CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[theveterans]

You should buy it from your friend for cheap (it’s old) and send it to Emm Labs to get it upgraded and basically get a new dac back .

I would try both BADA USB and directly via USB with some USB decrapfier in-between (you are however limited to 44/48 because dac2 is old ). I had a streamer with USB output and I tried that with DAC2 thought DAC2 sounded pretty good (not digital) with CD quality content.

Well, my friend partially wants to sell it AFAIK hehe. I don't know if EMM even supports upgrading it to the DAC2 V2 since it's already so old . It needs to have a complete overhaul since has the analog outputs and digital inputs are flipped top/bottom wise between the two models.

 

[chesebert]

Well, my friend partially wants to sell it AFAIK hehe. I don't know if EMM even supports upgrading it to the DAC2 V2 since it's already so old . It needs to have a complete overhaul since has the analog outputs and digital inputs are flipped top/bottom wise between the two models.

DAC2 is still supported and is upgradable directly to DAC2x v2. I didn’t make this up - answer came straight from them. Well I said you will basically get a new dac back.

 

[Reactcore]

Dave and DA2 are not in the same class in terms of sound quality. Dave simply lacks the kind of sound density, drive, dynamics and bass response that almost all high end dacs have. Dave sounds digital and most high end dacs do not.

Until you take it off the grid, put it on a rock solid accu battery with the lowest ESR cap buffer one can find straight on its amp section and feed it source data over double industrial fibers.

This thing sounds nothing like you described

 

[Rayon]

Recently sold a Holo May KTE because I lacked space for it in my new location. Have been using my Hugo 2 as a DAC to my Armageddon, does a decent job but cant help but feel I am missing that special sauce of the May. The DAVE has always interested me due to its quirky design and reputation and I cant help but wonder how great the step up from a Hugo 2 would be for headphone-only use.

I was able to A-B Hugo 2 and Dave in a quiet shop for 2h or so. The difference was quite dependent on headphones. I tried with some 10 headphones and results varied quite a lot. The next day I took my Utopia to the shop and it was immediate night and day difference. Hugo 2 was ball like stage in my head while Dave was representing music as shapes around me in the room.

Said that, Dave was also kind of disappointment in some ways. It was like music was hollow somehow and I had thought in my head "This is it?". When I got May, everything fall into place. It was just as grand, but sound is somehow more real. Combine that with HQPlayer and May becomes swiss army knife of TOTL sound, which you can tune to synergize with the rest of your setup and current taste.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

There is nothing "digital" about the DAVE, this is a just a troll that keep spewing nonsense in this chat, the DAVE is so good that such trolls have to keep coming to chats such as this to keep disparaging the DAC. If it's so bad, MOVE ON! . Yet you keep trying to convince others it's so "digital" . Hilarious.

 

[Meridian7]

One of dave's + mscaler assets is transients and those are served the best by bit perfect for the time being, imho a prerequisite often overlooked.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

Do you only listen to live recordings then?

No, but I get the sensation of live music with my system, I do have a live jazz recording on SACD that is just incredible.

 

[Reactcore]

Now that im on batteries off grid, i looked over my other mods in Dave again and bypassed its power input LC filter (without any mains RF to filter its not needed anymore) this further increased drivepower and headphone control and gave more overall energy to all sounds.

..but i noticed on sharp recordings that they also became sharper due to that.

Then per experiment i layed double solid core wiring for + and - 15v from my Lemo connector straight to the analog section on the cap buffer mod bypassing Dave's PCB tracks which run below the display.

This gave a suprisingly big softness to everything.. like taking the sparkle off the highs and transients. But.. how?? im free from the mains.. how can this change so radically.

But lyrics and voices became buttery smooth and again better understandable. So i tried and added a second thick solid power ground wire leaving the original stranded wire in place. This brought back the speed and clarity but also a very tiny bit of sharpness with harscher recordings.

So hmm what else can i do. Ah, exchange the stranded ground wire on Dave's PCB power input also with a solid core.

Ohboy this took sharpness away that i didnt realized i still had even after all my other mods. Depth became more noticable and texture realisticly rounded and smooth but without any clarity penalty. It sounds like i never heard before and im spoiled already.

It shows, like Mscaler, Dave's own FPGA generates processing noise which bleeds through the shared groundplane to the sensitive analog section.

With adding solid bypass wiring i devided the power feed groundplane currents between left side 5v + gnd for digital and on the right side both 15v and gnd for analog.

