of a certain youtube channel based in the Netherlands?

I also tried an MU1 in my Dave system for three weeks, both with and without the Mscaler. My conclusion was that I much preferred the MU1 with the Mscaler in the system connected to Dave. I don’t know whether it would have made any difference but both my Dave and Mscaler are powered by ARC6 DC4 power supplies.

Also I ultimately concluded that the MU1 sound is somewhat held back by its use of Roon. If one is wedded to using Roon then I think the MU1 is one of the best sounding Roon players but personally I much prefer the sound of streamers using LMS / Squeeze or Innuos Sense rather than Roon. Cost wise I compared Roon on the MU1 to a similar cost alternative of the Innuos Sense software running on an Innuos Zenith + PhoenixUSB + SRCDX + Mscaler and upgraded bnc cables and to my ears that was substantially better than the MU1.

So after three weeks I sent the MU1 back to the dealer and kept my Mscaler.

 

[Triode User]

You have reminded me of some posts I read a few days ago, about DIY power supplies for tube amps. Experienced DIYers pointing out simple designs that look perfect at the nominal 240V, start producing all sorts of mischief if the mains voltage is at the top end of the permitted range, eg your 250V+.

Yes, and indeed when I had a fully tube based preamp and power amp system I had all sorts of problems with my persistently high mains voltage. The only solution I found was to use a mains regenerator so I could set the voltage to 230V. Unfortunately there is often no such thing as a free dinner in life and I found that all the mains regenerators I tried introduced a hardness to the top end of the sound. I should point out that I was not using DIY power supplies for my tube amps because my Icon Audio amplifiers has their own pretty good internal power suppliers but the high mains translated into higher than normal internal voltages and that caused problems in biasing the valves (tubes).

The high mains voltage problem was ultimately dealt with by ditching my tube amps and connecting Dave straight into active ATC speakers with the Dave used for volume control.

 

[Playtron]

Hmmn, I guess that you were prompted to try the MU1 and Dave without the mscaler because of a certain youtube channel based in the Netherlands?

I also tried an MU1 in my Dave system for three weeks, both with and without the Mscaler. My conclusion was that I much preferred the MU1 with the Mscaler in the system connected to Dave. I don’t know whether it would have made any difference but both my Dave and Mscaler are powered by ARC6 DC4 power supplies.

Also I ultimately concluded that the MU1 sound is somewhat held back by its use of Roon. If one is wedded to using Roon then I think the MU1 is one of the best sounding Roon players but personally I much prefer the sound of streamers using LMS / Squeeze or Innuos Sense rather than Roon. Cost wise I compared Roon on the MU1 to a similar cost alternative of the Innuos Sense software running on an Innuos Zenith + PhoenixUSB + SRCDX + Mscaler and upgraded bnc cables and to my ears that was substantially better than the MU1.

So after three weeks I sent the MU1 back to the dealer and kept my Mscaler.

have not tried to insert the scaler yet to see how that sounds.... did you upscale from the mu1 into the scaler? many have said scaler makes worse inserted... will try and report back. I use ROON exclusively.

 

[TheAttorney]

Hmmn, I guess that you were prompted to try the MU1 and Dave without the mscaler because of a certain youtube channel based in the Netherlands?

I also tried an MU1 in my Dave system for three weeks, both with and without the Mscaler. My conclusion was that I much preferred the MU1 with the Mscaler in the system connected to Dave. I don’t know whether it would have made any difference but both my Dave and Mscaler are powered by ARC6 DC4 power supplies.

Also I ultimately concluded that the MU1 sound is somewhat held back by its use of Roon.

Or maybe he read some of my posts, like this one here

There are many reasons why different people come to different conclusions. In this case, I suspect the main difference is due to the previous server/streamer that the MU1 replaced. My server was a tweaked NUC. Yours was probably significantly better (and much more expensive). My Dave was stock, but the HMS was powered by a top class PH7 power supply, which was no slouch - even if it probably wasn't quite to the level of an ARC DC4.

Whatever, some people will find that the MU1 makes the HMS redundant, and some won't. Life's complicated.

Yes, roon probably is holding the MU1 back, but there are several documented configuration tweaks to make roon sound significantly better than default.
And the next MU1 firmware release will add uPnP support, so users can move on to other apps, such as Jplay, to replace roon. And some will continue with roon because of its features.

 

[Playtron]

have my own Roon nuc prior that I built... fanless... also have an sotm Neo... this is substantially better.... are the other platforms like jplay etc that much better sounding than Roon? I find it hard to believe.

had the nuc as core and Neo as renderer... sounded nothing like this

just bought a new pair of KEF REFERENCE 3 META for $8K half price (had to buy them on the weekend could not believe the price). Going to get them fired up in the next few days with the Dave mu1.

yes your story was great... it was Hans vid that got me to purchase. $9250 brand new no tax... not bad.

