CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[jlbrach]

that is very good to hear,i am pleased...i look forward to giving them a workout tomorrow when the dave arrives

 

[bigfatpaulie]

When that distortion is on the level of the Stellaris... yes! I want!

 
 
"Stellairs"  Sounds SUPER rare.  I'm not sure if anyone has one.    

 

[tkteo]

Nothing sounds like live unamplified music. The gap can never be closed. In which case, in the spirit of genuine enquiry: what should we be listening for? It's a question I've asked myself many times to which I've never found a satisfactory answer, other than that the music connects with me to an extent that I don't mind the gap.

 
As "Evolvist" stated -- amen to that -- "you just let it come."
 
I love live un-amped music for the atmosphere, the feeling of being there. No need to make arguments about how changing one cable versus another changes the "soundstage" and blah blah about widening the soundstage, as if all stages are supposed to be wide in real life?!. At a live performance, YOU ARE IN THE soundstage.

 

[Rob Watts]

 

This just really cracks me up after a long work day. Even though it seems to miss the point. Still super hilarious to me. Not sure why.

My simplistic interpretation of what Rob Watts and John Franks have been saying is this. If you build a DAC (Pulse Array + other design aspects) that is innately significantly more immune to jitter than any other DAC designs, a great clock that's good enough would be perfect. If you build a DAC that is innately more susceptible to jitter, you may try to get some sort of super clock to minimize the jitter. However, since you're not sure what you're doing, at some point, your super duper clock is not really helping with jitter and is just injecting noise into the system and altering the sound that you may think is better.

With all that said, still a hilarious joke.

I buy all of this, but why aren't the DAVE then miles better than the dcs Vivaldi / Nagra HD or even the Select II who are using jittery super clocks then, it is just a subtle difference and down to a matter of taste is what Roy concluded for example?

Is it because of the weak recordings that cant show of DAVEs full potential maybe, or how can the "poor-knowledge-ultra-expensive heavy-jittery-dac's" sound so close to DAVE then? In my book they should have sounded much worse, or does DAVE also got a small hidden secret bottleneck in the design that you struggle with to make it fully bloom out properly Rob?

 
To me it's absolutely not a subtle difference but night and day and I get perplexed that people can't hear it as vast differences. I listened to a well regarded DAC (not one that is mentioned in the quote) on my headphones using recordings I knew and it sounded absolutely awful. If i were to score it, I would give it a negative number - and by that I would prefer to listen to nothing at all and re-run my music in my head than listen to the awful noise it reproduced.
 
So why can't others hear the same? Am I super sensitive or OCD? Or is this just simply my own ultra confirmation bias? 
 
Or is it other peoples gear and their systems are not capable of resolving it? I know there are some headphones that people rave about, and I hear them and think ouch that's actually unpleasant.
 
I guess that we all have differing sensitivities and like and dislikes - and we need to have the humility to recognise that our likes and dislikes change - and for sure it would be pretty boring if everybody had the same opinions.
 
Rob 

 

[romaz]

Nothing sounds like live unamplified music. The gap can never be closed. In which case, in the spirit of genuine enquiry: what should we be listening for? It's a question I've asked myself many times to which I've never found a satisfactory answer, other than that the music connects with me to an extent that I don't mind the gap.

 
I fully agree that nothing sounds like live unamplified music and while the gap can never be fully closed, it can be approached much further than it is now.  In the end, whether it be live unamplified music or a facsimile of it, as you've stated, it is that emotional connection that I believe we each seek.  
 

I buy all of this, but why aren't the DAVE then miles better than the dcs Vivaldi / Nagra HD or even the Select II who are using jittery super clocks then, it is just a subtle difference and down to a matter of taste is what Roy concluded for example?

Is it because of the weak recordings that cant show of DAVEs full potential maybe, or how can the "poor-knowledge-ultra-expensive heavy-jittery-dac's" sound so close to DAVE then? In my book they should have sounded much worse, or does DAVE also got a small hidden secret bottleneck in the design that you struggle with to make it fully bloom out properly Rob?

