CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[jscmd2000]

Get a smaller house. DAVE will bring you more enjoyment than more square feet.

I love to hear impressions from anyone that has TOTL CIEMs like the A18t, Fourte, Zeus XR, VE8, UM Mason V3, SE 5 Way Ultimate, UE18+ etc and how they interacted with the Dave with regard to resolution, stage, layering, separation, all the basics.

Do they make audiophile usb-c to micro-b cables? I'm looking for a single cable to connect my S8+ to Hugo2, been using the cheap $7 amazon 1 piece cable, want to see if I can detect a sound quality improvement with a X < ~$200 cable. Of course the phone is in airplane mode so there is no EMI/RF and I'm running UAPP in bitperfect mode.

I'm sorry fellas but I have to share this. This is simply exceptional music, I don't know how to classify it. I've seen others call it afrobeat/neo-psychedlia/funk/soul. I'm a metal/synthwave guy as well so I typically avoid stuff like this. It's VERY audiophile-ish, I will be purchasing the FLAC. Very well recorded.



and here's one more 70's-ish sounding album that's along the same lines:



enjoy and happy Friday.

Hey mate, good to see you here! Both A18s and Encores scale up very nicely with the Dave. I do enjoy listening to these when I need isolation from noisy background, for instance when someone is drying hair or watching tv, etc. It would be hard to find better sounding full sized cans than these at the similar price range. Technology has caught up! I don't know of any closed cans that sound better than these, although I am hoping the upcoming HD820 will be better than my last endeavor with the aeon flows and Z1Rs. Similar to good pair of cans, the A18s and Encores both reveal especially the depth so much more and better than the H2. When it is quiet, I do feel that cans like Utopia and Abyss Phi scale up even better than iems.

 

[Deftone]

What is the length limit on the KabelDirekt Toslink for it to work. Would a 20 foot length cause any distortion or dropouts?? Can get one for $12 on eBay.

Using a 5 meter kabeldirekt Optical with no problems.

 

[flyte3333]

Just an update on my recent posts.

I've had my Analysis Plus Toslink cable (not too expensive) working 100% reliably at 192kHz and DSD64 (DoP) with my Pi2Design 502 DAC optical source for days now.

Today a few things arrived. A Sys Concept 1300 plastic strand fiber cable and a KabelDirekt cable, both 1.0m. Also a used Peachtree Audio X1 USB to Toslink converter arrived.

This Peachtree converter is used by Lifatec themselves to test their glass fiber cables at 192kHz.... See link:

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...ke-192khz/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-454297

Unfortunately my own Lifatec cabe (which I've had for 12months) fails with the Peachtree converter and Dave... No issues with Mojo but fails with Dave.

The Sys Concept 1300 strand cable fails at 192kHz even with my reliable Pi2Design source (TX179), so that cable is going back for a refund.

The KabelDirect works at 192kHz just as well as my Analysis Plus Toslink cable, with my Pi2Design source at 192kHz. With no hacking/mods required of the Toslink connector either.

So the Lifatec glass fiber and Sys Concept cables are of now of no use for me with Dave. These are two of the best regarded Toslink cables too, across forums at least, for a long while . And they work 100% fine with Mojo but not with Dave's fussiness.

And the Peachtree converter fails with all cables at 192kHz with Dave, even the Lifatec, even though Lifatec use that converter to test at 192kHz. This converter and cable is fine at 192kHz optical with Mojo.

If you're looking for a Roon/UPnP/DLNA networked Toslink 192kHz endpoint, this Pi2Design 502DAC is incredible value. And I can confirm it works at 192kHz with KabelDirect cable and the stock cable that came with Dave. You just need to be a little confident with ssh'ing into the Raspberry Pi3 to install Moode OS and Roon Bridge.

Unless someone can recommend that a Matrix Audio or Audiobyte USB-to-Toslink converter works at 192kHz with stock Toslink cable (with no modifications) I think I'm done with trying to get a USB converter to work with Dave. The converters I've tried so far are too fussy with Dave, compared with Mojo and Hugo2 working fine at 192kHz.

But I'm very happy with my Pi2Design and Analysis Plus and KabelDirekt parts all working at 192kHz flawlessly with Dave.

 

[tunes]

Maybe we should @ Rob and ask him if he still gives the edge to optical?

It seems like an inexpensive Toslink cable recommended by Rob works perfectly well with the DAVE.

