CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[TheAttorney]

So this is a new video:



I won't spoil the video by describing it here. But I will say that I think Hans is on the right path here, he has realised that devices such as those sold by SoTM are not the final solution.

The most important thing about this video, the factor that gives it credibility to me, is how he uses sibilance as a "comparison tool". He talks about improvements that come from various changes to his system, but he finds many of these changes make no meaningful difference to sibilance.

In my opinion, a key indicator that you are solving problems in system setup is how it handles "difficult" sibilance. In my experience RF causes a lot of sibilance problems and I've had absolutely fantastic success on that front. So when he finds a way to improve his system which appears to be due to RF filtering, it provides an independent opinion which I hope helps other people to get their DAVE working the best it can.

Now, someone needs to persuade him to try lots of ferrites on the final USB cable...

Yes, useful video, and I like Hans' down to earth and seemingly unbiased approach.

Shame he hasn't received the Ferrite Core memo yet - and nor has Jay at audiobacon, who's just raved over the Gutwire grounding cables as a low-ish cost way of reducing RFI/EMI, in this case by connecting any -ve signal connection back to the earth in your wallsocket. One interesting note was that the Gutwire didn't help DAVE in this instance (connected to DAVE's RCA/BNC input). Whereas he had previously reported good results with the Synergistic Research passive grounding block connected to DAVE's XLR socket. It's not clear if the particular sockect type is important or not.

There's a lot of discussions on other forums about the benefits of additional grounding. Seems to be an alternative solution to the ferrites or to the SOtM/Pink Faun type isolators. I wonder if these are all complementary to each other or replacements?
Personally, I'm not rushing to jump into Grounding rabbit hole, as this has the potential to go very deep and very expensive (some of these Entreq-style grounding products cost thousands of bucks).

 

[Whazzzup]

Well just listening to lance skiiwalker and I’m thoroughly impressed by pomposity on this thread towards hip hop, rap etc...and what good music is...

 

[Light - Man]

Well just listening to lance skiiwalker and I’m thoroughly impressed by pomposity on this thread towards hip hop, rap etc...and what good music is...

Indeed!

A rather pompous looking "Sponge-Bob-Square-Pants" springs to mind, for some reason?

 

[rgs9200m]

I think I read somewhere that Rob Watts loves the Beatles.

 

[rayl]

Back to an actual DAVE post... I've had my unit for a week now, feeding it USB from a Win PC. When using actual music software with WASAPI exclusive control, everything works better than great.

But subscribing to the school of -- if you have a great piece of kit, use it as much as possible -- I also view movies, etc. through it -- these are typically direct from a browser (usually Chrome, but the symptom I am about to describe happens with IE and FF as well) -- and uses the standard Windows mixer. I usu use DSD mode to reduce latency, but again, the symptoms happen in PCM mode as well.

Here's what I am struggling with: I get occasional soft clicks -- at least they aren't loud pops. I am guessing this is the dreaded USB issue, though in the identical configuration except for DAC, I've had no issues with 2 previous DACs. Here's the even stranger thing -- if I tell Windows to upsample more, the clicks become less prevalent. As a matter of fact, I've been running in 384kHz (most movies are 48kHz) without issue for several days.

I can replicate the same symptoms, and the same workaround, with wav/flac music played through Windows mixer -- e.g. with Windows Media Player. The lower the sampling rate, the more prevalent the issue. Made it through Mahler #3 1st through 3rd movements twice with zero issues if I set Windows mixer to upsample to 352.8 kHz... Thus I am convinced it's the combination of not using exclusive WASAPI control and the Windows mixer.

I am using the latest Win 10 Creators Edition CHORD driver.

Any suggestions? I guess USB decrappifiers is my next move, but thought I would ask. (I guess since it isn't problematic for true music, rationally, one should be OK with just leaving it at 384 for movie watching, but having a glitch irritates me and makes me want to fix it.)

