[Reactcore]

Must be weird seeing your creation modified

I had many private talks with him about my moddings and his reasons which i cant openly post about (i just respect him in that) but i can say theyre were pleasant and refreshing.

Dave is so much revealing cause of its low distortion in digital domain that it appeared to show easily any incoming RF pollution and also power stabillity issues, if you read through the lines of his early postings you see it supprised him too.. but Dave was already released and its (hardware) design frozen.

I took my cap idea from TT2's supercaps solution which is actually his improved design after Dave in power handling using caps. And built upon it with my own ideas and electronics experience.

As for Qutest, i wanted to drive my headphones straight out of its RCA's and Qutest power section is not designed to supply the currents for that. So i added buffering. It has Mojo's OP stage.

 

[Mr X]

I took my cap idea from TT2's supercaps solution which is actually his improved design after Dave in power handling using caps. And built upon it with my own ideas and electronics experience.

I think this is the point.

Rob Watts is an engineering genius so far as my ears are concerned. But he is also not a guy to rest on his laurels. It’s evident just how passionate he is in how much he loves music and his job.

His technical know how with DAVE (and his other designs) set the benchmark very high for what a DAC can do many years ago and then… along came MScaler.

Case in point…Rob continues to learn and take that knowledge into lessons learned and continual improvement of his vision for “real life” music reproduction.

When the next reiteration of DAVE finally comes and no doubt when we finally get to hear the hopefully imminent Choral Scaler, I think we all know that it will be an evolution of not just the product but of his findings over the years addressing improvements and innovating at the same time. Mojo2 and HD EQ is a perfect and amazing example.

He also appears to be a very humble man and I’m sure there are some mods he questions and some mods that really intrigue him.

But I guess at times especially in the early days of a product you’ve just given birth to, it could be like a new parent being told what a lovely looking baby they have, but….

 

[FunkyBassMan]

He has to dislike it. No option for him.

On the contrary. How cool to have built a DAC that so many people are still fanatic about after so many years.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

I had many private talks with him about my moddings and his reasons which i cant openly post about (i just respect him in that) but i can say theyre were pleasant and refreshing.

Dave is so much revealing cause of its low distortion in digital domain that it appeared to show easily any incoming RF pollution and also power stabillity issues, if you read through the lines of his early postings you see it supprised him too.. but Dave was already released and its (hardware) design frozen.

I took my cap idea from TT2's supercaps solution which is actually his improved design after Dave in power handling using caps. And built upon it with my own ideas and electronics experience.

As for Qutest, i wanted to drive my headphones straight out of its RCA's and Qutest power section is not designed to supply the currents for that. So i added buffering. It has Mojo's OP stage.

Very nice explanation, perhaps you should work with Rob on his future DACs, I think you should talk to him about collaborating.

 

[FunkyBassMan]

I'm curious how other peoples' experience of the DAVE, and in particular the M-Scaler/Dave combination for people who have it, shows its exceptional quality in your case (if it does). I ask because I've noticed in my case, it manifests in oddly interesting ways. Naturally there's the enjoyment of the music viscerally and the sense of a great reproduction of a recorded space. But for me anyway, I've noticed the quality shows up most strongly in a few different ways I'd have never predicted.

1) I have the system playing in my studio and be in some other room not even really listening, and all of a sudden and completely unconsciously I'll get a moment of almost fear as it sounds like someone's in the house playing the guitar or the trumpet or bongos or something.
2) I'll come in and have that feeling I'm sure we all have sometimes, "oh, this system doesn't sound as engaging as I remember. I guess I'm just used to it. And then I'll notice I have the M-Scaler set to video from something I was doing yesterday. I reset it to full upscaling and the magic comes back.
3) (with apologies...) I get so pulled into music that I literally can't make myself get up to go to the bathroom and things can get...unpleasant lol.
4) I listen to recordings made ages ago (like the Everly Brothers, say) or even more on point, to recordings I made myself and know extremely intimately, and can't believe all the new detail I'm hearing.

I might write all this stuff off as just enjoying a good system except that because I'm a producer and engineer, I interchange my listening chain regularly with top-end pro audio gear (Apogee and Digidesign) which interfaces with recording software at near zero-latency which, as good as it is, it never has any of these effects on me.

I was curious if other people had interesting ways the quality of this gear shows itself in their lives.

 

[Meridian7]

...I was curious if other people had interesting ways the quality of this gear shows itself in their lives.

Since recently I have an integrated amp Hegel 590 on Harbeth Super HL5 plus XD and sub REL.
Hegel 590 internal DAC is poor, then RME Adi2 dac FS (with hegel in dacloop modus) is better, then MOJO2 is even better, then Dave even better and with MS even better. But the differences between the steps are not small and thus easy to hear.
I cannot relate or refer to other chains with speakers though, but I've the impression with headphones the differences are less big steps between the dac's.
My intuition is that it's probably the Hegel amp being source sensitive.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

I'm curious how other peoples' experience of the DAVE, and in particular the M-Scaler/Dave combination for people who have it, shows its exceptional quality in your case (if it does). I ask because I've noticed in my case, it manifests in oddly interesting ways. Naturally there's the enjoyment of the music viscerally and the sense of a great reproduction of a recorded space. But for me anyway, I've noticed the quality shows up most strongly in a few different ways I'd have never predicted.

1) I have the system playing in my studio and be in some other room not even really listening, and all of a sudden and completely unconsciously I'll get a moment of almost fear as it sounds like someone's in the house playing the guitar or the trumpet or bongos or something.
2) I'll come in and have that feeling I'm sure we all have sometimes, "oh, this system doesn't sound as engaging as I remember. I guess I'm just used to it. And then I'll notice I have the M-Scaler set to video from something I was doing yesterday. I reset it to full upscaling and the magic comes back.
3) (with apologies...) I get so pulled into music that I literally can't make myself get up to go to the bathroom and things can get...unpleasant lol.
4) I listen to recordings made ages ago (like the Everly Brothers, say) or even more on point, to recordings I made myself and know extremely intimately, and can't believe all the new detail I'm hearing.

