CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[romaz]

Yes, with the DAVE feeding the BHSE, there was wonderful layering of details and good depth with the Stax. My curiosity has been satisfied.

 

[TheAttorney]

 If only electrostatics had better bass!

Two things to try, the first is free, the second costs a fortune:
 
1. If your 009's are not already a loose fit, very carefully bend out the plastic arcs to get a looser fit (it's plastic so do so at your own risk). This will subtley increase bass (especially lowest bass). There is a tipping point were too loose and the bass starts getting flabby.
 
2, Replace the BHSE tubes with vintage metal base. Apart from unbelievable clarity, the metal bases will give "balls" to the 009's. Maybe not to the same level as the best dynamics, but it closes the gap 

 

[romaz]

Two things to try, the first is free, the second costs a fortune:

1. If your 009's are not already a loose fit, very carefully bend out the plastic arcs to get a looser fit (it's plastic so do so at your own risk). This will subtley increase bass (especially lowest bass). There is a tipping point were too loose and the bass starts getting flabby.

2, Replace the BHSE tunes with vintage metal base. Apart from unbelievable clarity, the metal bases will give "balls" to the 009's. Maybe not to the same level as the best dynamics, but it closes the gap 

Thanks for the advice. I sold my electrostatic setup some time ago. Justin Wilson is designing a replacement for the BHSE that is supposed to improve things, especially in the lower octaves. Maybe it will incorporate some of your ideas.

 

[Samuel Snoopy]

Romaz, Interesting, it is out of my imagination that they allow you to compare their DAC with your Dave. I think it is impossible to do it here in HK. Thanks!

 

[romaz]

Romaz, Interesting, it is out of my imagination that they allow you to compare their DAC with your Dave. I think it is impossible to do it here in HK. Thanks!

I know what you're saying, it requires a certain sensitivity and approach but I have found that if you are honest, respectful and also complimentary of their product, it goes a long way. The other side of the equation is that some of these folks are just as eager to hear the DAVE and are even confident their product is better. This was the case at the Devialet room. They were showcasing the limited edition (only 100 made worldwide) copper dual mono Devialet D900 ($37k) which has their integrated DAC and monobloc amps. It was being fed by an Aurender N10 and a $15k Clearaudio turntable and driving a pair of wonderful Magico S3s. Here is a photo and you will notice that my DAVE is at the bottom of this Stillpoints rack:



Anyway, the Devialet dealer and some of the Devialet brass were there from France and they all agreed to allow me to demo this for them after the show ended because they all wanted to hear the DAVE. This is when we established that the N10 sounded better via AES/EBU compared to USB with the DAVE and so we compared 3 tracks against the Devialet's DAC using the DAVE's AES/EBU input. Unfortunately, they had no large scale orchestral music available but they had a hi res PCM track from Jazz at the Pawnshop, a Ramsey Lewis piano track, and a female vocal studio track.

In comparison, the Devialet DAC sounded drier where the DAVE sounded smoother and more fluid. The acoustical space, especially with Jazz at the Pawnshop was more readily appreciated. There was clearly some smearing on the piano with the Ramsey Lewis track on the Devialet. To my ears, there was no contest but I didn't feel it was polite to make a point of it. The 2 Devialet guys from Europe didn't say a word. The Devialet dealer was very complimentary of the DAVE but he said he preferred the sound of the Devialet DAC, something I predicted he would say given that the Devialet guys were there. To the credit of the Devialet, however, the monobloc amps were wonderfu and drove the Magicos beautifully. The Devialets are also a work of art and I would happily hang these special copper units on my wall for all to see (yes, Devialets are wall hangable). I would be happy to own a Devialet but the DAVE stays.

 

[Samuel Snoopy]

Romaz, interesting story; I like Devialet amp too, but they don't have pure amp product to connect Dave that I want.

 

[Articnoise]

I know what you're saying, it requires a certain sensitivity and approach but I have found that if you are honest, respectful and also complimentary of their product, it goes a long way. The other side of the equation is that some of these folks are just as eager to hear the DAVE and are even confident their product is better. This was the case at the Devialet room. They were showcasing the limited edition (only 100 made worldwide) copper dual mono Devialet D900 ($37k) which has their integrated DAC and monobloc amps. It was being fed by an Aurender N10 and a $15k Clearaudio turntable and driving a pair of wonderful Magico S3s. Here is a photo and you will notice that my DAVE is at the bottom of this Stillpoints rack:

 

 

I have listen to the Devialet D900 driving a pair of Magico S5 – It was okay, but sound kind of “hifi”. They then switched to use the phone in of the Devialet D900 and hooked up a SOTA Kronos turntable. They didn’t play the same records, nevertheless a totally different and IMO much better sound.  

