[analogmusic]

The point of davina is how to reduce a 768/24 bit recording to 44.1/16 and keep the musicality..... I think... but rob watts to answe this better

 

[AlanYWM]

  i have schiit Wyrd, i didn't use it on DAVE yet. so since i use PC as a source, will Wyrd help me with DAVE? or i should go with iFi iPower?? or both can't be used with DAVE?
 

 
 
planing to get sonore microRendu + UltraCap LPS-1 combo at some point.
 
 

 
 
yet if my Wyrd is usable or could help to clean the signal that would help. i didn't use it because i wanted to ask here first, just in case, or go with iFi iPower as a first step before i buy the "sonore microRendu + UltraCap LPS-1" combo.
 

 
 
Thanks in advance.

 
Since no one responded, I will give my 2 cents worth 

 
Given that you already have the Dave, I would put my resources to getting the microRendu + LPS-1. This combo is the best of the lot mentioned.

 

[Shini44]

   
Since no one responded, I will give my 2 cents worth 

 
Given that you already have the Dave, I would put my resources to getting the microRendu + LPS-1. This combo is the best of the lot mentioned.

decided to wait, LPS-1 will get a new combo from the same company. no need to get microRendu. also i dislike the fact that i have to stream music, i want to use directly. 

 

[Christer]

waterlily acoustics, Mahler 5 conducted temirkanov imho is native dsd recording by a single stereo mic.

Yes it is, but he got the strings sounding  too weak for Temirkanov so the  strings  have been "boosted" in post production.
DSD 64 can sound very good raw ie  without any   editing used. But  rising DSD noise  for  each editing step, gradually seeping into the audible frequency range is a problem with too many multimic´d and post produced/edited DSD 64 recordings.
But yes, that one and the companion  Scriabin SACD  are  two rare  exceptions from the standard way of recording classical these days which unfortunately is more less throw everything you´ve got at the orchestra and  do the balance in post production.
And everything "you´ve got" often amounts to 30 mics or more.
One label recently boasted that they had made the world´s first 48 channels DXD recording!
I have not heard it but a person whose judgment I  normally trust has said it sounded pretty terrible and synthetic.
 
And ironically  Water Lily´s purist stereo   was not much appreciated by  a  misguided HIFI crowd  used to multimic´d balances doctored  to sound impressive on their boombox systems. 
Likewise although they do use multimiking and postprocess a lot , BIS has often been blamed for too much dynamic range in some of their recordings by the same crowd.
I sometimes wonder how many HIFI enthusiasts actually visit live acoustic concerts and have those as reference.
Far too few it seems especially when reading reviews of really expensive High End stuff like DAVE or recently in HI FI NEWS and other mags  again, Martin Logan´s most expensive electrostatic speakers which are reviewed playing mainly  the general crowd pleasing, pop/rock synthetic crap recordings  recorded in low res pcm. 
I hope DAVINA will bring at least some simply mic´d  well recorded acoustic music to the table.

 

[Christer]

The point of davina is how to reduce a 768/24 bit recording to 44.1/16 and keep the musicality..... I think... but rob watts to answe this better

That objective is another thing I don´t get. Why record in true hi res and then reduce to 16/44.1????
Even WIFI connection downloads are pretty fast these days and hardrives are getting bigger and cheaper on a regular basis.
Rob himself said he had recently bought a 5 gigabyte  portable harddrive.
I carry three 2 gigabyte  LACIE rugged portable drives on my travels this winter and the only drawback is that I sometimes don´t remember on which disk  a particular piece I want to hear in its native hi res master quality is.
But that is a price I  will gladly pay rather than compromise and listen to the downsampled 16/44.1 with its lesser SQ.
I have never heard  16/44.1 sound as EFFORTLESS and natural as a well recorded native HI RES recording of the large scale classical works I mostly listen to both as recordings and live.
To my ears 16/44.1  always reveals its digital limitations one way or other.
The more complex the music is  the more obvious  the lack of realism.

