[EVOLVIST]

After my odd experience the other day with the Dave, I got to try the Hugo and the Mojo.

I quite liked the Hugo, it was no where near as dark as the Dave, but not as detailed or clear.

The Mojo was warmer and softer than the Hugo, I didn't like it.

Is the Hugo generally considered brighter than the Dave? What about the TT, as compared to the Dave?

What did you listen to this time on the Hugo and Mojo?

 

[mlxx]

What did you listen to this time on the Hugo and Mojo

 
Wanted to compare the same as on the Dave so did Thriller again as well as some of The Wall. Dave unit wasn't there so just going by memory. I could live with the Hugo, it was still a bit dark though, but me coming from a sabre probably isn't helping things. Had a play with the crossfeed also.

 

[Rob Watts]

Mr Watts, Is there any chance you may be releasing a DAC only version of the DAVE to maybe cut down on costs?

No plans to - there would be tiny savings, as the OP stage needs the performance as it currently is even when driving easy loads.
 
Rob

 

[analogmusic]

Thanks for clarifying. 
 
Dave is significantly better than Mojo and Hugo, but it does not mean one cannot enjoy music if you only had a Mojo.

I was driving yesterday for 90 minutes and really had a very musical time with Mojo in the car.
 
But still the 3D sound stage of Dave, more refined/more clarity, more musical, it is something worth buying, you only live once !

 

[Christer]

Yeah, I've wondered the same thing, in that if I'm just listening on cans what sort of vibratory action is going on around me to need a product to squelch the fuzzy warbles.

At any rate, I didn't get my DAVE today, because I guess the regular postman doesn't deliver anything but floppy envelopes. I'll have to wait at the house for the postman to ring twice.

So, in much defiance to Christer, tonight will be spent in a vacuum of no blow, nor little people, and no ladies of ill repute.

I'm sunk.

You could  practice the full moon anti-clockwise walk though.
Cheers Chris .

 

[GreenLeo]

You can post it on Life after Yggy or in Chord Mojo/Hugo/2Qute and Yggy thread to get some inputs for others who owned both.

Thanks for the reply, I've read the "Life after Yggy" thread. Somehow Yggy is highly regarded on that thread and both Yggy > Hugo and Yggy > Mojo seems to be the consenus there. However, Yggy seems to be a mediocre DAC on this thread when compare with the Mojo or the Hugo. This is the key reason why I am interested in the opinion of this thread.

 

[Rob Watts]

   
My own reservation against this kind of gear with this kind of price tags has a similar background: How can effective damping require such a sophisticated high-tech design with expensive materials and thousands of hours of development efforts? I strongly suspect that the same effect can be achieved with a cheap DIY design – maybe you just have to do some experiments to get this far or almost as far for a fraction of the asked price – which borders on usuries in my book.
 
I'm not even disputing the benefit from such damping tools, since some trustworthy Head-Fiers confirm it. But one thing I wonder: Is there also an effect in the case of pure headphone listening, or are the reports exclusively referring to speaker listening? In the latter case the benefit from damping against vibrations through solid-borne sound from the furniture on which the DAVE stands, which on its part is excited by air-borne sound waves from the speakers, is kind of plausible. The only question is how it can have an impact on the electronics and thus the analogue signal emitted by the DAVE. From what I know Rob acknowledges such a possiblity, and maybe he's willing to explain. But in the case of headphone listening, I don't see a possiblity of a furniture anywhere in a living/listening room not affected by aircraft or traffic noise to transfer some vibrations to the DAVE that are neither felt nor heard. So how is your take for this second scenario? Is the DAVE (without any moving parts in it) supposed to develop some vibrations itself that need to be dampened?

 
Dave, in common with all electronics, is (very slightly) microphonic. You can hear this using the AP - set it up so the -128 dB background noise from Dave is a roar from the AP loudspeaker monitor (that would be about 120 dB of gain), then tap Dave's PCB and you can hear tiny clicks through the loudspeaker. On headphones you can't hear it with the Nighthawks but you can just hear it with Noble Kaiser K10 IEM. Note if this was a valve or tube DAC or pre-amp the clicks would have been extremely audible.
 
So using Dave with loudspeakers one can reasonably expect it would be (slightly) sensitive to vibration - after all I can hear the effects of noise shapers at -350 dB affecting depth, so this is way bigger than that. Also I experimented a lot in the 1980's with vibration control - my turntable was in an 1 inch thick oak double glazed (with half inch thick plate glass) enclosure, and this made a huge difference to turntable sound. My electronics were on stainless steel springs and Italian slate - so I know vibration is important. That is one reason why Dave is in a solid aluminium billet, so I can control vibration. Reducing vibration gives smoother sound, with better depth.
 