 

[STR-1]

Still learning how best to use my Dave (well actually a loan Dave until mine arrives) and I am wondering when the HF filter could/should be used and what the pros and cons are of using it. Grateful for any thoughts you guys with more technical understanding can offer. Thanks

 

[Kamil21]

I know what you're saying, it requires a certain sensitivity and approach but I have found that if you are honest, respectful and also complimentary of their product, it goes a long way. The other side of the equation is that some of these folks are just as eager to hear the DAVE and are even confident their product is better. This was the case at the Devialet room. They were showcasing the limited edition (only 100 made worldwide) copper dual mono Devialet D900 ($37k) which has their integrated DAC and monobloc amps. It was being fed by an Aurender N10 and a $15k Clearaudio turntable and driving a pair of wonderful Magico S3s. Here is a photo and you will notice that my DAVE is at the bottom of this Stillpoints rack:



Anyway, the Devialet dealer and some of the Devialet brass were there from France and they all agreed to allow me to demo this for them after the show ended because they all wanted to hear the DAVE. This is when we established that the N10 sounded better via AES/EBU compared to USB with the DAVE and so we compared 3 tracks against the Devialet's DAC using the DAVE's AES/EBU input. Unfortunately, they had no large scale orchestral music available but they had a hi res PCM track from Jazz at the Pawnshop, a Ramsey Lewis piano track, and a female vocal studio track.

In comparison, the Devialet DAC sounded drier where the DAVE sounded smoother and more fluid. The acoustical space, especially with Jazz at the Pawnshop was more readily appreciated. There was clearly some smearing on the piano with the Ramsey Lewis track on the Devialet. To my ears, there was no contest but I didn't feel it was polite to make a point of it. The 2 Devialet guys from Europe didn't say a word. The Devialet dealer was very complimentary of the DAVE but he said he preferred the sound of the Devialet DAC, something I predicted he would say given that the Devialet guys were there. To the credit of the Devialet, however, the monobloc amps were wonderfu and drove the Magicos beautifully. The Devialets are also a work of art and I would happily hang these special copper units on my wall for all to see (yes, Devialets are wall hangable). I would be happy to own a Devialet but the DAVE stays.

Doesn't the Devialet convert all analog input to digital? Thus inserting the Dave, into the Devialet amps you will simply layer the Dave with the Devialet's digital circuits? I would think that in this case the Devialet should in theory sound better.

 

[lovethatsound]

Still learning how best to use my Dave (well actually a loan Dave until mine arrives) and I am wondering when the HF filter could/should be used and what the pros and cons are of using it. Grateful for any thoughts you guys with more technical understanding can offer. Thanks

Hi STR-1
I think Rob answered this question early on,somewhere on this thread . I'm 100% sure he said he thinks it sounds better ON.I think originally it was for just for hi-res,but Rob said he was surprised that it sounded better with red book as well.

 

[ecwl]

  AXPONA Day 1 - DAVE vs T+A DAC 8 DSD
 
Much has been made about this DAC that upsamples to DSD512 on another forum.  I have made my comments on it before but I got the chance to directly A/B this DAC against the DAVE today using my HE-1000 + Silver Spore4.  It is a nice sounding DAC for $4k but my comments regarding this DAC against the DAVE stand.  It is closer in sound signature to the DirectStream that also upsamples to DSD but it is not in the same league as the Nagra HD which is much better and certainly not in the same league as the DAVE.  Using well recorded orchestral and jazz PCM and even native DSD, the DAVE was superior in every way.  Those who are saying this DAC sounds as good or better than the DAVE have probably not heard them side by side because there is no way I can imagine someone saying the T+A sounds better if they have compared them side by side.  In the words of the U.S. distributor:  "Well, your DAC should sound better, it's three times the cost."  That's true but that was never the point.

Roy, I think the people who raved about T+A DAC8 over DAVE are not using it straight as a DAC or using T+A to internally upsample. They are using their desktop computer CPU & GPU to upsample music to DSD512 with the most sophisticated computationally intensive algorithms and then playing the DSD512 file/stream back on the T+A DAC8.

 

[lovethatsound]

The HF filter is a sharp cutoff filter set to 60 kHz. The intention was to bandwidth limit high sample rate recordings - DXD and 384k have huge amounts of noise shaper noise from the ADC. This noise will degrade SQ by increasing noise floor modulation as the out of band noise creates intermodulation distortion with the wanted audio signal in the analogue electronics.

Now it works very well, in using it makes it sound smoother and darker - exactly what you get from lower noise floor modulation. But the curious thing is that it also sounds better with 44.1 k - curious because the WTA filter typically has a stop band attenuation of 140 dB (worst case 120 dB). So out of band noise is very low with 44.1 k and I was not expecting a SQ change with the filter with CD. The filter is not something added, its just a different set of coefficients for the 16 FS to 256 FS WTA filter.

