[STR-1]

  If you're noticing changes in your SQ during the late hours when nothing else is running, you likely will benefit from some sort of mains conditioning.  I know of several including bigfatpaulie who have noticed an improvement in SQ with their DAVE and a PS Audio AC regenerator.  I also know of one person who felt his AC regenerator (a P10) robbed his speaker system which includes a DAVE of dynamics and didn't feel the tradeoff was worthwhile and so he moved away from it.  The one area where AC regenerators may be a necessity is if you have wildly fluctuating mains voltages since an AC regenerator will tightly regulate this.  It would be ideal if you could try before you buy.

romaz, thanks for this.  I should be taking delivery of a loan PS Audio P3 today, so will soon learn what if any benefit it can bring to the Dave.  I've not tested my mains so do not know if it has wildly swinging voltages.  Yes, things do sound cleaner at night and that probably does have something to do with a cleaner more stable mains supply over the late/early hours.  But I think some of it is probably also due to being able to concentrate more on the music as things are quite, lights are subdued (sometimes even turned off altogether), I'm relaxed and the other senses have largely closed down.  Anyway, I'll give the P3 a good try out.
 
The UK distributor of HFC cables has now returned from holiday and I will speak with him about either a demo or (better still) a loan of one of the cheaper mains cables.
 
Thank you also for your comments on the DHC cables.  Can you confirm that the Silver Complement would add extra detail, transparency and dynamism compared to the HE1000 stock cable (SE), while not taking anything away from the bass?  I did look at your post mentioning those other cables but if they only get me half way between the HE1000 stock and the Complement, for the money I think I would prefer to go for the latter.  Thanks again

 

[STR-1]

  Ah the P3...  Yes, thanks everyone for bringing my premature selling of it to the attention of all
 
I purchased the P3 originally for use with a tube amp.  I had an issue with a noise floor with it and the P3 quickly resolved the issue.  I live in a condo downtown and the AC in my building seems to fluctuate pretty heavily not to mention that there are literally hundreds of devices plugged in in the building all adding to line noise.  The P3 handled all this nicely.  
 
Enter the DAVE.  I am trying to make my system physically smaller (condo life, am I right?) so along with the tube amp selling I listed the P3 because, after all, the DAVE is immune to everything before it.  Not the case, I assure you.  
 
Other feel that the PS Audio units don't make a difference, and they may not.  I think if you are starting with decent power the P3 is probably not going to add anything for you.  If, however, you are in a case like mine the P3 is well worth exploring.

bigfatpaulie, thanks for that.  I'm getting a loan P3 today, so will soon learn what it can do for my Dave.  cheers

 

[rkt31]

I also agree . while dave is the best headphone amp still any dac to shine to its full potential a good stereo speaker system is imho needed. I have few opus 3 records digital recordings which were transferred from tapes. I think the information contained on tape may be worth more than even dxd , may be due to the random nature of analog medium ( this hiss) which acts as some kind of natural dither to allow far more information to be recorded. also tape has natural roll off and saturation characteristics which make it sound pleasing. some of the opus 3 recordings are extremely natural and very transparent despite on tape. upcoming Davina will be useful in extracting last bit of information from these tapes. imho digital format is like a channel which always run full ( harsh clipping) tape is like a pipe which is not flowing full.

 

[x RELIC x]

I also agree . while dave is the best headphone amp still any dac to shine to its full potential a good stereo speaker system is imho needed. I have few opus 3 records digital recordings which were transferred from tapes. I think the information contained on tape may be worth more than even dxd , may be due to the random nature of analog medium ( this hiss) which acts as some kind of natural dither to allow far more information to be recorded. also tape has natural roll off and saturation characteristics which make it sound pleasing. some of the opus 3 recordings are extremely natural and very transparent despite on tape. upcoming Davina will be useful in extracting last bit of information from these tapes. imho digital format is like a channel which always run full ( harsh clipping) tape is like a pipe which is not flowing full.

Tape sounds better because it's analogue (continuous data), not digital (sampled data). Plainly, sampled data doesn't have all the initial information in place and the DAC needs to fill in the gaps when re-creating the original analogue signal. There's no voodo with hiss. It's simply an artifact of the medium. Believe me, if you could get an analogue recording with zero hiss you would prefer it if you value how things sound in real life (transparency). Look at it like this, people with tinnitus never value the constant hiss/ringing they hear over every day sounds, and they never think it adds a pleasing sound to what they hear.