 
Thank you, Fredrik.  I was hoping someone would bring this up.  I have repeatedly alluded to Chord's upcoming digital amps but I believe it will be the combination of these amps and DAVINA that will more fully show us what the DAVE is capable of.  The onus will now be on Rob to deliver and I have full confidence he will but I believe these two components will erase all doubts about where the DAVE stands compared to the rest.  
 
Until recently, I, too, have wondered what DAVE's ultra-low noise floor, lack of noise floor modulation, small signal linearity, almost unmeasurable distortion levels, etc. all means if other DACs can approach the DAVE's performance with their supposedly flawed designs but over the past couple of months and again this past weekend, I have had three very revelatory experiences that have changed my perspective on everything. 
 
(1)  As some of you know, a couple of months ago, I compared a variety of interconnects that differed in terms of metallurgy using my DAVE and my Abyss/HE-1000.  It ranged from UP-OCC grade copper (the purest copper that is commercially available in the world today and is 99.9999% pure) to UP-OCC grade silver to an alloy consisting of OCC Silver/Gold and eventually to one of High Fidelity Cable's entry level interconnects (CT-1E).  As I moved from copper to silver to the HFC interconnect, it was very clear that resolution (meaning detail retrieval) improved.  The only thing that the silver/gold alloy seemed to add was greater tonal body and a more natural sounding timbre but resolution-wise, it appeared equivalent to UP-OCC silver in terms of resolution.  Short of the HFC interconnect, I would go for the OCC Silver/Gold alloy.  Given the choice, however, I would go with the HFC interconnect every time.  The point is that whatever you use to connect your DAVE to your amp will have a significant influence on resolution and thereby transparency but it shouldn't require any stretch of the imagination to understand that even the best interconnect in the world can never be completely transparent.  Just like no preamp will always be more transparent than any preamp, the same thing goes for interconnects.
 
(2)  Last month, many of you recall that I compared a very high-quality class D amplifier against a First Watt J2 class A JFET amplifier by Nelson Pass against the DAVE directly driving my ALNICO monitors.  As part of this comparison, I also introduced a tube buffer with a variable bias that allowed me to vary the impact of the tube from 0% (complete bypass) to 100%.  With the tube in full effect, there was this nice warm colorful bloom, a sound I have been familiar with for years that was indeed very pleasant and for certain poorly-recorded tracks, I actually preferred it.  In the absence of any comparison, it actually sounded very transparent as if the artists were in the room as they say.  As I gradually reduced the effect of the tube, it was very interesting to see how this colorful bloom was replaced by clarity and depth and I realized that what I thought was transparent wasn't so transparent after all.  As I went from the class D amp to the First Watt J2, it was very evident that Nelson Pass knows how to build amplifiers as the improved refinement was nothing short of breathtaking.  Given the switching properties of class D amps, moving up to the class A First Watt J2 also resulted in a very noticeable improvement in transparency.  As I fully bypassed the tube buffer (ie preamp) and switched from the class D amp to the First Watt J2, the improvement in transparency was so significant that I was thinking there was no way I could top this and that this was as transparent as things could get for my system.  This is what I meant in a previous post when I said that we all think our systems are transparent until we hear that next "something" that is even more transparent and I believe there will always be that next "something" until you actually find yourself seated in the concert hall.  In my case, that next "something" happened to be DAVE driving my speakers directly.  This change has been so significant that paired with my upper-end High Fidelity Cables speaker cables, I have yet to hear a more transparent sounding headphone or speaker setup.  Imagine a class A speaker amp that requires no transparency-robbing interconnects, a noise floor of -180dB with no noise floor modulation, almost unmeasurable distortion levels and the full speed, linearity, dynamic range and bandwidth of the original DAC signal and you begin to understand why this might fully change the landscape of 2-channel speaker listening.  My comparison of my DAVE against the dCS Vivaldi and Nagra HD took place weeks ago and nothing I heard that night or at RMAF this past weekend has matched the detail retrieval I am getting with my DAVE directly driving my monitors.  If you think you have a transparent speaker system now, just wait until next year.  I believe you will be forced to recalibrate in your brain what transparency from an audio system means.
 
