I have the iBasso DX220 and use it as a transport for my Flac music files with the CHORD DAVE DAC and HMS up-sampler. I haven’t used any WiFi music streaming services yet with the DAP but was wondering if I can stream music via optical out to the DAVE from the DX220? How is this done? Thanks
Need some assistance please from the group. I just set up my newly purchased Dave, which I have put in the place of my TT2. When I connect the Dave to my WA33 headphone amp and use the Dave as a DAC, everything works beautifully. I am feeding it by USB with a Roon setup on my Macbook. The Dave also is working great directly as a headphone amp. However, when I insert my HMS into the mix, which previously worked flawlessly in the same set up but with the TT2, I am now getting intermittent drop off of sound and a bit of intermittent background noise coming from my left headphone. The display on the Dave also occasionally flickers, together with the sound. There must be a setting or something that I am missing, possibly on the Dave or in Roon? I tried reversing the ports on the BNC cables, and changing some of the settings on the Dave, but the result was the same. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Try switching to the other BNC pair on the DAVE. The DAVE is more sensitive to dual BNC (DX) sync than TT2. If you're still having issues, try single BNC from each HMS out to each DAVE in, and see if the 352kHz signal is stable. Try with each of your cables. If unstable, you won't get a dual BNC sync (705/768kHZ)
can we get a cut down version of the chord dave without that amp? just make it a dedicated desktop dac without that 10k price tag.
I had very similar problems when using certain BNC cable brands. I could not get dual bnc setting to work and the Dave's display would flicker and I got crackling, etc. The BNC cables that worked for me were the Moon Silver Dragons ( to which I added ferrite cores) and the Wave Streams. I settled on the Wave Stream cables which are very well built and sounded fuller than the Moon Audio cables. Both cables were really good though. I'd recommend them both. I think it might in partt be a BNC connector issue. Both the Wave and Moon Audio cables have really good connectors that attach firmly. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Hope it helps. Thanks, James
You can’t cut the ‘amp’ out of the DAVE, or any of Rob Watts’ current DAC designs. The analogue out of Rob’s DAC design is more akin to the line-out of most other DACs. There is only one analogue stage that includes the critical I to V conversion, buffer, filter and gain compared to the complicated and distortion inducing 4 stages in the amp of other DAC/amp combos. Basically you can’t separate the sound of Rob’s DAC from it’s analogue output and when using DAC mode it’s nothing more than a fixed volume preset. Nothing internally is bypassed.
Rob has several times said it is not currently feasible. Keeping them separate also means that people can keep their HMS whilst migrating up the DAC range.
Post #172 Specifically, the quote would be... "Now depth perception is a major thing with Dave - and that is down to resolving small signals absolutely perfectly, with no changes in amplitude. Having a chip next to the pulse array elements injecting 10A peak of weakly signal correlated current would destroy that ability, so using a separate M scaler would be easily the best sounding option."
Technically you are 100% correct. However there is Qutest, same DAC as H2, but 2/3 the price. But Qutest has an amp similar to Mojo, but "fixed" to line out and without volume control. But I guess doing the "Qutest treatment" to Dave would translate to much smaller relative cost decrease, given the much higher cost of Dave.
you’re correct about the Qutest, but I agree, I’m not sure it would translate to significant savings on the DAVE. I guess only Rob and Chord will know...
