CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[NYanakiev]

Ok after some listening letting it deplete with Dave connected and recharging, heres my findings sofar.

On a full charge i played for almost 11 hours until the +15v battery part depleted first i measured the cells in that part and found all cells to be 3,1v except one that discharged under 2,9v which is not good for it, the total of those 5 cells was still about 15,4v.

I think i will change de zenerdiodes in the 15v protection circuits to make it switchoff Dave at 15,5v to prevent possible cell degradation.

So i switched on the charger while playing, which is actually just hard connecting the PSU's via relays to Dave and batteries.
Nice i heard no 'pop' sound at all.

The massive authority and bass performance in the sound remained the same due to the batteries energy buffer keeping connected.

But Lol.. i just gave way to mains RF to enter Dave via the charger and instantly hear a bit of the smoothness being covered by treble glare and this fake 'hifi' brightness. Its fun to be able to switch RF in and out with one button press. (Charger on/off)

Having listened to more music i can say i never want to go without batteries anymore.
Its real obvious that, like Rob said so many times, having reference 'car' battery power is the best to have. But it must not use a regulating DC-DC stage like Triode user mentioned about another user's battery experiment that failed vs a linear PSU. No it must be raw energy with all current reserve available and lowest ESR coupling.

The powerful resonances of sounds and instruments this brings, not to mention deepest bass creep into my bones.. its just so touching my soul.

My cap mods stay in as i know they keep contributing to voltage stabillity on Dave's amp section after all contacts and Dave's PCB track resistances. And the dual optic link with Mscaler can truly show what total isolation does.

So next is designing the Choral battery housing. Im thinking to also make the charge PSU in Choral style. In all cases it will stay apart from the battery section for maximum isolation (not even an unconnected mains wire entering the battery casing)

Now back to wonderfull music

Cheers!

I am so getting this done as well. My modded DAVE and Mscaler already sound incredible and taking the system fully off the mains will be the icing on the cake.

Thanks to @Reactcore's suggestion, I got a 2X RCA to 4.4 female extension lead and can now listen to IEMs as the cable is long enough.

Intended to listen to Traillii Ti for 15 minutes before heading out for work, turned to a 30+ minute listening session.
I feel zero temptation to do any further upgrades whatsoever- can only recommend people get their ears on a modded DAVE and Mscaler!!

 

[Whazzzup]

I do see a trend, the eu/ South Asia has some dirty mains issues it seems. At least compared to the T. More folks from these parts seem to need this stuff

 

[cedric79]

Letting go of two Shunyata Altaira Signal and 3 DeltaV3 grounding cables at great price, give me a shout if interested! i had superb results by grounding the Dave on its BNC output on the Altaira (the outputs have near zero Ohmic resistance to the AC ground, thus a great fit for the Altaira. Results were increase in imaging and massive drop in noise floor.

 

[theveterans]

I do see a trend, the eu/ South Asia has some dirty mains issues it seems. At least compared to the T. More folks from these parts seem to need this stuff

If you’ve seen their electric poles on the streets you’d easily understand why. It’s so bad that a dude in japan installed his own pole with a dedicated transformer that only powers his house

 

[GuiltyRocker]

What I noticed makes the most difference is getting your source clean and possibly off the mains, or using Toslink with the source. I got USB to match Toslink, but I was only able to do it using an iFi Zen Stream (which is low power) on Bix power battery and using WiFi instead of LAN, it sounds absolutely amazing. I can tell there is little to no noise floor modulation, Rob is right about using battery-powered USB sources, I took it further by having off the LAN port as well. The result is incredibly fast sound, the warmth of Toslink with ability to play DSD and everything else.

 

[chesebert]

PSA: Toslink is often a suboptimal choice for connecting digital gear. It’s 2025 and it’s time to move on.

Toslink uses an LED and receiver to convert electrical signals into optical signals and back to electrical. This conversion process introduces distortion, phase noise, and latency due to the imperfections of the LED’s response time and the photodiode sensitivity. Optical cables suffer from chromatic dispersion and modal dispersion, further degrading signal integrity.

While optical transmission eliminates electrical ground loops and EMI, the source’s power supply and clocking circuitry still introduce noise into the digital stream before it is converted to optical. Jitter is introduced in the transmission process due to inconsistent timing in the toslink output.

Toslink carries audio data using the S/PDIF protocol, which multiplexes both the clock and data within the same stream. This means the receiver must extract the clock from the data stream instead of having a dedicated clock line.

Since toslink does not carry a dedicated word clock and is not asynchronous, the dac must extract and reconstruct the clock using PLL (I don’t care what the manufacturer calls it for marketing purposes).

The PLL must track variations in the data stream timing, which introduces jitter and phase noise. The quality of the PLL in the dac determines how well this jitter is suppressed, but even high-quality PLLs struggle to achieve the precision of dedicated clocked systems or asynchronous system.

You may like how toslink sound in your system (I would say your digital is not well sorted if toslink sounds best), but if you compare toslink with asynchronous connection (USB and other proprietary protocols) from a good source you will hear toslink as having lack of resolution, spearing, lacking dynamics and other problems.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

PSA: Toslink is often a suboptimal choice for connecting digital gear. It’s 2025 and it’s time to move on.

