CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[Christer]

Some people really have no idea what music really is and what it really sounds like, I corne from a musical family and play a musical instrument myself, so yes I know. The DAVE even now is head and shoulders better than most of what's out there, the only thing I haven't compared it to is Wadax .

Interesting , do you play an acoustic instrument or an amplified one?
I hope you are not using electric guitar or synth keyboard as reference points here ?
In my very strong opinion the only valid reference points in the context of HIFI can be unamplfied instruments and the human voice as HIFI test music material.
But outside of music, bird song and many other sounds in nature can be quite useful too.
My personal daily reference point is the piano I have in my music room, and quite regularly two of my friends playing acoustic guitars. My humble HIFI system includes a Qutest /HMS a 900 watts per channel MF amp and a pair of electostatic speakers in a room that can reproduce recorded music to an enjoyable standard.I know Dave would be a noticable improvement, but it is imo so horrendously priced and not worth anywhere near its horrible price to me.
Cheers CC

 

[GuiltyRocker]

Interesting , do you play an acoustic instrument or an amplified one?
I hope you are not using electric guitar or synth keyboard as reference points here ?
In my very strong opinion the only valid reference points in the context of HIFI can be unamplfied instruments and the human voice as HIFI test music material.
But outside of music, bird song and many other sounds in nature can be quite useful too.
My personal daily reference point is the piano I have in my music room, and quite regularly two of my friends playing acoustic guitars. My humble HIFI system includes a Qutest /HMS a 900 watts per channel MF amp and a pair of electostatic speakers in a room that can reproduce recorded music to an enjoyable standard.I know Dave would be a noticable improvement, but it is imo so horrendously priced and not worth anywhere near its horrible price to me.
Cheers CC

I started with a 12 string acoustic guitar, I play 6 string acoustic and electric guitars. I do agree that unamplified instruments gives you the real sound of music, I do have an amp for my electric guitar and some pedals, those I don't really consider the standard for music. I have been exposed to a great deal of unamplified music over my life. When I go to events and stores and I talk to people about what they consider "Hifi" it is mostly overly soft, too laid back dead-sounding stuff. Real life music in my opinion is visceral and explosive, it is bright when instruments are bright, and soft and rich when the instruments are such. The instruments variation is something I don't really get from other DACs, everything to me sounds the same, and that leads to me not caring at all emotionally about what I am hearing. Just recently I went to a "high-end" dealer with speakers at the $650k USD-level, the sound was so dead, flat and all the same with no instrument variations that it was just ridiculous, it is what it is.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

@Rob Watts Any updates on the Quartet Scaler?

 

[icnaiwhimor1975]

I bought it
I finally bought chord dave
Now I'm in your club too

 

[Reactcore]

I bought it
I finally bought chord dave
Now I'm in your club too

Poor guy.. long sleepless nights ahead where he cant break loose from audio bliss

 

[icnaiwhimor1975]

Poor guy.. long sleepless nights ahead where he cant break loose from audio bliss

and I still haven't found a single photo of the board from the back side with a screen from TT2 on the Internet to see the IR receiver diagram

I'll have to buy another TT2 to just see this...

 

[GuiltyRocker]

and I still haven't found a single photo of the board from the back side with a screen from TT2 on the Internet to see the IR receiver diagram

I'll have to buy another TT2 to just see this...

 

[Jxnkz]

Would be nice if Chord is launching a good streamer for the Dave / TT2

 

[Red Rd Wolf]

Would be nice if Chord is launching a good streamer for the Dave / TT2

My opinion is that there are too many very good, dedicated streamers available for Chord to invest in custom code and licensing with the streaming providers. I have the flagship Eversolo and love it's integration with Amazon as well as Tidal and others. My favorite feature of the Chord Dave is that it is simply a DAC, allowing me to focus my money on dedicated equipment. Streamers will change very rapidly. I would rather not invest in a bundled streamer as I replace mine frequently when new technology and chips are released.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

My opinion is that there are too many very good, dedicated streamers available for Chord to invest in custom code and licensing with the streaming providers. I have the flagship Eversolo and love it's integration with Amazon as well as Tidal and others. My favorite feature of the Chord Dave is that it is simply a DAC, allowing me to focus my money on dedicated equipment. Streamers will change very rapidly. I would rather not invest in a bundled streamer as I replace mine frequently when new technology and chips are released.