 

[rgs9200m]

I put a Tel-Wire HC power cord on my DAVE and I like the sound better than the stock cord. Just reporting my findings here; (you decide). It's a nice flexible cable too, which is something I needed in my desktop setup. (No power conditioner used.) Link:
http://www.telwire.net/hc-cord/

 

[Triode User]

I put a Tel-Wire HC power cord on my DAVE and I like the sound better than the stock cord. Just reporting my findings here; (you decide). It's a nice flexible cable too, which is something I needed in my desktop setup. (No power conditioner used.) Link:
http://www.telwire.net/hc-cord/

I can think of no reason why that power cord can make a blind bit of difference to Dave. Are you really really sure it is not just a fat helping of expectation bias? Unfortunately it is more powerful than you might expect.

 

[musicday]

Back to an actual DAVE post... I've had my unit for a week now, feeding it USB from a Win PC. When using actual music software with WASAPI exclusive control, everything works better than great.

But subscribing to the school of -- if you have a great piece of kit, use it as much as possible -- I also view movies, etc. through it -- these are typically direct from a browser (usually Chrome, but the symptom I am about to describe happens with IE and FF as well) -- and uses the standard Windows mixer. I usu use DSD mode to reduce latency, but again, the symptoms happen in PCM mode as well.

Here's what I am struggling with: I get occasional soft clicks -- at least they aren't loud pops. I am guessing this is the dreaded USB issue, though in the identical configuration except for DAC, I've had no issues with 2 previous DACs. Here's the even stranger thing -- if I tell Windows to upsample more, the clicks become less prevalent. As a matter of fact, I've been running in 384kHz (most movies are 48kHz) without issue for several days.

I can replicate the same symptoms, and the same workaround, with wav/flac music played through Windows mixer -- e.g. with Windows Media Player. The lower the sampling rate, the more prevalent the issue. Made it through Mahler #3 1st through 3rd movements twice with zero issues if I set Windows mixer to upsample to 352.8 kHz... Thus I am convinced it's the combination of not using exclusive WASAPI control and the Windows mixer.

I am using the latest Win 10 Creators Edition CHORD driver.

Any suggestions? I guess USB decrappifiers is my next move, but thought I would ask. (I guess since it isn't problematic for true music, rationally, one should be OK with just leaving it at 384 for movie watching, but having a glitch irritates me and makes me want to fix it.)

Not sure if will help with your problem, but why not add 40 core ferrites to the stock USB cable that came with it? 7 mm ones should be fine, and they are very cheap not to try them out.

 

[dmance]

@rayl
Congrats on the DAVE,
Regarding latency ....as you progress up the Chord chain you add taps and taps=latency. With a BluDAVE you have about 0.72seconds of group delay and this is waaay too much lip sync error to be acceptable. No browser playback will let you align the output USB audio with the screen or HDMI output ...so you have to resort to a dedicated playback mechanism (like JRiver allows browsers within its shell).

Regarding the clicks - this must be a WinPC+USB issue. Clicks are a definite digital artifact of bits being dropped. Just try the usual suspects in your chain - even testing our other computers in the house as temporary sources to see if its a system quirk. Good luck.

 

[xxx1313]

Back to an actual DAVE post... I've had my unit for a week now, feeding it USB from a Win PC. When using actual music software with WASAPI exclusive control, everything works better than great.

But subscribing to the school of -- if you have a great piece of kit, use it as much as possible -- I also view movies, etc. through it -- these are typically direct from a browser (usually Chrome, but the symptom I am about to describe happens with IE and FF as well) -- and uses the standard Windows mixer. I usu use DSD mode to reduce latency, but again, the symptoms happen in PCM mode as well.

Here's what I am struggling with: I get occasional soft clicks -- at least they aren't loud pops. I am guessing this is the dreaded USB issue, though in the identical configuration except for DAC, I've had no issues with 2 previous DACs. Here's the even stranger thing -- if I tell Windows to upsample more, the clicks become less prevalent. As a matter of fact, I've been running in 384kHz (most movies are 48kHz) without issue for several days.

I can replicate the same symptoms, and the same workaround, with wav/flac music played through Windows mixer -- e.g. with Windows Media Player. The lower the sampling rate, the more prevalent the issue. Made it through Mahler #3 1st through 3rd movements twice with zero issues if I set Windows mixer to upsample to 352.8 kHz... Thus I am convinced it's the combination of not using exclusive WASAPI control and the Windows mixer.