Now some will say that DAVE directly driving my monitors shouldn't be that different than DAVE directly driving headphones.  I even recall Fredrik suggesting that his Simaudio amp is maybe only 5% less transparent than DAVE directly driving his Abyss but what I'm hearing is well beyond that.  As I mentioned in a previous post, with the appropriate recording, depth is conservatively 20% better than the First Watt J2 and detail retrieval with these ALNICO monitors is superior to any headphone I currently own.  I believe the shortcoming of headphone listening is the headphones themselves and their relatively infant technology but I do believe things will continue to improve.  First of all, as has been mentioned recently, headphones are limited in their abilities to fully reveal the performance of a DAC and I agree with this.  While headphones can be better with regards to resolving detail, they can never fully compete with speakers with regards to resolving time.  Not just depth from the standpoint of knowing that the brass section is seated 5 meters behind the woodwinds but even the reverberant sound field of the strumming of a guitar is better appreciated with speakers.  With headphones, there's just too short of a space for certain sounds to fully unfold.  The second problem is with headphone technology and the paucity of truly high-end headphones.  Of course, high-end headphones haven't been around anywhere as long as high-end speakers and so it is to be expected headphone technology needs time to catch up and that we would have fewer choices when it comes to state of the art headphones but it sure would be great if there was a headphone that had the detail resolution of a Utopia, the air and musicality of an HE-1000, the clarity of an SR-009, the midrange of an LCD-4, the bass of the TH-900, the soundstage of an HD800 and the imaging of the Abyss.  While I love the headphones that I have, oh how I wish that they could move me as much as my ALNICOs.
 
(3)  This past weekend, while at RMAF, I paid the MQA rooms a visit.  I have seen these demonstrations before and have had mixed emotions.  This time was different.  While at the Aurender room, they were demonstrating their new A20 music server with built-in DAC.  This latest Aurender has an MQA decoder built-in and I got to hear a track by Adele with both MQA decoding turned off then on.  My impression?  Ho hum.  Maybe a little improvement but I had to struggle to hear it.  On to the Mytek Brooklyn DAC and while it was better, at no time did I feel like ditching my DAVE and buying a Mytek.  
 
Then I went to this room:
 

 
That's right, all MSB DACs are now MQA-capable including their Select II.  During a conversation with an MQA rep at CES back in January, I was told that MQA works by taking advantage of the oversampling capabilities of a DAC to remove pre- and post-echo.  For those not aware of what this results in, it is supposed to lead to time smearing and so its elimination is supposed to improve clarity, timing fidelity, and depth and consequently result in less listening fatigue.  Back in January, I recall being told that DACs that could oversample to very high levels had the potential to perform better than DACs that couldn't oversample much at all and so this technology was not well suited for R2R DACs.  I'm not sure if things changed or else I misunderstood but this is no longer how MQA apparently works.  All a DAC needs now is an MQA decoder to feed the DAC a decoded signal that has been optimized for the performance characteristics of that DAC but that oversampling had nothing to do with it and I was told by Bob Stuart that this technology should be compatible with all DACs.  Fortunately, Rob himself has suggested that this should be possible with Chord DACs but the question is whether it really results in a worthwhile improvement.  As I stated, with the Aurender A10 and the Mytek Brooklyn, for me, it was a noticeable improvement but it wasn't anywhere close to what I was already hearing at home with my DAVE.  With the MSB Select II, however, it was quite a different story.  With a certain piano track, I was simply dumbfounded by what I heard and I believe the entire room was as well.  With MQA-enabled, the dimensionality of the sound, especially the depth rose to another level.  Details were clearer with noticeably less smearing.  With MQA off, this DAC sounded very pedestrian by comparison and I have never found the Select II to sound pedestrian in the past.  The point of this is that it is clear there is much to be gained by overcoming the limitations of current ADCs.  While MQA is more of a patch that addresses some shortcomings, I see DAVINA as the bigger potential game changer as it is supposed to have the full performance characteristics of the DAVE with regards to noise floor, lack of noise floor modulation, DR, etc.  If the promise of DAVINA proves to be real and in theory, it should easily improve upon what MQA provides, while all will benefit, those with a DAVE should benefit the most.
 
This is why I believe 2017 will be such a landmark year for audiophiles but especially speaker audiophiles.  In addition to whatever else Rob might have up his sleeve, if my experience with my DAVE directly driving my speakers is any indication of what is to come, I can only imagine what impact both DAVINA and Chord's digital amps will provide and I believe only then will we know what DAVE can really do.  