Its still not as ideal as totally separating analog from digital which i cant do, but damn this took my Dave to a higher reality level. There i go again through my music collection being amazed everytime

Sorry, this should be posted on my mod thread but headfi wont let me post after last post is mine

 

[chesebert]

Now that im on batteries off grid, i looked over my other mods in Dave again and bypassed its power input LC filter (without any mains RF to filter its not needed anymore) this further increased drivepower and headphone control and gave more overall energy to all sounds.

..but i noticed on sharp recordings that they also became sharper due to that.

Then per experiment i layed double solid core wiring for + and - 15v from my Lemo connector straight to the analog section on the cap buffer mod bypassing Dave's PCB tracks which run below the display.

This gave a suprisingly big softness to everything.. like taking the sparkle off the highs and transients. But.. how?? im free from the mains.. how can this change so radically.

But lyrics and voices became buttery smooth and again better understandable. So i tried and added a second thick solid power ground wire leaving the original stranded wire in place. This brought back the speed and clarity but also a very tiny bit of sharpness with harscher recordings.

So hmm what else can i do. Ah, exchange the stranded ground wire on Dave's PCB power input also with a solid core.

Ohboy this took sharpness away that i didnt realized i still had even after all my other mods. Depth became more noticable and texture realisticly rounded and smooth but without any clarity penalty. It sounds like i never heard before and im spoiled already.

It shows, like Mscaler, Dave's own FPGA generates processing noise which bleeds through the shared groundplane to the sensitive analog section.

With adding solid bypass wiring i devided the power feed groundplane currents between left side 5v + gnd for digital and on the right side both 15v and gnd for analog.

Its still not as ideal as totally separating analog from digital which i cant do, but damn this took my Dave to a higher reality level. There i go again through my music collection being amazed everytime

Sorry, this should be posted on my mod thread but headfi wont let me post after last post is mine

Most modern dacs are good enough from a digital processing perspective. The true differentiators are power supply, clock design, clock distribution, power delivery, RF noise control, ground plane noise, input jitter control, output design, board quality, layout, vibration control, most of these are analog problems and cost money to get right.

This is exactly what I’ve been saying—now you’re finally identifying and addressing the shortcomings in Dave’s engineering. However, when I purchase a DAC, I expect it to sound great right out of the box with just a basic $2 power cable. If I want to enhance the sound, I can always make further improvements like better cabling and conditioner, but it should sound great from the start. I don’t want to have to modify, tweak, add a $5k+ external power supply, or be required to incorporate numerous magnets, a $1000 power cable, $2k worth of conditioning, and other accessories to fix something that should have been properly designed initially.

 

[Jawed]

Then per experiment i layed double solid core wiring for + and - 15v from my Lemo connector straight to the analog section on the cap buffer mod bypassing Dave's PCB tracks which run below the display.

This gave a suprisingly big softness to everything.. like taking the sparkle off the highs and transients. But.. how?? im free from the mains.. how can this change so radically.

But lyrics and voices became buttery smooth and again better understandable. So i tried and added a second thick solid power ground wire leaving the original stranded wire in place. This brought back the speed and clarity but also a very tiny bit of sharpness with harscher recordings.

So hmm what else can i do. Ah, exchange the stranded ground wire on Dave's PCB power input also with a solid core.

Ohboy this took sharpness away that i didnt realized i still had even after all my other mods. Depth became more noticable and texture realisticly rounded and smooth but without any clarity penalty. It sounds like i never heard before and im spoiled already.

It shows, like Mscaler, Dave's own FPGA generates processing noise which bleeds through the shared groundplane to the sensitive analog section.

With adding solid bypass wiring i devided the power feed groundplane currents between left side 5v + gnd for digital and on the right side both 15v and gnd for analog.

Its still not as ideal as totally separating analog from digital which i cant do, but damn this took my Dave to a higher reality level. There i go again through my music collection being amazed everytime

Sorry, this should be posted on my mod thread but headfi wont let me post after last post is mine

Back in October I suggested:

I thought of a mod you might try @Reactcore : As far as I can tell the +/-15V rails are solely used for the output circuit.

You could run a pair of "thick" wires directly from the SMPS (bypassing the molex connector) for these two rails, across all of the circuit board and directly to the +/- side of the bypass capacitors. Maybe twisted over their length.

You might get a lower impedance for these two rails?

I'm guessing you can do this without having to cut any existing wires or PCB tracks. I suppose a new Molex connection is required so that only 0 and +5V is transmitted into the PCB. Not sure of the best way to do that.

