CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[Beolab]

Its like an old great red wine, it matures you more you taste it..

 

[MacedonianHero]

  Optical will sound the best. Don't worry about source jitter at all, Dave eliminates it.
 
Rob

 
Hi Rob:

Just curious, would you recommend optical of spdif with both the Dave and Hugo TT?

Thanks!

 

[Rob Watts]

For both tt and Dave, usb is best, closely followed by optical, then last is coax.

 

[MacedonianHero]

For both tt and Dave, usb is best, closely followed by optical, then last is coax.

Thanks Rob! Pretty much sums up my experiences too with the TT. Any reason why optical is better than coax? Traditionally with other DACs I've owned, it was the reverse?

 

[Rob Watts]

Normally dacs are sensitive to source jitter, but my dacs are not, due to the DPLL which eliminates incoming jitter, buffers the data and creates a local clock sychronisation.
So you are just left with benefits of optical which is galvanic isolation, which reduces noise floor modulation thus making it sound smoother and darker. With usb we have galvanic isolation too, but the clock is allready local as timing for usb comes from the dac.

 

[MacedonianHero]

Normally dacs are sensitive to source jitter, but my dacs are not, due to the DPLL which eliminates incoming jitter, buffers the data and creates a local clock sychronisation.
So you are just left with benefits of optical which is galvanic isolation, which reduces noise floor modulation thus making it sound smoother and darker. With usb we have galvanic isolation too, but the clock is allready local as timing for usb comes from the dac.

 
Excellent...thanks for such a thorough explanation!

 

[Rob Watts]

I am currently designing a ADC converter, that will match Dave's performance, and solve a number of issues that plague conventional ADC's - notably huge noise floor modulation, poor anti-aliasing filters, and poor noise shaper performance.
 
I know from the work with Dave that the perception of depth needs noise shapers of astounding accuracy; indeed, Dave ended up with 350 dB performance noise shapers, in order to ensure that small signals are resolved with zero error - from listening tests, this is needed to ensure the brain can perceive depth correctly.
 
Now I have designed a ADC noise shaper that exceeds 350 dB performance (note these numbers are digital domain performance only, so it is an idealised noise shaper - I am only looking at the THD and noise of the noise shaper only). To test the noise shaper I can run Verilog simulations, capture the data, then do an FFT on the data, and then check the results. Before I did that, I thought it would be a good idea to run a similar simulation with Dave's noise shaper. In this case, I am trying to evaluate whether it can accurately encode very small signals, so I am using a -301 dB sine wave at 6 kHz. If it can resolve a signal at -301 dB, then we can safely say that small signals are accurately encoded, at least in the digital domain.
 
So here are the results:
 
 

 
So this is the digital domain performance of the Dave noise shaper, and frequency is from DC to 100kHz (0.1 MHz).
 
The 6 kHz signal is perfectly reconstituted at -301 dB. You can see a flat line at -340 dB, but this is just a FFT issue. The real noise floor at 15 kHz is at -380 dB, which is about 100 trillion times lower noise than conventional high performance noise shapers. Note also the noise at 100 kHz is at -200 dB - that is extraordinary low for a noise shaper, and shows why I need to do little filtering on the analogue side.
 
-301 db is better than 50 bits accuracy.
 
Now to write the code for the ADC!
 
Rob

 

[romaz]

  I am currently designing a ADC converter, that will match Dave's performance, and solve a number of issues that plague conventional ADC's - notably huge noise floor modulation, poor anti-aliasing filters, and poor noise shaper performance.
 
I know from the work with Dave that the perception of depth needs noise shapers of astounding accuracy; indeed, Dave ended up with 350 dB performance noise shapers, in order to ensure that small signals are resolved with zero error - from listening tests, this is needed to ensure the brain can perceive depth correctly.
 
Now I have designed a ADC noise shaper that exceeds 350 dB performance (note these numbers are digital domain performance only, so it is an idealised noise shaper - I am only looking at the THD and noise of the noise shaper only). To test the noise shaper I can run Verilog simulations, capture the data, then do an FFT on the data, and then check the results. Before I did that, I thought it would be a good idea to run a similar simulation with Dave's noise shaper. In this case, I am trying to evaluate whether it can accurately encode very small signals, so I am using a -301 dB sine wave at 6 kHz. If it can resolve a signal at -301 dB, then we can safely say that small signals are accurately encoded, at least in the digital domain.
 