Something else to look into in the future as this suggests that 140 dB (typical) stop band attenuation is not enough.

Rob

Found it for you STR-1

 

[STR-1]

Found it for you STR-1

Thanks for that, you're a star. I've been trying the filter turned on today with my 16/44 rips (ALAC) and I think it does sound better but I had no feel for why that was. Cheers

 

[bacon333]

   
Does it sound like that?
 

Quite possibly...but hoping not.

 

[Beolab]

I want to thank Bacon for his in depth review, an ambitious and heroic effort that led to a truly enjoyable and enlightening read! Jay not only has a good ear but his consistently methodical approach makes his comments very credible and his review conveniently answered several questions for me. Jay and I share something in common, and it is both a blessing and a curse (maybe more curse) and that is we are both pathologically curious about things and we can't leave well enough alone but I think this is a curse probably shared by most audiophiles. If only I stopped listening to new things 10 DACs ago, I could be blissfully happy and also have a much fatter bank account...

Regarding the importance of power, I agree wholeheartedly. Some would argue that it's more important than the source because without power, your have nothing. Before the DAVE, I had invested more than $25,000 in my power infrastructure if you include the cost of my Audience line conditioner, Son of Q balanced power supply, Furutech GTX wall receptacles, numerous mains cables, aftermarket linear power supplies, audiophile fuses, Entreq Poseidon grounding box, Entreq grounding cables, etc., and while some things made a bigger difference than others, with my previous system, the cumulative impact of all of these things was quite large. While Jay probably has very dirty mains power to warrant a more robust power setup, with the DAVE and compared to my TotalDAC, I have been able to sell off most of my power gear including my expensive Audience line conditioner and Entreq grounding equipment. In my environment, I have found the DAVE, even with its switching power supply, to be much more immune to the gremlins in my power line than my previous gear. I have held onto my Son of Q balanced power supply, because it's the one piece of equipment that seems to make the biggest difference to both my digital and analog gear but also my audiophile mains cables, with my Challenger AE15 digital mains cable which feeds the DAVE being my most important one. Especially with my Son of Q, my system is now dead silent, even my subwoofer hum is gone, and nothing sounds harsh nor do I suffer from the variations in SQ that I used to notice during different times in the day.

Regarding the DAVE's immunity to source jitter and source RF, I have been in accord with Rob's personal findings for USB and digital optical sources because that is what my own blind testing had revealed to me in my system. Not that all sources sounded identical during my blind testing but that the differences were not large enough to warrant spending large sums of money for one over the other. It was for this reason that I sold off my CAD CAT, Aurender and several purpose built PC music servers. But today, while attending AXPONA (Audio Expo of North America) in Chicago, I heard something new, something different that has left me curious about whether a source could perhaps sound considerably better with the DAVE.

Before today, all the music sources I have listened to with the DAVE have been through USB or optical. Even when I had the Aurender N10 around, I never bothered to test the AES/EBU connection mainly because I sold my high quality AES/EBU cables with my TotalDac. A few hours ago, I heard an Aurender N10 again but this time, I connected to my DAVE both with my $400 Curious USB cable (a cable I found to be superior to my TotalDac USB, AQ Diamond, Wireworld Platinum 7, Lightspeed USB and Synergistic Research USB SE) and also with a $4,200 Nordost Valhalla AES/EBU cable. This was the first time I heard my DAVE through the AES/EBU input and while I was expecting it to sound inferior based on Rob's findings, it made USB sound quite compressed in comparison. Without question, to the ears of all that were in the room, the N10 via AES/EBU to my DAVE sounded more open and more dynamic than USB which suggests either the USB port on this particular Aurender is faulty or AES/EBU with a really good cable could sound better than USB on the DAVE. Tomorrow, I will listen to this again with both an Aurender N10 and W20 but it has left me curious about this input which is supposedly very susceptible to noise.

I agree with almost everything you are writing Roy, but after extensive testing with 4 different bit perfect sources i have discovered that the DAVE are not totally immune to the source.

I have like you very sensitive hearing, but i find it to sound different with different sources, exactly like the difference btw the inputs on DAVE.

Aurender W20 / USB
Auralic Aries. / USB
Macbook Pro BitPerfect and Roon / USB
Iphone 5S / Ipad with CCK adapter / USB =

Wider soundstage than the aries and different presentation in the perspective with little less clarity than Auralic Aries, but it sounds almost even with MacBook Pro using BitPerfect.
The Aurender have the best sound overall if it is setup properly, and the Auralic got the thinnest but clearest sound presentation.

So this is a is a difference, please do the test with one track and you'll see .

PS i will test the AES with W20 and see what happens, maybe it can sound a bit less compressed than using USB if we are lucky.

Have a great day!