 

[Triode User]

have not tried to insert the scaler yet to see how that sounds.... did you upscale from the mu1 into the scaler? many have said scaler makes worse inserted... will try and report back. I use ROON exclusively.

Yes i did upscale internally in the MU1 and then connect that to the Mscaler to get further upscaling. That sounded better.

Dont get me wrong, just using the internally upscaled from the Mu1 to the Dave sounded good its just that I have heard substantially better for the same cost eg the Innuos Zenith + Mscaler route that I described in my post.

Out of interest, one of the staff members at the dealer who loaned me the MU1 has bought the MU1 for his own use and he and I discussed at length the best way of connecting Dave to the MU1 and also that despite claims by some to the contrary the MU1 is affected by the ethernet network (I used an Innuos PhoenixNET to good effect with it, having also tried the Muon Pro and associated cable).

 

[TheAttorney]

.... are the other platforms like jplay etc that much better sounding than Roon? I find it hard to believe.

Well, MU1's reputation is that it makes roon sound much better (and more consistent between roon releases) than most servers.
And some users will value roon's unparalleled UI and discovery features sufficiently highly that they will put up with a slight loss of SQ.

However, if simply disabling roon's radio feature, or dynamic lyrics feature, causes a subtle increase in SQ, then it stands to reason that a completely different app could potentially provide a substantial improvement.

I'm new to uPnP, but as I understand it, JPlay is a controller that sits on (typically) a tablet that merely directs the MU1 uPnP s/w to pull music files from MU1's filestore up to the renderer on its FPGA card. So everything running on MU1 is proprietary to MU1. There are other uPnP controller apps around, so it's most likely going to take a while to get a consensus for what works best.

 

[Triode User]

Well, MU1's reputation is that it makes roon sound much better (and more consistent between roon releases) than most servers.
And some users will value roon's unparalleled UI and discovery features sufficiently highly that they will put up with a slight loss of SQ.

However, if, simply disabling roon's radio feature, or dynamic lyrics feature, causes a subtle increase in SQ, then it stands to reason that a completely different app could potentially provide a substantial improvement.

I'm new to uPnP, but as I understand it, JPlay is a controller that sits on (typically) a tablet that merely directs the MU1 uPnP s/w to pull music files from MU1's filestore up to the renderer on its FPGA card. So everything running on MU1 is proprietary to MU1. There are other uPnP controller apps around, so it's most likely going to take a while to get a consensus for what works best.

I have an Antipodes server/streamer that can easily be user configured with the onboard Antipodes software to run a variety of options such as Roon, uPnP, Squeeze, HQP etc etc. So it is pretty painless to swop between the various options. With the release of the JPLAY controlling app for iOS I did try that for a while (as you say it utilises uPnP so I was using MinimServer on the Antipodes server board and MPD on the Player board) but whilst it did sound better to me compared to even a stripped down Roon it was some distance behind LMS (Logitech Media Server) and Squeezelite player in terms of sound quality.

It all depends on where ones priorities lie and whether the interface and user experience is more important or whether the sound quality is the main goal. I am very firmly in the latter camp and have little use for much of what Roon offers and hence why I lean towards LMS + Squeeze despite having a lifetime Roon subscription from many years ago.

 

[alphaman]

Any plans at Chord to mate Pulse Array with a vacuum tube (valve) output? I've heard Lampizator now takes others' DACs (Soekris ????? or other R2R) and mates them with his Blue Balls designs. $50,000 USD. But maybe some DAVE owners could spring for it.

 

[miketlse]

Any plans at Chord to mate Pulse Array with a vacuum tube (valve) output? I've heard Lampizator now takes others' DACs (Soekris ????? or other R2R) and mates them with his Blue Balls designs. $50,000 USD. But maybe some DAVE owners could spring for it.

I doubt it.
During recent weeks i have read some high spec DIY hybrid tube amps, and started to wonder if you could just use the analog output from one of Robs dacs, as the input to a high spec DIY tube amp (ie replace the solid state part of a hybrid amp with a Chord dac).
It would probably cost no more than $2k to experiment, so not much profit for Chord, and I am not sure that any valve enthusiasts would bother when they can already easily just use a standard tube amp.

 

[kawhia]

@Triode User @TheAttorney
Are you looking forward to the release of the MU2, and how that will compare to the MU1 with DAVE? I certainly do and would appreciate if you pointed out any review of that sort when it is release.

 

[Triode User]

I doubt it.
During recent weeks i have read some high spec DIY hybrid tube amps, and started to wonder if you could just use the analog output from one of Robs dacs, as the input to a high spec DIY tube amp (ie replace the solid state part of a hybrid amp with a Chord dac).
It would probably cost no more than $2k to experiment, so not much profit for Chord, and I am not sure that any valve enthusiasts would bother when they can already easily just use a standard tube amp.

I tried a Dave direct into a hi spec tube power amp. It sounded rubbish and one needed to take the Dave through an active pre amp or something like a transformer volume control like the Music First passive pre amps.