So here are the results:
 
 

 
So this is the digital domain performance of the Dave noise shaper, and frequency is from DC to 100kHz (0.1 MHz).
 
The 6 kHz signal is perfectly reconstituted at -301 dB. You can see a flat line at -340 dB, but this is just a FFT issue. The real noise floor at 15 kHz is at -380 dB, which is about 100 trillion times lower noise than conventional high performance noise shapers. Note also the noise at 100 kHz is at -200 dB - that is extraordinary low for a noise shaper, and shows why I need to do little filtering on the analogue side.
 
-301 db is better than 50 bits accuracy.
 
Now to write the code for the ADC!
 
Rob

Rob, obviously such a product is for studios and not consumers and it makes sense to do it right at the ADC rather than to have to correct for it at the DAC.  Is this your answer for MQA?

 

[analogmusic]

This is superb.

Hopefully Rob can finish this soon and our music will sound a lot better

 

[Christer]

  I am currently designing a ADC converter, that will match Dave's performance, and solve a number of issues that plague conventional ADC's - notably huge noise floor modulation, poor anti-aliasing filters, and poor noise shaper performance.
 
I know from the work with Dave that the perception of depth needs noise shapers of astounding accuracy; indeed, Dave ended up with 350 dB performance noise shapers, in order to ensure that small signals are resolved with zero error - from listening tests, this is needed to ensure the brain can perceive depth correctly.
 
Now I have designed a ADC noise shaper that exceeds 350 dB performance (note these numbers are digital domain performance only, so it is an idealised noise shaper - I am only looking at the THD and noise of the noise shaper only). To test the noise shaper I can run Verilog simulations, capture the data, then do an FFT on the data, and then check the results. Before I did that, I thought it would be a good idea to run a similar simulation with Dave's noise shaper. In this case, I am trying to evaluate whether it can accurately encode very small signals, so I am using a -301 dB sine wave at 6 kHz. If it can resolve a signal at -301 dB, then we can safely say that small signals are accurately encoded, at least in the digital domain.
 
So here are the results:
 
 

 
So this is the digital domain performance of the Dave noise shaper, and frequency is from DC to 100kHz (0.1 MHz).
 
The 6 kHz signal is perfectly reconstituted at -301 dB. You can see a flat line at -340 dB, but this is just a FFT issue. The real noise floor at 15 kHz is at -380 dB, which is about 100 trillion times lower noise than conventional high performance noise shapers. Note also the noise at 100 kHz is at -200 dB - that is extraordinary low for a noise shaper, and shows why I need to do little filtering on the analogue side.
 
-301 db is better than 50 bits accuracy.
 
Now to write the code for the ADC!
 
Rob

Sounds exciting indeed.
Once ready I would suggest you   let  some equally dedicated  recording engineers in the genre of acoustic and classical like Jared Sacks or Morten Lindberg or any of the freelancers for BIS  or  Challenge Classics  or any other label that cares about both music and SQ! try  it at  sessions comparing it to the current SOTA  ADCs like Merging and others. 
And/or make some of your  own  simply miked or even true binaural recordings for headphone listeners like most people here ,under the best possible conditions acoustically  with music and musicians where all the things you are  striving for for really matter and make a difference.
Imho that excludes basically all of modern synthetic Pop and Rock by the way.
Cheers Chris who never made it to Can Jam , instead I listened to Dave the week before, under better than show conditions for hours , on my own in a reasonably quiet environment and was duly impressed as  I reported earlier.

 

[Beolab]

Unpacking my new Black DAVE







Now it is time for some listening !

 

[JaZZ]

Congrats, Beolab!

It looks exactly like mine.
 
Now time to perform the 250-hour break-in!

 

[Beolab]

Congrats, Beolab! It looks exactly like mine.

Now time to perform the 250-hour break-in!

I give it 2 hours to warm up and break in tops

Thanks my fellow Dave owner !

Cheers !

 

[Hiyono]

Grats, Black looks nice. 
 
I was wondering.  Did other people's Dave come with any booklets or anything?  That unboxing video showed a packet of papers.  I don't think mine came with anything like that.

 

[wdh777]

Do any online retailers in the United States sell these yet? I can't find one. Thanks