Did you twist these additional wires?

Anyway, glad to see that there's been another major step forwards.

 

[Reactcore]

This is exactly what I’ve been saying—now you’re finally identifying and addressing the shortcomings in Dave’s engineering. However, when I purchase a DAC, I expect it to sound great right out of the box with just a basic $2 power cable. If I want to enhance the sound, I can always make further improvements like better cabling and conditioner, but it should sound great from the start. I don’t want to have to modify, tweak, add a $5k+ external power supply, or be required to incorporate numerous magnets, a $1000 power cable, $2k worth of conditioning, and other accessories to fix something that should have been properly designed initially.

I have to agree.

But when i first got Dave i still was amazed by its resolving and holograpic transient performance that few other DAC's have, even being overshadowed by its sensitivity to noise as i discovered later.

Still im happy i holded on to it, seeing its capabillities and improved on it, making its digital specialty perform as it was meant to. Thanks to all peoples and Rob's postings here.

 

[ecwl]

There is nothing "digital" about the DAVE, this is a just a troll that keep spewing nonsense in this chat, the DAVE is so good that such trolls have to keep coming to chats such as this to keep disparaging the DAC. If it's so bad, MOVE ON! . Yet you keep trying to convince others it's so "digital" . Hilarious.

I think I have said it before on this forum that some people just like R2R DAC sound. That is my polite version of the comment. My honest opinion is that R2R DAC introduces measurable harmonic distortions that people find euphoric and prefer. Sometimes I wonder if Rob Watts would add this kind of distortion filter digitally into the DAC but I realized Rob has his own vision and principles so I think that’s not likely.

I have definitely heard Chord DACs sound “digital” when paired with a noisy USB source. And some of those people who own these noisy sources spent tons of money on their source, they’re more likely to blame the DAC than the source. Euphonic distortions in a non-Chird DAC can sometimes mask these noisy USB sources so I do think some people are making “fair” comparisons of Chord vs non-Chord DACs from their perspective.
I think it’s okay for me to disagree with them and for them to disagree with me. I just don’t always understand why they post so often in chord forums since I rarely post in non-chord forums with my opinions.

 

[icnaiwhimor1975]

The Dave is indeed a significant step up in every aspect of the sound. Detail, speed, holographic spacing, bass, vocals, midrange, etc.

I sign every word

 

[GuiltyRocker]

I think I have said it before on this forum that some people just like R2R DAC sound. That is my polite version of the comment. My honest opinion is that R2R DAC introduces measurable harmonic distortions that people find euphoric and prefer. Sometimes I wonder if Rob Watts would add this kind of distortion filter digitally into the DAC but I realized Rob has his own vision and principles so I think that’s not likely.

I have definitely heard Chord DACs sound “digital” when paired with a noisy USB source. And some of those people who own these noisy sources spent tons of money on their source, they’re more likely to blame the DAC than the source. Euphonic distortions in a non-Chird DAC can sometimes mask these noisy USB sources so I do think some people are making “fair” comparisons of Chord vs non-Chord DACs from their perspective.
I think it’s okay for me to disagree with them and for them to disagree with me. I just don’t always understand why they post so often in chord forums since I rarely post in non-chord forums with my opinions.

I agree, however, on the case of the R2Rs, I think it has more to do with poor transient resolution, most R2Rs are just trying to use resistor ladders to reproduce the digital signal, as the voltage gets smaller and smaller from the most significant bit to the least significant bit there are a ton of issues as the resistors can never match. Then there is the case that the sampled data just cannot be reproduced with transient accuracy, the digital signal looks like a ladder instead of a wave, that is where oversampling done properly takes things to the next level, because you add buffer points between the samples smoothing out the signal and having more accuracy in terms of predicting there the timing of the transients are, not too late, or too early. You can argue that an R2R DAC's strength is that it doesn't have a noise shaper, but all the other issues are crazy. The reason they sound "soft' and "warm" is because they have poor timing and transient accuracy, that's my take. I just cannot stand those DACs, but, I don't go to their forums to talk nonsense about those DACs to people that love their sound, I don't understand the need some people have to do that and then talk about other DACs instead

 

[Reactcore]

Back in October I suggested:




Did you twist these additional wires?

Anyway, glad to see that there's been another major step forwards.

I must have missed that paying better attention i could have had this bliss earlier hmm i guess you have done these things yourself in secret lol

If not, you should come have a listen