In your pipe analogy it's actually the opposite regarding information. Analogue is full, digital is not... Presuming no clipping in the mastering.

 

[ToroFiestaSol]

In response to all the quotes regarding my questions about Dave's PSU and PCB design:
 
When the owner of the forum and even a Chord employee take such an effort to answer, I call it:
 
"Politically correct feeding frenzy"
 
Good luck with the sales thread
 
Hope you guys have a nice day

 

[Sunya]

Your question was basically why the DAVE has a crappy PSU, without offering any arguments to sustain this opinion of yours.

 

[miketlse]

  In response to all the quotes regarding my questions about Dave's PSU and PCB design:
 
When the owner of the forum and even a Chord employee take such an effort to answer, I call it:
 
"Politically correct feeding frenzy"
 
Good luck with the sales thread
 
Hope you guys have a nice day

 
Why 'politically correct'?
 
In your initial posts you also felt the need to include the work 'fkn' in as many sentences as possible, in an attempt to add 'force' to your statements - there is no need for such words if you want to have a calm rational discussion with people.
 
The sun is out, and it is a nice day.

 

[rkt31]

x RELIC x, even the tape contains micro particles which are randomly distributed therefore at micro level even the tape sound theoretically is not continuous but yes it is more continuous than digital. in digital there are fixed samples of fixed resolution per second but in tape there is no such fixed thing due to random distribution of particles which is what makes tape different. hissing ( less or more depending upon mainly the size of tape) is basically the due to inherent randomness of analog process. you can't eliminate randomness from analog process and thus can't fully remove hiss.

 

[rkt31]

digital is like open channel flow because overflowing (clipping) loses information permanently while analog is partial pipe flow because even when the flow is under slight pressure there is no loss information only redistribution of information. anyway the analogy does no matter much but analog sound recording ( wide tapes) is like a medium or large format negative in which you never know how much information it holds. you keep in I increasing the scanner resolution and get better results. similarly you keep on using better adc and get better digital output of tape. so it means if an old digital recording was made at 48khz it is stuck at that rate/information but if it was done on high quality tape you always have the option to use a better adc in future. but that said both mediums have pros and cons. with the advent of recent chord DACs digital is never behind and even better in many aspect specially the noise and dynamic range

 

[rkt31]

DACs like Dave will always have upper hand in native digital recordings beacuase vinyl of such recordings will need a dac . and even in case of native analog recordings dave will do at par or better beacuase transfer to vinyl from tape will have have its own losses ( equalization etc) vs direct digital conversion from tape using high end adc ( Davina in future) and then playing back with dave.

 

[Mython]

digital is like open channel flow because overflowing (clipping) loses information permanently while analog is partial pipe flow because even when the flow is under slight pressure there is no loss information only redistribution of information. anyway the analogy does no matter much but analog sound recording ( wide tapes) is like a medium or large format negative in which you never know how much information it holds. you keep in I increasing the scanner resolution and get better results. similarly you keep on using better adc and get better digital output of tape. so it means if an old digital recording was made at 48khz it is stuck at that rate/information but if it was done on high quality tape you always have the option to use a better adc in future. but that said both mediums have pros and cons. with the advent of recent chord DACs digital is never behind and even better in many aspect specially the noise and dynamic range

 
 
It'll be interesting to see what reel-to-reel uber-analogue die-hard audiophiles make of a DAVINA ADC => DAVE DAC  recording & playback chain, in terms of the subjective results, vs. their reel-to-reel recording & playback chain.
 
 
...actually, let me re-phrase that:
 
 
It'll be interesting to see what reel-to-reel uber-analogue die-hard audiophiles make of a DAVINA ADC => DAVE DAC  recording & playback chain, in terms of the subjective results, vs. their reel-to-reel recording & playback chain, when blind-tested.

 

[theppd]

Gentlemen, as a current owner of Auralic Vega I'm looking for a ~$12k DAC while I can't take them all to my place, would like to get some recommendations. Which one of those on the market could sound as the Vega but on completely another level? I do like Vega's signature for sure and would like to pick top tier dac which will remind me of technicolor sound of Vega. What bothers me regarding the Dave that I constantly read the he sounds a bit rounded. Which I'm afraid is not my cup of tea...

 

[Jawed]

Well, hiss is a natural phenomenon for tape, though tape is wholly unnatural when compared to our environment. At least that's what I think that you're saying.


But take hiss IS nostalgia! I have no problem with it in my ears of the recording and/or the songs support that magic which only comes from 2" tape.