So I am not surprised about it being slightly sensitive with loudspeakers. But I admit I was very surprised to hear reports about it being sensitive with headphones - this I can't see making a difference. That said I have two favorite quotes relating to audio - "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." And somewhat more recently "You know nothing Jon Snow". So yesterday I puzzled over what may be a reason and thought of skirts. When a DAC or oscillator creates a sine wave, when you do an FFT you do not get a straight line indicating a pure tone - it will have skirts. Now these skirts are important subjectively - you hear them as a hardening of the SQ, so reducing the skirts and making an individual sine wave more pure and sharper on an FFT makes it sound smoother. And the ear/brain is very sensitive to this problem. Skirts are caused by low frequency jitter problems, and if you can measure a skirt it is audible. This is why I do not use fempto S clocks or atomic clocks; these have low cycle to cycle jitter, but lots of low frequency jitter, as these oscillators use PLL's - which have poor low frequency jitter performance. So using a fempto clocks measurably increases skirts, and sound much brighter - and its easy to confuse the brightness as more transparency. With Dave, I have no measurable skirts - at least I am at the residual level of skirts that you get with the windowing function of the FFT within the AP.
 
But the action of low frequency vibration may add more skirts, and so this is a potential mechanism for making very small changes to the SQ when you are just using headphones - but it would only have the effect of making it sound a little smoother with lower vibration levels.
 
I am in Moscow tomorrow, then Dusseldorf, Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo and finally Ho Chi Min. When I finally get back I think it will be worth investigating, as I am intrigued.
 
Rob 

 

[ecwl]

   
Wanted to compare the same as on the Dave so did Thriller again as well as some of The Wall. Dave unit wasn't there so just going by memory. I could live with the Hugo, it was still a bit dark though, but me coming from a sabre probably isn't helping things. Had a play with the crossfeed also.

If you get to hear the DAVE again, you may want to try listening to Thriller with the HF filter turned off. I think almost every DAVE owner (except one I believe on this forum) prefers the HF filter turned on and I think Rob Watts said he originally designed it for playing back hi-res files and then he found it sounded smoother and darker and better with the HF filter turned on too with CD quality files. But you may like the sounds better with it turned off.

 

[Beolab]

The HF filter does not do that great impact if it ON or OFF.

Maybe their is some delay in the filter to be fully activated before you can hear a difference, but if you only switch back and forth you cant hear any obvious difference on Red Book, because it only cuts the noise very high in frequency, in the un-hearable space, so it should not affect the SQ that much, and are meant for High Res audio with higher frequency span.

It is most likely something else that are lurking is my best guess. More likely the file or the source in my opinion.

Maybe Rob can shim in here..

 

[EVOLVIST]

Wanted to compare the same as on the Dave so did Thriller again as well as some of The Wall. Dave unit wasn't there so just going by memory. I could live with the Hugo, it was still a bit dark though, but me coming from a sabre probably isn't helping things. Had a play with the crossfeed also.

Well, the eagle has landed. I got my DAVE today, and one of the things I played were two cuts from MJ's Thriller album: my SACD version from 1999.

No darkness at all. I'm fact, it was a little bright as most of the things I listened to on my DAVE. Super clear through HD800s.

I'm telling you, man, most of those Tidal schiznits dynamically compromised in the worst way.

Anyway, I've got a friggin' DAVE!!!!

 

[bigfatpaulie]

Congrats!!  Out of interest, how much of a difference does the P300 make with the DAVE?
 
The HD800 + DAVE is one of my favorite combos. 

 

[JaZZ]

Well, the eagle has landed. I got my DAVE today ...

Anyway, I've got a friggin' DAVE!!!!

 
Congrats, EVOLVIST!

 

  The HD800 + DAVE is one of my favorite combos. 

 
Same here. What a difference a cable makes! New love since it hangs on a Black Dragon.

 

[EVOLVIST]

Thanks, y'all!

@Bigfatpaulie, as with anything a grain of salt is just that, only a grain, but to me the PS300 was a godsend. It gives me as close to perfect of a sine wave as you'll get, and it's balanced on top of that. You can certainly hear the difference by taking it out of the chain and plugging into the wall. You've lost a lot of clarity and instrument seperation without it. Easily a 15% increase. I can't claim the same thing with any other piece in my chain...not even my iFi iUSB 3.0, which I'm still deciding whether it benefits the DAVE at all. My DAVE is so new that it's difficult to tell.

 

[x RELIC x]

Congrats EVOLVIST!!

 

[iDesign]

I wanted to revisit the discussion about ROON, HQPlayer, and DAVE. Can anyone share screenshots of their Roon + HQPlayer settings? For Audirvanna+ I assume everyone is using the "DSD over PCM standard 1.0" and "Integer Mode 1" settings?