I am using the latest Win 10 Creators Edition CHORD driver.

Any suggestions? I guess USB decrappifiers is my next move, but thought I would ask. (I guess since it isn't problematic for true music, rationally, one should be OK with just leaving it at 384 for movie watching, but having a glitch irritates me and makes me want to fix it.)

I also had to make the experience, that Windows is a bitch with audio and with many DACs. This is why I went away from computer audio.

Try the Audioquest Jitterbug and a few ferrites (I do not expect that you will need 40 of them, though). Even though I am using an A&K SP1000 as transport (a good source/transport), the Jitterbug improves the sound quite considerably (deeper soundstage, less "digital" brightness).

 

[rayl]

I also had to make the experience, that Windows is a bitch with audio and with many DACs. This is why I went away from computer audio.

Try the Audioquest Jitterbug and a few ferrites (I do not expect that you will need 40 of them, though). Even though I am using an A&K SP1000 as transport (a good source/transport), the Jitterbug improves the sound quite considerably (deeper soundstage, less "digital" brightness).

Thanks to several folks for the suggestions. I've experimented with a different PC (a laptop) -- and there is a difference. It takes a lower upsampling rate for the problem to effectively disappear on the laptop than my desktop. It does feel like lost (or perhaps just late) audio data as opposed to noise/data corruption.

At this point, my theory is a Windows delay issue. When using WASAPI exclusive mode, the thread gets higher priority so there's less delay and zero issues.

W/o exclusive mode, the upsampling causes the thread to hog more CPU cycles and not get swapped out. At least that's my theory.

I am also guessing that the DAVE has less USB buffering than various USB chips used by other DACS (e.g. others I've used had an option to set the buffer size between super low latency, safe, and extra buffering) but the Chord driver does not -- further guessing that to reduce noise, USB decoding is done by the FPGA instead of a USB chip on the DAVE.

As a first attempt, I've ordered 2 USB reclocking solutions to try (Uptone Regen and Schiit Wyrd). They should be here by the wkend. Also, I am starting with a super short 1.5 ft cable for the regen tests.... I will also order a Jitterbug when I get home tonight.

 

[Jawed]

I've had similar problems with my Hugo TT and DAVE over the years. Jitterbug and ferrites make no difference. I found the same as you, that by increasing the sample rate in the Windows audio properties (i.e. because I'm using Windows mixer), the soft clicks would stop.

WASAPI from Foobar is a complete solution.

Optical is also a solution in my system, working at any sample rate (upto 192KHz) with Windows mixer.

On my TT with the SD input, which does not use the Chord driver, there was no problem. The SD input also has no galvanic isolation and only supports 44.1KHz/48KHz sample rates, so it's really there for direct connection of phones/tablets.

With my DAVE, if I change track sometimes I get a few clicks within the first few seconds. On YouTube videos this is very common. It seems to me that DAVE (and TT before it, which did the same) is trying to get the PC to do something shortly after the music starts and this interferes with the transmission of music.

So, I have to conclude that the fault lies entirely with Chord. My old PC might be relevant, but this is a common complaint with Chord's USB.

I very much doubt a USB device between PC and DAVE will solve this problem, as the PC itself is being "interrupted" as it tries to send the music.

 

[Whazzzup]

I use TT via antipodes roon core server using HD port no such problems. I have used TT via iMac as well no problems. This ferrite craze I really just ran into perusing the dave thread, Then in combo with bu 2 struck me as an expensive sunk cost to get into ferrits. just kidding around. I have herd the odd tick on hugo 1 via cck...Hpa8 operates well via iMac.. wonder if its windows..

 

[GryphonGuy]

I can think of no reason why that power cord can make a blind bit of difference to Dave. Are you really really sure it is not just a fat helping of expectation bias? Unfortunately it is more powerful than you might expect.

No. people do hear differences that pleases them.

GG

 

[jscmd2000]

I didn't believe it until I plugged the Audioquest NRG4 to my Rag. Music sounded clearer, louder, and effortless like a totally different amp. The difference was more than upgrading to a custom headphone cable worth 5 times more. I have an extra one prepared for my Dave arriving next week.