LOL - nevermind the hiss - what about the magnetic 'bleed-through' of the signal, from one tape layer to the next, on the spool, creating a pre-emptive quiet 'echo' on some recordings?

Here is an example - and this is actually a very nicely-recorded album, in other respects:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwf844beG5E

Ry Cooder's Paris Texas is another example. Originally I thought it was print through across the grooves on my vinyl copy. I'm not even sure if that is a real thing. But the CD issue revealed the tape problem.

 

[romaz]

Gentlemen, as a current owner of Auralic Vega I'm looking for a ~$12k DAC while I can't take them all to my place, would like to get some recommendations. Which one of those on the market could sound as the Vega but on completely another level? I do like Vega's signature for sure and would like to pick top tier dac which will remind me of technicolor sound of Vega. What bothers me regarding the Dave that I constantly read the he sounds a bit rounded. Which I'm afraid is not my cup of tea...

I know the Vega well and "technicolor" is a good descriptor although part of the vividness and sharpness that you hear with the Vega is digital grain, at least that was my impression.  If you like to watch television with your monitor set to "vivid" instead of "natural" or "neutral" and your sharpness set to "high", you may not initially like the DAVE but I believe you will adjust as the DAVE is very capable of presenting a very rich, deep  and detailed bouquet of colors but in a very tonally accurate way.
 
When I first heard the DAVE, I also felt it sounded a bit rounded compared to anything I had previously heard including my already very smooth TotalDac and so the DAVE makes many DACs sound dry in comparison.  As I listened more, however, I found this liquidity to more accurately mirror the real sounds we hear every day.  Even a loud and explosive thunderstorm has a roundedness to its sound and so I found myself adjusting to the DAVE's presentation very easily and concluded that my previous DACs were less natural in their presentation.  What you should know is that this roundedness does not mean soft and less dynamic.  Because the noise floor of the DAVE is so low (for sure, lower than the Vega), dynamic contrasts actually feel all the more dramatic.  From out of nowhere, when called upon, this DAC can hit very hard.  If you are a headphone listener and should you plug your headphone directly into the DAVE, compared to any outboard amp, you will notice a level of speed and agility that is unmatched.  Ideally, you should hear it for yourself and while it's not practical to hear every DAC, I think you should make a special effort to hear this one.
 
If you find that the DAVE does not suit you, an alternative to your Vega with a similar signature would be something like the Aqua La Scala Mk 2.

 

[theppd]

  I know the Vega well and "technicolor" is a good descriptor although part of the vividness and sharpness that you hear with the Vega is digital grain, at least that was my impression.  If you like to watch television with your monitor set to "vivid" instead of "natural" or "neutral" and your sharpness set to "high", you may not initially like the DAVE but I believe you will adjust as the DAVE is very capable of presenting a very rich, deep  and detailed bouquet of colors but in a very tonally accurate way.
 
When I first heard the DAVE, I also felt it sounded a bit rounded compared to anything I had previously heard including my already very smooth TotalDac and so the DAVE makes many DACs sound dry in comparison.  As I listened more, however, I found this liquidity to more accurately mirror the real sounds we hear every day.  Even a loud and explosive thunderstorm has a roundedness to its sound and so I found myself adjusting to the DAVE's presentation very easily and concluded that my previous DACs were less natural in their presentation.  What you should know is that this roundedness does not mean soft and less dynamic.  Because the noise floor of the DAVE is so low (for sure, lower than the Vega), dynamic contrasts actually feel all the more dramatic.  From out of nowhere, when called upon, this DAC can hit very hard.  If you are a headphone listener and should you plug your headphone directly into the DAVE, compared to any outboard amp, you will notice a level of speed and agility that is unmatched.  Ideally, you should hear it for yourself and while it's not practical to hear every DAC, I think you should make a special effort to hear this one.
 
If you find that the DAVE does not suit you, an alternative to your Vega with a similar signature would be something like the Aqua La Scala Mk 2.

Romaz, thanks for such a thorough reply! Much appreciated! And have you heard the MSB Analogue? Is it on the same 'happy-sounding DAC' path as the Vega? Since basically I choose between the Dave / Analogue / or M1 from Bricasti. What I don't like initially from the latter is that it's a bit outdated already and the Analogue is sort of the beginning of the line from MSB which will bother me one day. While the Dave is the latest and greatest of those three. And Aqua is not quite in the same league in terms of appreciation of the brand history if you know what I mean.
BTW I also use the microRendu which I find an astonishing piece of gear!