CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[jelt2359]

 

  I assume the M-Scaler is part of the Blue II.  Is there going to eventually be an M-Scaler on its own without the CD player?

Yes, it is part of the Blu2. There may be an M-Scaler later, but expect it to be neither portable, nor in a significantly different price bracket:
 
 
 
Quote:

please try to understand our pricing policy is always fair. When We at Chord and Rob decide to make a product that has never existed before and often involves years of design and programming. We are often unsure if a design will be a sortafter success or not. This is purely because we have nothing to measure it against as the new design has no piers or competitors. So to take something like the mega scaler and to try to recover the costs by gearing up to produce very large numbers at a marginal cost would just be foolish as there would be too much risk. It's far more advisable to recover the developement cost over a limited but higher valuable number of premium products and then perhaps at a later time carry out a marketing exercise to see if a cost reduced design is possible and is worth doing.

 
 

A ten Ampere power requirement for a 1,000,000 taps or even 5 Ampere for half a million is out of the question for a mobile product. The price of the mega scaler reflects the both the cost of the chipset and the cost of the extensive programming that went into it.

 

[draytonklammer]

Does anyone have the ability to compare the built-in 430HA dac versus the DAVE?
 
I realize they're in very different price categories, but I don't expect the Moon is lacking THAT much.
Just curious to know what I could expect if I decide to make this leap.

 

[EVOLVIST]

  Does anyone have the ability to compare the built-in 430HA dac versus the DAVE?
 
I realize they're in very different price categories, but I don't expect the Moon is lacking THAT much.
Just curious to know what I could expect if I decide to make this leap.

 
Have you plugged your cans into a DAVE yet?

 

[draytonklammer]

   
Have you plugged your cans into a DAVE yet?

I've never used a DAVE, I would be buying blindly as I have no way to audition them.
 
To be honest though, I buy all of my gear blindly.

 

[EVOLVIST]

  I've never used a DAVE, I would be buying blindly as I have no way to audition them.
 
To be honest though, I buy all of my gear blindly.

   
Dave does indeed have a unique amplifier section - it is actually a 2nd order analogue noise shaper (a conventional amp is a first order noise shaper).
 
The reason I do this is two fold - firstly, whenever you load a headphone amp you get more distortion, and its audible and all amplifiers suffer from this. By using a 2nd order noise shaper approach allows me to eliminate this problem - when I load the outputs there is zero change in distortion (apart from a small increase in 2nd harmonic). This means when you load the OP, there is no change in sound quality (all other amps harden up and to mask this they add a lot of 2nd harmonic to fatten the sound up).
 
The second reason this is done is high frequency distortion. All conventional amplifiers have higher distortion as frequency rises, and this has important SQ consequences, in terms of making things sound hard and un-musical. This is due to insufficient feedback available at high frequencies with poor open loop distortion. Now the distortion with modern high performance op-amps is down to the output stage - and that's one reason why all my DAC's have discrete OP stages, so I can eliminate this weakness. But my second order system has excellent open loop distortion performance plus no HF feedback problems too. A indicator of this is the gain bandwidth product - the best audio op-amps are 100 MHz, but with Dave it is 1 GHz.    
 
You can see this HF distortion problem with the 19k/20k test. All DAC's make a mess of this but Dave has the lowest distortion of any other DAC using this test:
 

 
This level is actually the residual performance of the APX555, so Dave is probably much better than this (one reason why Davina is happening - I need better ADC's to measure).
 
By using the second order approach does not affect transparency - it is still a single global feedback path, so the effective number of passive components is the same as before.
 
Rob 
 
 
 
 

 

[jelt2359]

  Does anyone have the ability to compare the built-in 430HA dac versus the DAVE?
 
I realize they're in very different price categories, but I don't expect the Moon is lacking THAT much.
Just curious to know what I could expect if I decide to make this leap.

I sold my 430 HAD a while ago now, but yes, the 430's dac seems like a bit of a throw-in, does the job in a pinch but really not in the same league.

 

[iDesign]

Does anyone have the ability to compare the built-in 430HA dac versus the DAVE?

I realize they're in very different price categories, but I don't expect the Moon is lacking THAT much.
Just curious to know what I could expect if I decide to make this leap.

The DAC in the 430HAD was added for utility and not with performance in mind. The DAVE is significantly better and the margin couldn't be any wider. However, the 430HA is an exceptionally transparent amp and thats why it is highly acclaimed.

 

[EVOLVIST]

I sold my 430 HAD a while ago now, but yes, the 430's dac seems like a bit of a throw-in, does the job in a pinch but really not in the same league.

Sounds like the McIntosh MHA-100. I went and auditioned one of those and I couldn't even tell how good the headphone amp was because the DAC was so poor.

 

[iDesign]

Sounds like the McIntosh MHA-100. I went and auditioned one of those and I couldn't even tell how good the headphone amp was because the DAC was so poor.

Not quite. The 430HA is a very neutral, transparent, and powerful amp. For users with hard to drive headphones or have uses for the amp's other features, the 430HA would be top the choice for any Chord DAC. When I used the 430HAD with the DAVE and Mojo, the coloration and loss of transparency was minimal.

 

[jlbrach]

question about the Blu 2 for those in the know...if i was to buy one and connect it to my Dave how exactly would I then listen to headphones?...would I be plugging my HP's into the Dave or the Blu 2?Would there be a difference in amplification?.......I am trying to figure out how one would buy a Blu 2 and take advantage of the increase in taps and performance using HP's....any help would be appreciated!

 

[lovethatsound]

question about the Blu 2 for those in the know...if i was to buy one and connect it to my Dave how exactly would I then listen to headphones?...would I be plugging my HP's into the Dave or the Blu 2?Would there be a difference in amplification?.......I am trying to figure out how one would buy a Blu 2 and take advantage of the increase in taps and performance using HP's....any help would be appreciated!

You would be plugging your headphones into your Dave

 

[JaZZ]

  question about the Blu 2 for those in the know...if i was to buy one and connect it to my Dave how exactly would I then listen to headphones?...would I be plugging my HP's into the Dave or the Blu 2?Would there be a difference in amplification?.......I am trying to figure out how one would buy a Blu 2 and take advantage of the increase in taps and performance using HP's....any help would be appreciated!

 
 

 

question about the Blu 2 for those in the know...if i was to buy one and connect it to my Dave how exactly would I then listen to headphones?...would I be plugging my HP's into the Dave or the Blu 2?Would there be a difference in amplification?.......I am trying to figure out how one would buy a Blu 2 and take advantage of the increase in taps and performance using HP's....any help would be appreciated!

 
You would be plugging your headphones into your Dave

 
Yes, lovethatsound is right. The M-Scaler (Blu²) is just switched between your traditional source and the DAVE.

 

[x RELIC x]

For those that want to review the Hugo2 the Canadian Tour thread is now accepting American applicants.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/837542/official-chord-hugo2-canadian-u-s-a-tour-thread#post_13277995

 

[onsionsi]

I have a curiosity to know the brand name of BNC that is using to connect BLU mkII and DAVE in JAPAN releasthe and Power Cable that is using in DAVE and BLUE mkII.
 
http://www.stereosound.co.jp/review/article/2017/01/27/53335.html

 

[514077]

 

   
Have you plugged your cans into a DAVE yet?

I've never used a DAVE, I would be buying blindly as I have no way to audition them.
 
To be honest though, I buy all of my gear blindly.

So do I.  Oops!  Couldn't resist.