 

[Kamil21]

@romaz, thanks for putting up your thoughts.

1) What is the rated sensitivity of your alnico loudspeakers?

2) Were they connected directly to the headphone outputs or other output on the Dave?

3) Was the volume adequate for musical enjoyment? A poor man's super desktop system maybe?

 

[x RELIC x]

@romaz, thanks for putting up your thoughts.

1) What is the rated sensitivity of your alnico loudspeakers?

2) Were they connected directly to the headphone outputs or other output on the Dave?

3) Was the volume adequate for musical enjoyment? A poor man's super desktop system maybe?

Roy shared his setup in detail in this post:

http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave/4815#post_12874117

 

[romaz]

@romaz, thanks for putting up your thoughts.

1) What is the rated sensitivity of your alnico loudspeakers?

2) Were they connected directly to the headphone outputs or other output on the Dave?

3) Was the volume adequate for musical enjoyment? A poor man's super desktop system maybe?

1)  Rated at 95dB but it feels like much higher than this.  I use a custom version of these Omega Alnico monitors:  http://omegaloudspeakers.com/superalnicomonit.html with this exact same finish. Not too expensive at about $2k.  They incorporate OCC silver/gold alloy wire internally and Furutech's best low mass binding posts.  They sit on a pair of Symposium Acoustics Svelte Plus platforms for isolation which then sit on a pair of IsoAcoustics Aperta stands to get the driver exactly to ear height.  
 
2)  I designed my tube buffer to have a special "super" bypass mode with RCA in and speaker binding posts out.  I used Furutech's best connectors and UP-OCC grade Neotech solid core silver wiring to connect the two.  A pair of High Fidelity Cables CT-1 Reference RCA interconnects go from DAVE to the input of this box and a pair High Fidelity Cables CT-1 Ultimate speaker cables connect from the binding posts of the box and directly to my speakers. 
 
3)  They cannot play my recordings to full scale but I can reach peaks of about 90dB using the DAVE's 2 watts which is very satisfactory for my type of listening in most cases.  It is the cleanest 2 watts you will ever see.  Combined with a very fast JL Audio Fathom F110V2 subwoofer, it is extremely satisfying.  In my home theater setup, which includes a pair of floor standing Sonus Faber Cremonas and a 400 watt Sunfire amp, I will occasionally bring my DAVE there and I enjoy it very much but this setup is considerably more resolving and also more satisfying.  While I would love more power and will hope to be first in line for Chord's 20-watt digital amp when it is released, this "poor man's super desktop system" (a very good descriptor) is the best system I have every owned, so good that I have removed all budgetary constraints to improve it.  I am now targeting HFC's best speaker cables for it.

 

[6RS]

   
To me it's absolutely not a subtle difference but night and day and I get perplexed that people can't hear it as vast differences. 
 
Rob 

I felt like relieved from a big stress when hearing the Hugo - finally that glare or whatever you might want to call it is gone. And I had a NOS Dac before. Rob's explanations and his research make total sense to me. The brain is relieved from all that compensatory calculations it engages to process sound emanating from poor digital.
But to get this, one needs to relax while listening. Do not actively listen to every note, shut-off the audiophile critical listening mode. Just expose yourself to the music. Well, at least it works for me.

 

[analogmusic]

Really looking forward to the first recordings from DAVINA........ 

 
 
Listening to Metallica (Black album) - on Mojo, amazing !!!!! 

 

[x RELIC x]

Really looking forward to the first recordings from DAVINA........   

Listening to Metallica (Black album) - on Mojo, amazing !!!!!

Me too! Actually, I'm very interested in the test recordings Rob has mentioned he wants to use, some everyday things. I personally would REALLY want to listen to that on the DAVE. I hope Rob can share these.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

I will be doing some initial recordings to mostly test for depth - I plan to have two prototypes, fed with the same mic feed, so I can change the internal configuration and see if noise shaper resolution is the same for DAC's and ADC's - they should be. So this will be natural sounds in my Welsh village - dogs barking, birds, etc. I will test for sounds that are several miles away to close up.

