CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[Mython]

  .... (maybe you could even live with DAVE's «low-res» performance, as I do).

 
 
LOL.... oh.... how times have changed.
 
Seems like it was only yesterday when a million taps was just a distant dream and a mere twinkle in Rob's eye...
 
Hey, wait a minute...it was only yesterday!

 

[DaveRedRef-III]

It would seem to me if (As I expect) all but the most acute of hearing will be unlikely to tell Red Book from Hi Res through Dave/Blu II combination then the cheapest way for any new audiophile or any converted vinyl enthusiast to amass a 2000 album collection would be to go CD. That's a saving of the best part of £15k compared to download costs and would pay for the kit. CD's are just so cheap these days.

 

[JaZZ]

It would seem to me if (As I expect) all but the most acute of hearing will be unlikely to tell Red Book from Hi Res through Dave/Blu II combination then the cheapest way for any new audiophile or any converted vinyl enthusiast to amass a 2000 album collection would be to go CD. That's a saving of the best part of £15k compared to download costs and would pay for the kit. CD's are just so cheap these days.

 
...and so impractical to handle. So you'd need a nechanical 2000-CD changer (music box) for shuffling the whole collection...

...not good for their physical health. Hey, and what about equalizing your headphones?
 

  LOL.... oh.... how times have changed.
 
Seems like it was only yesterday when a million taps was just a distant dream and a mere twinkle in Rob's eye...
 
Hey, wait a minute...it was only yesterday!

 
Yeah, Rob is a magician.

 

[DaveRedRef-III]

I don't mind puting a disc on the player Jazz. I guess old habits die hard.

 

[lovethatsound]

...and so impractical to handle. So you'd need a nechanical 2000-CD changer (music box) for shuffling the whole collection... :blink: ...not good for their physical health. Hey, and what about equalizing your headphones?


Yeah, Rob is a magician.

Their's nothing wrong with cd,s jaZZ,their easy to handle.

 

[Sonic77]

I bet this new cd Dave combo sounds great.

 

[JaZZ]

Their's nothing wrong with cd,s jaZZ,their easy to handle.

 
Yes, I also thought so after switching from vinyl discs.

 

[SunWarrior]

   
...and so impractical to handle. So you'd need a nechanical 2000-CD changer (music box) for shuffling the whole collection...

...not good for their physical health. Hey, and what about equalizing your headphones?
 
 
Yeah, Rob is a magician.

 
 Mechanical 2000-CD changer?
 
 Yah, I call that music box my Aurender.
 Only 2600 albums at this point though.
 
 Dave, who looks forward to the non-CD-playing version of this new Chord gizmo to get to 1M taps

 

[DaveRedRef-III]

Have to smile when I think about all those competitors scrambling to catch up after the launch of Dave only to find at the start of 2017 what probably equates to an even greater jump in SQ.

 

[Mython]

Have to smile when I think about all those competitors scrambling to catch up after the launch of Dave only to find at the start of 2017 what probably equates to an even greater jump in SQ.

 
 
Aye, but only an unwise person would be complacent about such matters.
 
Rob is undoubtedly pushing the leading edge forward, and at an impressive rate of knots, but there are lots of talented engineers in the world who will not be idly sitting on their laurels.
 
Any activity that advances the state of the DAC art, be it on Rob's part or that of his peers, is probably good news for the industry, as a whole, so I don't view healthy competition and innovation as a bad thing.
 
...nonetheless, I am in awe at what Rob has now achieved - BRAVO!! 

 

[maxh22]

   
 
Aye, but only an unwise person would be complacent about such matters.
 
Rob is undoubtedly pushing the leading edge forward, and at an impressive rate of knots, but there are lots of talented engineers in the world who will not be idly sitting on their laurels.
 
Any activity that advances the state of the DAC art, be it on Rob's part or that of his peers, is probably good news for the industry, as a whole, so I don't view healthy competition and innovation as a bad thing.
 