I might write all this stuff off as just enjoying a good system except that because I'm a producer and engineer, I interchange my listening chain regularly with top-end pro audio gear (Apogee and Digidesign) which interfaces with recording software at near zero-latency which, as good as it is, it never has any of these effects on me.

I was curious if other people had interesting ways the quality of this gear shows itself in their lives.

That is precisely what I experience, and other DACs don't do that for me.

 

[iDesign]

That is precisely what I experience, and other DACs don't do that for me.

On that note, I listened to my DAVE+Blu Mk II via CD for the first time in many months and fell in love with my DAVE all over again. As some of you may or may not know, I have one of the largest known private collections of rare and out of print classical CD recordings and that’s why I purchased the Blu Mk II. The realization for me tonight again was that the hundreds of thousands man-hours and dollars invested in trying to fix USB steaming audio were down a dirt road (from the SGM Extreme to Sonore to Innuos to SoTM). I realize the Blu Mk II is a discontinued product and others have expressed their opinions but I salute Rob Watts for his work because it was ahead of its time.

 

[The Jester]

How would you compare it to the MScaler and a good CD transport via optical,
Of course assuming you’ve listened to both. ?

 

[iDesign]

How would you compare it to the MScaler and a good CD transport via optical,
Of course assuming you’ve listened to both. ?

I tend to keep audio equipment for many years and have a one-in, one-out discipline of upgrading. That said, I haven’t owned or tested every generation of CD transports. I previously used (and still own) the Dan Wright ModWright Sony 9100ES Signature Truth which I felt handily beat other flagships from dCS and Meridian at the time. The M Scaler itself improved the DAVE so the Blu Mk II is an ideal solution. And seeing that it was discontinued, its a one-in and one and done from Chord.

 

[nwavesailor]

I tend to keep audio equipment for many years and have a one-in, one-out discipline of upgrading. That said, I haven’t owned or tested every generation of CD transports. I previously used (and still own) the Dan Wright ModWright Sony 9100ES Signature Truth which I felt handily beat other flagships from dCS and Meridian at the time. The M Scaler itself improved the DAVE so the Blu Mk II is an ideal solution. And seeing that it was discontinued, its a one-in and one and done from Chord.

I worked for Dan for 16 years and did most of the CD / DVD mods. (Sony, Denon, Oppo) I'm sure I did your 9100!
I still have the MW Sony 5400ES and love it.

 

[The Jester]

I tend to keep audio equipment for many years and have a one-in, one-out discipline of upgrading. That said, I haven’t owned or tested every generation of CD transports. I previously used (and still own) the Dan Wright ModWright Sony 9100ES Signature Truth which I felt handily beat other flagships from dCS and Meridian at the time. The M Scaler itself improved the DAVE so the Blu Mk II is an ideal solution. And seeing that it was discontinued, its a one-in and one and done from Chord.

Hard to tell I guess, the later MScaler could contain some minor improvements but then again could be offset by the CD drive being better connected internally … direct i2S etc vs Toslink/coax …

 

[GuiltyRocker]

On that note, I listened to my DAVE+Blu Mk II via CD for the first time in many months and fell in love with my DAVE all over again. As some of you may or may not know, I have one of the largest known private collections of rare and out of print classical CD recordings and that’s why I purchased the Blu Mk II. The realization for me tonight again was that the hundreds of thousands man-hours and dollars invested in trying to fix USB steaming audio were down a dirt road (from the SGM Extreme to Sonore to Innuos to SoTM). I realize the Blu Mk II is a discontinued product and others have expressed their opinions but I salute Rob Watts for his work because it was ahead of its time.

I still pop in my CDs and route them to the M scaler via TosLink, I love sitting there and letting albums run through, instead of neurotically changing tracks like a lot of people do these days streaming, it's a horrible way to listen. Staying put while listening to CDs is still awesome, kudos to you.

 

[Meridian7]

It's not only ASR going all-in for the {measurement = all that (can) matter = holy truth = the rest is BS} philosophy.
Gene Dellasala has both knowledge and special measuring gear, having him convinced that cables don't matter, so he felt obligated to debunk 'cables-matter'.
Then again there is overpriced overrated snake oil out there and psychological bias exist too, one can't really argue with that as a given.
So that sets the premise for a very difficult conversation between convictions.

ASR and Gene make same error: it is their very own psychological bias that they covered every affecting aspect of nature with their measure. The bold claim that nothing can exist outside their scope of attention is an utter non scientifically attitude.

After that post, honesty obliges me to link this rather recent vid in defense of Gene Dellasala. Has he changed a bit over time?

 

[GOKYO]

I don't know if this thread is appropriate for Cable. If it doesn't work I will delete it
"Tara Labs The 0.8 Onboard xlr Interconnect"

The sound density is extremely high, full and watery, and has a great sense of weight.
The lines of the instrument are significantly strengthened, and the high frequencies are refined and rounded.
Rich vocals, sincere emotions, very real
Although it is a copper wire, it is not dull at all and the background is extremely black.

It is not at the same level as the 1.TWL spirit II RCA and 2.Cardas clear reflection xlr that I have used before (of course the price is also very different)
The signal line characteristics of Taralabs are particularly well matched with Chord Dave, which can complement the weight and thickness.
I highly recommend giving it a try

yes cables matter!Nordost Valhalla IC/Evolution Acoustics power cord with mine.I also use the DAVE in DAC mode into Airtight ATM 300b amp