Also, it will be home recordings of guitar and a few other instruments, again with two units with differing internal settings - how else can one do AB testing with an ADC? The other issue is transient reproduction, timing and how this relates to decimation, which is currently very poorly done. I am currently thinking about the best way to consistently and reliably do this. Percussion comes to mind as the best way to do this.

The next stage is to release to professional engineers, and here we have a number of big names lined up, so I won't be dependent on my inexperienced efforts. These recordings will be used for final decimation testing as I will record at 768 kHz then post recording convert down to 44.1 16 bits - and having the original 768 k on hand will be very interesting.

I will be posting more about this once the PCB is finished.

Rob

 

[DaveRedRef-III]

This question of "why is the difference not larger?" Is a good one because I think it has the healthy affect of getting us to focus on the weak links in our systems.

As Romaz reminds us, two significant new developments are not far away for Chord customers and like him I am really looking forward to hearing them. However, there are things we can do now which will enhance our listening experience in the meantime and at relatively little cost. The benefit comes from isolation.

I have always been an advocate of good isolation but on Head-fi and elsewhere I see many photos of Show setups and home setups with woefully inadequate isolation. It is clear to me that many people still do not think it is worth the effort. This includes some hifi designers too, who imo could easily improve their products with a simple understanding of isolation fundamentals. There are still speaker designers who put the feet directly under the speaker for instance. Maybe some audiophiles don't bother because a short while ago we were all still trying to hide the less desirable facets of digital sound, I don't know. The current crop SotA components though are often not shown in their best light due to a lack of sensible isolation. It is crazy to think (given the price of some components) that in some cases for £50 or less i could get the component to sound like the manufacturers next upgrade.

There is more to isolation than just putting your amp on a wooden board or slab of granite. Every room has its weakness of design, every component has its own flaw when it comes to isolation. You just need to find the flaws and use some ingenuity. For instance my 300 year old house has floating timber floors and my hifi room has carpet. The weakness here is that not unsurprisingly the floor vibrates, which affects not just focus of my speakers but also creates key bass frequencies which resonate more than others. If I use spikes through the carpet the unwanted bass frequency resonates are still prevalent and the image focus is still compromised. If I get two slabs of granite and put the speakers on them the unwanted resonant bass frequencies are significantly reduced but the image focus is affected by a large granite base floating on a thick carpet. No matter how big and heavy the granite plinth, it still floats on a sea of carpet fibres and does not flatten the carpet sufficiently to improve focus (to my expectations at least.) So I needed the plinths to sit firm and the answer for me was 4 small spikes sited under the corners of each granite plinth (at small outlay). I chose small cone spikes in this case which were in two parts so I could use only the wider part of the cone (upside down) without the point. This meant the full weight pushed the cones down to the carpet backing and 'not through it' (to avoid direct contact with the floors vibrations) and there was almost no chance of a cone falling on its side due to an unwanted nudge of the plinth. I chose the biggest plinths I could find (500mm square) to reduce the effect of movement from vibration in the floor amplifying at the tweeter end of my speaker on a lateral basis. To explain this principle, if I have a 2 inch plate tilted at 1/64th inch the affects on a 4 feet tower sitting above it are far greater than 1/64th inch tilt on a 2 feet plate. Add to this the greater weight of my 500mm granite plinths and you can see that bigger is better for the purpose of both suppressing vibration and its amplified effects on the tweeter. Now if I focus on my amplifier I have a VertexAQ granite plinth sitting on 4 vibration absorbent pucks beneath the (Chord) amplifier which also sits on 4 vibration absorbent feet. One of the reasons Chord products are so well isolated from ground based vibration is that the design not only has soft shoes, those shoes are on aluminium feet which 'do not sit directly under the chassis'. In my experience this isolation principle provides the best form of isolation. Even Still Points use it on a micro scale. Another example is Sonus Faber speakers have metal struts which stick out from the base and then the spikes affix to the floor. This has two benefits. 1) the speaker vibrations are disapated along those struts horizontally before the go down to the floor and 2) it provides a wider stance so small vibrational tilts are reduced at the point of the tweeter some 4 feet above. Now as good as the Chord amp is designed for vertical vibration, like all components it is still susceptible to lateral vibration from sound waves (my right speaker is only 3 feet away) and the amp has a thin steel base plate affixed only at its edges which unfortunately acts like a Rolf Harris wobble board. The top plate by comparison is brilliantly designed and affixed in regard to vibration and is beautiful to look at but fortunately both lateral vibribration and the base plate vibration can be sorted with a single solution. This is not so much isolation as 'anchoring'. I used a large VertexAQ spike sitting on 3 metal discs (for height) to 'just reach' the base plate. A Still Points would work also. I don't wish to lift the unit off the ground just reduce the vibration of the plate. In doing so this also provides enough 'anchoring' to meaningfully reduce lateral vibration. To put this simple solution into context, the improvement in focus and musicality gained from this simple solution on my system was so noticeable that, had it been achieved by another amp, I would have bought the other amp........ and yet I achieved this improvement with something I had lying around in my hifi room!