...nonetheless, I am in awe at what Rob has now achieved - BRAVO!! 

 
What is even more astounding is that Rob has managed the willpower to keep all this excitment in close secrecy. I'm sure this was his lifelong dream!

 

[Crgreen]

I applaud Rob's technical achievement, but at the moment I can't see myself investing in CD technology. Many of my CDs have been ripped and are in storage. Surely better to wait for the upsampler which presumably will take a USB input from a computer or other similar device and output to two BNC connections which go into the back of the DAVE. Since they'll be no CD mechanism, I assume it will be cheaper too.

 

[Ampus]

I am old school and still spin CD's and therefore naturally excited about the new Blu. What I don't understand is how upsampling CD files would bring CD's SQ to the same level of those files that were originally recorded in hi-res format. If you have a 4 cylinder engine on your Honda Civic, you could tweak the ECU as much as you want but you would never achieve the performance level of a Huracan's V10 engine. Maybe some forum members can enlighten me on the SQ with upsampling?

If I remember correctly, some of the reviewers on the old Blu / DAC 64 combo stated that sometime music through this combo sounded slightly harsh and unnatural. Would be interesting to read a formal review of the new Blu / DAVE combo.

 

[JaZZ]

I am old school and still spin CD's and therefore naturally excited about the new Blu. What I don't understand is how upsampling CD files would bring CD's SQ to the same level of those files that were originally recorded in hi-res format. If you have a 4 cylinder engine on your Honda Civic, you could tweak the ECU as much as you want but you would never achieve the performance level of a Huracan's V10 engine. Maybe some forum members can enlighten me on the SQ with upsampling?

If I remember correctly, some of the reviewers on the old Blu / DAC 64 combo stated that sometime music through this combo sounded slightly harsh and unnatural. Would be interesting to read a formal review of the new Blu / DAVE combo.

 
I've already explained it here. It's not the upsampling that does the trick, but the better (sharper) anti-aliasing filter (with the higher tap count) enabled by it.

 

[Jawed]

Wow, I have to say these three new products are very exciting. I would go so far as to say that I expect Hugo 2 will probably sound surprisingly close to DAVE (more so than Hugo TT).

I've only just realised that Blu Mk 2 is doing something very special: it completely replaces the first stage upsampling in DAVE. DAVE's first stage upsampler takes 1xFS to 16xFS audio and creates 16xFS as its output.

DAVE can't upsample a digital stream that is already at 16xFS (705.6KHz). So the 1st Stage WTA Interpolation Filter is a pass-through stage:



DAVE simply does the following stages ("Cross Feed...", "WTA 2nd Stage Interpolation filter...", "Linear Interpolation filter..." etc.).

Now I understand the talk about the new FPGA in Blu Mk 2 being "extremely noisy", using lots of power and being disruptive to the "quiet" environment inside DAVE. Keeping the two boxes separate was always a key concept from the start of the CD transport + DAC configuration that arose back in the 1980s: each box being optimised for the specific job and the final audio signal remaining unpolluted by the transport.

I dare say in a few years' time the FPGA in Blu Mk 2 will be superseded by something at lower power and cost (as we saw with the FPGA in Mojo). At that time DAVE 2 can do everything in one box for those who just want a replacement for DAVE.

The idea that later this year there could be an upsampler that uses the Blu Mk 2 FPGA but has no transport while supporting USB, as an upgrade for DAVE, is also pretty exciting. I wonder if that box will connect to DAVE through USB instead of BNC?...

So, now the big question, one which I have no doubt Rob is expecting to be asked: is one million taps enough? I can't help thinking that the apparently large jump in performance beyond DAVE's 164,000 taps is indicative that there's much more in them thar 44.1KHz at 16-bit bits. Perfect sound forever? Well it simply took almost forever to arrive...

Perhaps when the dedicated streaming upsampler is released there'll be an option to use two of them: one for the left channel and the other for the right channel. 2 million taps...

Now playing: Mark Lanegan - Borracho