Great points.

 

[Ike1985]

Mathematically, the cross-feed is identical to analogue cross-feed from the 1980s. But the digital implementation is the key here, and doing it perfectly transparently is no simple task - that's why the digital cross-feed on all my designs uniquely run at very high sample rates and uses noise shaping for all the internal nodes.

Is it possible to create a crossfeed box so Chord Crossfeed can be used with other DACs. It's such a powerful feature, I would like to try it with my other DACs as well. I own Dave, Hugo2 and MPD-8. Could I use Hugo2/DAVE before the MPD-8 send a crossfed signal into the MPD-8?

 

[Rob Watts]

@Rob Watts Any updates on the Quartet Scaler?

Over Christmas it's been very much a case of 3 steps forward, two steps back, with the PCB. I am trying to do something never done before, so it's proving challenging. Anyhow, the PCB revisions are done, so fingers crossed this is the final version.

On the code side, the work Daniel did on the unlimited filter accuracy revealed a possible improvement, so that has been designed but needs implementing in the next few weeks.

Is it possible to create a crossfeed box so Chord Crossfeed can be used with other DACs. It's such a powerful feature, I would like to try it with my other DACs as well. I own Dave, Hugo2 and MPD-8. Could I use Hugo2/DAVE before the MPD-8 send a crossfed signal into the MPD-8?

Trouble is that cross-feed is implemented at 768kHz, so that noise shaping can be used. Getting other DACs to work at 768k isn't easy. Also, the benefits of this high accuracy implementation (depth, detail resolution and elimination of noise floor modulation) won't be so obvious on other DACs as they are already seriously compromised in that regard anyway.

 

[Meridian7]

Dave is not only an iteration towards authentic music instruments. I mainly listen EDM/rave where there is not really a goal of live instruments to represent. With EDM there is not coming close to the real stuff so is Daves talent wasted there, one could ask?

You give Dave, as if it's a cook, some ingredients (samples) and the cook will churn out a meal for you. The Dave cook is a real wizard regardless of there being authenticism to reach or not, it's making a meal of wonder and delight nonetheless. It makes beats captivating and hypnotising, bass textures galore, the highs popping with character...and so on, probably the edm maker himself never heard his own works this way, this flavoured and engaging. The Dave + mscaler owner might be the first to witness a rendering of beep bab samples in that particular way, a privileged experience.

The draw back of this is that same songs in the car deeply disappoint and you cant simply share a song link thinking you share a vibe experience

 

[GuiltyRocker]

Dave is not only an iteration towards authentic music instruments. I mainly listen EDM/rave where there is not really a goal of live instruments to represent. With EDM there is not coming close to the real stuff so is Daves talent wasted there, one could ask?

You give Dave, as if it's a cook, some ingredients (samples) and the cook will churn out a meal for you. The Dave cook is a real wizard regardless of there being authenticism to reach or not, it's making a meal of wonder and delight nonetheless. It makes beats captivating and hypnotising, bass textures galore, the highs popping with character...and so on, probably the edm maker himself never heard his own works this way, this flavoured and engaging. The Dave + mscaler owner might be the first to witness a rendering of beep bab samples in that particular way, a privileged experience.

The draw back of this is that same songs in the car deeply disappoint and you cant simply share a song link thinking you share a vibe experience

Makes sense, if it makes digital music sound very close to the real thing, I imagine everything else will also sound better, including synthetic instruments.

 

[Ike1985]

Dave is not only an iteration towards authentic music instruments. I mainly listen EDM/rave where there is not really a goal of live instruments to represent. With EDM there is not coming close to the real stuff so is Daves talent wasted there, one could ask?

You give Dave, as if it's a cook, some ingredients (samples) and the cook will churn out a meal for you. The Dave cook is a real wizard regardless of there being authenticism to reach or not, it's making a meal of wonder and delight nonetheless. It makes beats captivating and hypnotising, bass textures galore, the highs popping with character...and so on, probably the edm maker himself never heard his own works this way, this flavoured and engaging. The Dave + mscaler owner might be the first to witness a rendering of beep bab samples in that particular way, a privileged experience.

The draw back of this is that same songs in the car deeply disappoint and you cant simply share a song link thinking you share a vibe experience

Yea and at 6-7k its a freaking steal rn even if its a decade old or whatever, glad I waited.