Now here is the real rub, my experience of Dave (in Regard to isolating my system components) is different than any other DAC that I have experienced to date. What I have found is that with every other DAC (owned or demo'd) over the years there comes a point at which isolation uncovers some undesirable facet to the sound. I would get to a certain point and then I had to 'back-off some' for the sake of a pleasant listening experience. However, with Dave I have yet to find that point, which to my mind is an indicator that there is probably more goodness still hidden yet. I think this partly explains why many audiophiles are not hearing as wide a difference between Dave and many of its competitors as Dave is capable of. I would encourage those here who haven't bothered to experiment more with isolation to give it some of your time and use some of your own ingenuity. I think you will find it rewarding on more than one level.

 

[analogmusic]

As Rob said, sound quality is not the main issue that separates his DACs from all the competition.
 
It is musicality, whether the music sounds "stressed", robotic or mechanical, and whether one can hear how the musicians are playing, their intent, the power of the instruments and the mood/feeling of each musician as they play the music, (and for the vocalist, the feeling in the vocals).

 

[ecwl]

I have my personal opinions as to why many people fail to hear the superiority of Chord Mojo/DAVE over other DACs. I agree with Romaz that the equipments downstream that color the sound and reduce transparency is part of the problem. But I think despite what I also think is a huge difference between the sound quality of Chord Mojo/DAVE compared to other DACs, I think most people listen to recorded music differently and put priorities on other aspects than what I consider the more important ones.
 
From watching what other audiophiles listen for, the first thing is often noise floor and then dynamics. And to them, dynamics is whether the music sounds exciting. After that, they often listen for details that they haven't heard before. And then afterwards they listen for soundstage. Rarely do they listen for timbre of the instruments and timing.
 
The problem with listening for the things they listen for is that accuracy can be lost. What I mean is that music played by Chord DAVE is dynamic because of great low-level linearity (amplitude accuracy) and 256fs WTA upsampling (great timing). However, many people think non-Chord DACs are dynamic because noise floor modulation adds brightness to everything. So poor timing and noise floor modulation in non-Chord DACs often sounds as dynamic or even more dynamic to a lot of listeners as Chord DAVE. In fact, with musical passages that are not supposed to be dynamic, many listeners would find Chord DACs boring because of the absence of noise floor modulation to add that little bit of extra brightness.
 
Similarly, when people listen for details that they haven't heard before when upgrading DACs, you can hear more musical details and greater instrument separation with Chord DAVE because of the great low-level linearity. However, many people think non-Chord DACs have better details because the noise floor modulation adds brightness and creates a sense of false details. They generally offer much less genuine instrumental separation (as Romaz pointed out when he was listening to a string section). Since people don't really know what's in the original recording or music and many people don't listen to music with many, many instruments because it is a challenge to both the listener and to audio equipments, they tend to ignore the inaccuracies in instrumental separation with their non-Chord DACs, but to make matters worse, they identify new details in the recording that is generated by the noise floor modulation's brightness so a smooth vocal that sounds smooth on Chord DACs are deemed inferior because they claim to hear more details (brightness) in the vocals of their non-Chord DACs.
 