KabelDirekt (15 feet) Mini TOSLINK Optical Digital Audio Cable - PRO...
$9.99

SO why fuss with USB and EMI ferrites etc?? Take a relatively inexpensive battery driven portable DAC that has optical out and stores audio files on solid state memory cards and forget about any EMI distortion.

 

[flyte3333]

SO why fuss with USB and EMI ferrites etc??

With Toslink there can be some fuss with Dave, for high sample rates (176kHz and 192kHz), as per the last few of pages.

The KabelDirekt cable is great as long as you have a source that gives Dave's RX the signal integrity it needs for 192kHz.

I've only just got Dave (long time Mojo and Hugo2 user) and I've been learning about Dave's Toslink 192k fussiness (which has lead to people hacking at expensive cables) through trial and error.

I've really enjoyed Toslink with Hugo2 and Mojo. Now that I'm happy to have 192k working flawlessy with Dave, this weekend I will get to comparing against my pimped out microRendu (v1.4 upgrade) chain, i.e. battery powered microRendu and optically isolated ethernet with the FMC's also battery powered.

It will be interesting (for me) if Dave's significantly better transparency (compared with even Hugo2, to my ears) better reveals differences with Toslink or if they sound the same.

I'm only one data point of course. I'm no expert and I don't pretend to have Golden Ears hehe. I do like reading other people's observations though, especially in the context of their entire system chain. So I try to share my own observations also.

If I hear no difference I'll sell my microRendu, so my wallet is hoping to hear no difference !

 

[jrfmd]

No I don't think 384/24 is indistinguishable with 48/24 or certainly not 44.1/16 - but my feeling is that the standard is much less important than the recording method, so in that sense M scaler is a great equalizer - although this was true with Dave too, certainly with the ability to enjoy older recordings. For example, Decca recordings from 1960 to pre dolby 1967 redbook recordings do things that modern 192/24 kHz recordings are incapable of doing - notably being able to record speed and impact of real instruments. Modern recordings are smooth and refined but seem incapable of reproducing timbre variations and raw impact like the classic 1960's recordings. So simple microphone and short signal paths with sound optimized custom built mixers and amps are more important than 44.1 or 192. That said, my older recosrdings benefit much more from M scaler - which is what one would expect.

Future recordings with Davina will allow us to evaluate exactly what the losses are in sample rate and reconstruction. With the tremendous change M scaler offers clearly the next question is how much further can we take this, and Davina will tell us exactly how close 1M taps to ideal actually is.

Rob

 

[jrfmd]

slightly off topic but I find that playing a 16 bit /44.1 k cd file from with my macbook pro sending the dave a 32 bit/96 k signal via usb results in a noticeably better sound than when I send the dave a 16/44.1 signal from the same file(I guess from the up sampling being done in the macbooks midi setup).

I don't notice any difference when i compare it to the same performance using a 24bit/96 k source file of the exact same performance from hdtracks.

1. I now play all my cd quality tracks sent at 96k/32 from the macbook pro via itunes to the dave. seems like a very good improvement just by using the audio midi setup program on the dave
2. I would like to know if anyone else has reported the same phenomenon or if you knew about it all the time or if you disagree

thanks
Jeff

 

[tunes]

With Toslink there can be some fuss with Dave, for high sample rates (176kHz and 192kHz), as per the last few of pages.

The KabelDirekt cable is great as long as you have a source that gives Dave's RX the signal integrity it needs for 192kHz.

I've only just got Dave (long time Mojo and Hugo2 user) and I've been learning about Dave's Toslink 192k fussiness (which has lead to people hacking at expensive cables) through trial and error.

I've really enjoyed Toslink with Hugo2 and Mojo. Now that I'm happy to have 192k working flawlessy with Dave, this weekend I will get to comparing against my pimped out microRendu (v1.4 upgrade) chain, i.e. battery powered microRendu and optically isolated ethernet with the FMC's also battery powered.

It will be interesting (for me) if Dave's significantly better transparency (compared with even Hugo2, to my ears) better reveals differences with Toslink or if they sound the same.

I'm only one data point of course. I'm no expert and I don't pretend to have Golden Ears hehe. I do like reading other people's observations though, especially in the context of their entire system chain. So I try to share my own observations also.

If I hear no difference I'll sell my microRendu, so my wallet is hoping to hear no difference !

Please post your impressions when you have compared the two.