Toslink uses an LED and receiver to convert electrical signals into optical signals and back to electrical. This conversion process introduces distortion, phase noise, and latency due to the imperfections of the LED’s response time and the photodiode sensitivity. Optical cables suffer from chromatic dispersion and modal dispersion, further degrading signal integrity.

While optical transmission eliminates electrical ground loops and EMI, the source’s power supply and clocking circuitry still introduce noise into the digital stream before it is converted to optical. Jitter is introduced in the transmission process due to inconsistent timing in the toslink output.

Toslink carries audio data using the S/PDIF protocol, which multiplexes both the clock and data within the same stream. This means the receiver must extract the clock from the data stream instead of having a dedicated clock line.

Since toslink does not carry a dedicated word clock and is not asynchronous, the dac must extract and reconstruct the clock using PLL (I don’t care what the manufacturer calls it for marketing purposes).

The PLL must track variations in the data stream timing, which introduces jitter and phase noise. The quality of the PLL in the dac determines how well this jitter is suppressed, but even high-quality PLLs struggle to achieve the precision of dedicated clocked systems or asynchronous system.

You may like how toslink sound in your system (I would say your digital is not well sorted if toslink sounds best), but if you compare toslink with asynchronous connection (USB and other proprietary protocols) from a good source you will hear toslink as having lack of resolution, spearing, lacking dynamics and other problems.

As usual I disagree with everything you say, I like Toslink and that's that, you like your other connections and that's fine, it's 2025 and I love Toslink

 

[theveterans]

PSA: Toslink is often a suboptimal choice for connecting digital gear. It’s 2025 and it’s time to move on.

Toslink uses an LED and receiver to convert electrical signals into optical signals and back to electrical. This conversion process introduces distortion, phase noise, and latency due to the imperfections of the LED’s response time and the photodiode sensitivity. Optical cables suffer from chromatic dispersion and modal dispersion, further degrading signal integrity.

While optical transmission eliminates electrical ground loops and EMI, the source’s power supply and clocking circuitry still introduce noise into the digital stream before it is converted to optical. Jitter is introduced in the transmission process due to inconsistent timing in the toslink output.

Toslink carries audio data using the S/PDIF protocol, which multiplexes both the clock and data within the same stream. This means the receiver must extract the clock from the data stream instead of having a dedicated clock line.

Since toslink does not carry a dedicated word clock and is not asynchronous, the dac must extract and reconstruct the clock using PLL (I don’t care what the manufacturer calls it for marketing purposes).

The PLL must track variations in the data stream timing, which introduces jitter and phase noise. The quality of the PLL in the dac determines how well this jitter is suppressed, but even high-quality PLLs struggle to achieve the precision of dedicated clocked systems or asynchronous system.

You may like how toslink sound in your system (I would say your digital is not well sorted if toslink sounds best), but if you compare toslink with asynchronous connection (USB and other proprietary protocols) from a good source you will hear toslink as having lack of resolution, spearing, lacking dynamics and other problems.

The glass quality is usually the bottleneck with Toslink but I do find it to sound really good except I can get even better presentation with USB and AES

 

[chesebert]

As usual I disagree with everything you say, I like Toslink and that's that, you like your other connections and that's fine, it's 2025 and I love Toslink

You are absolutely free to disagree with science and engineering. People disagree with science all the time.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

You are absolutely free to disagree with science and engineering. People disagree with science all the time.

Dude you're not the science and engineering guru here, you just state opinions, you're no scientist and you have zero authority here. I listen to Rob Watts who actually designs, he says and my ears confirm that Toslink is best, go listen to your USB or whatever it is you use.

 

[dguitarnut]

As I found out the hard way there are good and bad Toslink cables………..not going to point a finger at a certain included Toslink.

 

[559938]

The problem I see when declaring any one protocol superior to any other is that’s it’s (inevitably) lacking any context. For example, it’s entirely plausible that a listener would prefer a connection that produces higher frequency artefacts that give the false impression of more detail, if that listener’s system was rolled off in the top end, either because of cabling, electronics, speakers or the room.
So personal preference and individual set up will actually become the defining factors in what is good, better, or (the completely mythical) best, not the theoretical or technical reality of design.
So, it’s just one man’s opinion and so holds the weight of one person, the technical discussions are interesting and educational, but you just don’t know how that will play out in a system, in a room, with a pair of ears and a full suite of human perception.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

As I found out the hard way there are good and bad Toslink cables………..not going to point a finger at a certain included Toslink.

Like everything else it has it's plusses and minuses.

The problem I see when declaring any one protocol superior to any other is that’s it’s (inevitably) lacking any context. For example, it’s entirely plausible that a listener would prefer a connection that produces higher frequency artefacts that give the false impression of more detail, if that listener’s system was rolled off in the top end, either because of cabling, electronics, speakers or the room.
So personal preference and individual set up will actually become the defining factors in what is good, better, or (the completely mythical) best, not the theoretical or technical reality of design.
So, it’s just one man’s opinion and so holds the weight of one person, the technical discussions are interesting and educational, but you just don’t know how that will play out in a system, in a room, with a pair of ears and a full suite of human perception.

True.

 

[Jawed]

Chord DACs don't use a PLL. Once the clock rate of an SPDIF source has been determined, there's no reason to lock to it.

 

[Jxnkz]

Can someone post their HQPlayer settings for the Dave? Thank you in advance