And then there is the aspect of soundstage which of course includes depth and width. As has been discussed before, 2nd and 3rd order harmonics can create a false illusion of additional soundstage width. And some recordings simply have no soundstage to speak of. Hence, Chord DACs would be more true to the original soundstage of the recording whereas DACs with more harmonic distortions would actually make all recordings have an "enhanced" soundstage to most listeners when in fact, they are merely listening to distorted soundstage.
 
To me, the most important thing I appreciate about Chord DACs is the accuracy of instrumental timbre. However, I find that some audiophiles simply don't notice it. Sometimes, the music they listen to don't use real acoustic instruments so they have no reference point to compare. Sometimes, they listen to live unamplified concerts so rarely that they forget what real instruments sound like. So they start assuming that their non-Chord DACs are actually the most accurate at reproducing the instrumental timbre of their favorite recording. They would say the Chord DACs sound different but they can't pinpoint it. And then they would say they don't like the Chord DACs because they don't have the same dynamic/soundstage/details that they are used to with their current non-Chord DAC. However, I find that learning to listen to correct instrumental timbre to compare DACs is the easiest thing to do and the easiest thing to listen for. Once you're used to the Chord DACs sound, the next easiest thing to listen for is actually excessive brightness from noise floor modulation in non-Chord DACs.
 
I think what Rob Watts describe as the best timing from 164000 taps and 256fs WTA upsampling is actually the hardest for most audiophiles to listen for, including myself. For the first 3 months when I owned the DAVE and compared to the Mojo, I had no idea what Rob Watts was talking about. It was winter and I got lazy and didn't go to a live concert. When you don't listen to live concerts, you forget what a drum strike sounds like or what a live plucked string sound like. Moreover, even though every time an instrument starts, we are hearing transient timing, it is simply not something we usually listen for. After attending the Boston Symphony on vacation, it suddenly clicked. I can hear the timing inaccuracy of non-Chord DACs vs Chord Mojo vs Chord DAVE vs live sound. It was something I never listened for and never noticed before. And I have to admit, because I've been busy in the summer with work and tennis, I'm beginning to forget what correct transient timing sounds like. If it weren't for me switching between Mojo (work) and DAVE (home) frequently I think I would start missing the differences in transient timing when listening.
 
For those lucky enough to own Chord DAVE or other Chord DACs, I think these are interesting aspects of musical reproduction and listening to think about. I've tried explaining some of these aspects to other audiophiles and some people would appreciate it and slowly become converts to Chord DACs but others have told me that they have been audiophiles for over 50 years and I don't know what I'm talking about and Chord DACs aren't that great. I guess if they're happy with what they've got, who am I to judge...

 

[Rob Watts]

 

Really looking forward to the first recordings from DAVINA........ 

 

Listening to Metallica (Black album) - on Mojo, amazing !!!!!

Me too! Actually, I'm very interested in the test recordings Rob has mentioned he wants to use, some everyday things. I personally would REALLY want to listen to that on the DAVE. I hope Rob can share these.

 

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

I will be doing some initial recordings to mostly test for depth - I plan to have two prototypes, fed with the same mic feed, so I can change the internal configuration and see if noise shaper resolution is the same for DAC's and ADC's - they should be. So this will be natural sounds in my Welsh village - dogs barking, birds, etc. I will test for sounds that are several miles away to close up.

Also, it will be home recordings of guitar and a few other instruments, again with two units with differing internal settings - how else can one do AB testing with an ADC? The other issue is transient reproduction, timing and how this relates to decimation, which is currently very poorly done. I am currently thinking about the best way to consistently and reliably do this. Percussion comes to mind as the best way to do this.

The next stage is to release to professional engineers, and here we have a number of big names lined up, so I won't be dependent on my inexperienced efforts. These recordings will be used for final decimation testing as I will record at 768 kHz then post recording convert down to 44.1 16 bits - and having the original 768 k on hand will be very interesting.

I will be posting more about this once the PCB is finished.

Rob

 
I had to give Davina a short break, as I have been very busy finishing off the new Blu for a show later this month. But I am back onto Davina now, so I hope to finish the PCB by the end of (this!) October.
 
For sure I will publish copies of test recordings, together with some files that are experimental (one Davina set up one way, another Davina a different way both fed the same mic feed) so we can all hear the difference.
 
Rob