 

[doraymon]

RF noise will not have my Dave!
I'm preparing for war :
74271633 "STAR-GAP Snap Ferrite for RF applications"
74271131 "STAR-TEC Snap Ferrite with safety key technology"
74271733 "STAR-FIX Snap Ferrite with flexible cable fixing"

 

[Jiffi32]

RF noise will not have my Dave!
I'm preparing for war :
74271633 "STAR-GAP Snap Ferrite for RF applications"
74271131 "STAR-TEC Snap Ferrite with safety key technology"
74271733 "STAR-FIX Snap Ferrite with flexible cable fixing"

what store are the part no.s from?

 

[doraymon]

what store are the part no.s from?

Würth Elektronik part no.s, but I purchased from Mouser Electronics.

 

[astrostar59]

slightly off topic but I find that playing a 16 bit /44.1 k cd file from with my macbook pro sending the dave a 32 bit/96 k signal via usb results in a noticeably better sound than when I send the dave a 16/44.1 signal from the same file(I guess from the up sampling being done in the macbooks midi setup).

I don't notice any difference when i compare it to the same performance using a 24bit/96 k source file of the exact same performance from hdtracks.

1. I now play all my cd quality tracks sent at 96k/32 from the macbook pro via itunes to the dave. seems like a very good improvement just by using the audio midi setup program on the dave
2. I would like to know if anyone else has reported the same phenomenon or if you knew about it all the time or if you disagree

thanks
Jeff

Interesting. You will find better quality still using HQ player inside Roon. iTunes is the bottom of the heap for sound quality output. Also the better player programs disable the system bits not required and further improve SQ.

 

[miketlse]

slightly off topic but I find that playing a 16 bit /44.1 k cd file from with my macbook pro sending the dave a 32 bit/96 k signal via usb results in a noticeably better sound than when I send the dave a 16/44.1 signal from the same file(I guess from the up sampling being done in the macbooks midi setup).

I don't notice any difference when i compare it to the same performance using a 24bit/96 k source file of the exact same performance from hdtracks.

1. I now play all my cd quality tracks sent at 96k/32 from the macbook pro via itunes to the dave. seems like a very good improvement just by using the audio midi setup program on the dave
2. I would like to know if anyone else has reported the same phenomenon or if you knew about it all the time or if you disagree

thanks
Jeff

It would be useful for you to define for everyone, what you mean by 'noticeably better' - for example, brighter, warmer, darker or whatever.
Rob Watts normal recommendation is to let the Chord dac do the upscaling, because it will do it to a far higher quality, than the software normally used on PCs.

 

[hikaru12]

Unexpectedly, after moving from the TT to DAVE (and fearing that DAVE would be more unforgiving in the highs or shriller with vocals or ruthlessly revealing or fatiguing with popular music), I find the DAVE to be LESS peaky and more relaxing (and at the same time more detailed).
The DAVE is the best of both worlds. It's a nice smooth ride with great impact, speed, and has a great exciting swing factor.

I sometimes resorted to EQ to tame notorious digital highs with the TT (and other DACS before this), but now I don't need any EQ at all.

So far, my favorite headphone with DAVE is my ZMF Eikon (Padauk wood) with a Draug Silver cable.
The Atticus is also fine, but the Eikon's extra definition to my ears takes the cake here. The more forgiving Atticus was my favorite with the Hugo TT.

Thanks for your impressions - I've been thinking of getting the Dave to pair with the Auteur which I think would take the great detail you're getting with the Eikon and pair it with the smoothness of the Atticus.

 

[audio_1]

slightly off topic but I find that playing a 16 bit /44.1 k cd file from with my macbook pro sending the dave a 32 bit/96 k signal via usb results in a noticeably better sound than when I send the dave a 16/44.1 signal from the same file(I guess from the up sampling being done in the macbooks midi setup).

I don't notice any difference when i compare it to the same performance using a 24bit/96 k source file of the exact same performance from hdtracks.

1. I now play all my cd quality tracks sent at 96k/32 from the macbook pro via itunes to the dave. seems like a very good improvement just by using the audio midi setup program on the dave
2. I would like to know if anyone else has reported the same phenomenon or if you knew about it all the time or if you disagree

thanks
Jeff

You should not up sample from 44.1 to 96 but to 88.2.
Rob Watts said in a post:
"Sample rate conversion (44.1 to 48) adds large amounts of THD and noise, and permanently damages transient timing accuracy. It's actually the reason why I buy the original 96k master and not the 44.1 version for modern classical recordings. I can't understand why they record at 96 (rather than 88.2) for music only releases..."