 

[rkt31]

@Christer, you are right about that waterlily recording. that was one of the first digital recordings done by them. before that they used a tape system with single stereo mic in blumlein arrangement. I have few of those earlier recordings like a meeting by the river, tabula rasa, saltanah . all these are more of fusion music so not for everyone. but these recordings are one of the finest example of most natural recordings done through a minimalistic arrangements by their engineer kavi alaxander . another two labels known for minimalistic arrangements are opus 3 records and reference recordings . I recently came across an acoustic music recording of Doug MacLeod by reference recordings. the recording is done through a single stereo mic and the performers sat around the mic in a circle for the recording. you could clearly feel the voice of Doug wavering in the soundstage as he moved his head , such is the natural feel. Imagine a single stereo mic feeding directly to Davina for such an acoustic recording !

 

[Christer]

@Christer, you are right about that waterlily recording. that was one of the digital recordings done by them. before that they used a tape system with single stereo mic in blumlein arrangement. I have few of those earlier recordings like a meeting by the river, tabula rasa, saltanah . all these are more of fusion music so not for everyone. but these recordings are one of the finest example of most natural recordings done through a minimalistic arrangements by their engineer kavi alaxander . another two labels known for minimalistic arrangements are opus 3 records and reference recordings . I recently came across an acoustic music recording of Doug MacLeod by reference recordings. the recording is done through a single stereo mic and the performers sat around the mic in a circle for the recording. you could clearly feel the voice of Doug wavering in the soundstage as he moved his head , such is the natural feel.

I  certainly agree regarding both Reference Recordings and Opus 3.
I have many good  recordings by both labels and have  been at the actual sessions /concert recordings for some of the famous OPUS 3 releases.
I am not normally very patriotic but little Sweden has had some very good recording engineers , guys with the actual live sound in a  real acoustic venue as  reference.
And imho Prof Johnson of Refernce Recordings not only made rbcd a bit more listenable with his HDCD system before real digital  hi res became available, he also  captures an orchestra  very much as it sound in a good hall too.
What I don´t get in the context of DAVINA is why anyone would want to use an absolete recording format when there are much better ones avaliable.

 

[drbobbybones]

Hi all,
 
I know I'm the new guy and I'm probably gonna get shot down to oblivion with this question, but can we put all the Davina questions into its own thread and out of this one?  I just got my Chord DAVE, and I LOVE it, but looking for information in this thread is impossible with all of the off topic comments.  

Thanks, and happy new year to you all!  I learned a lot by reading most of the comments on this thread.  I would love some how-to's about settings from anyone else here if they have any!  

  

 

[Deftone]

Wow!

I just don't get posts like this. Clearly the poster hasn't heard the DAVE and it's not the first time they've spoken nonsense about Chord gear. In the same thread they mention the Mojo's D-S glare. Rubbish if you ask me.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/818323/schiit-jotunheim-review-preview-head-fi-tv/3195#post_13128336

______________________________________________


Anyway, Happy New Year to all the DAVE owners and a special Happy New Year to Rob and John! Looking forward to 2017!

I have seen many people and on different forums complain about chord DACs sounding too digital or having glare, but to my ears chord DACs have the most realistic and effortless natural sound I have ever heard.

 

[miketlse]

  Hi all,
 
I know I'm the new guy and I'm probably gonna get shot down to oblivion with this question, but can we put all the Davina questions into its own thread and out of this one?  I just got my Chord DAVE, and I LOVE it, but looking for information in this thread is impossible with all of the off topic comments.  

Thanks, and happy new year to you all!  I learned a lot by reading most of the comments on this thread.  I would love some how-to's about settings from anyone else here if they have any!  

  

 
Questions about Davina have occurred in occasional spurts, and we are experiencing one at present. Rob has posted that he will be able to discuss Davina more after CES 2017, so maybe that will be an appropriate time for Chord (or maybe Rob, because he is not a Chord employee) to reassess if they want to create/sponsor a new thread. I suspect they would have several willing volunteers, from members interested in performing the moderator role.

 

[Crgreen]

The problem is, in my experience many purist recordings are musically vapid. For me, the quality of the music and the performance always comes first. I'd rather listen to music rather than a recording, though I can see that engineers might view things differently.

 

[JaZZ]

The problem is, in my experience many purist recordings are musically vapid. For me, the quality of the music and the performance always comes first. I'd rather listen to music rather than a recording, though I can see that engineers might view things differently.

 
Unfortunately that's true in my opinion. Lately I was provided with some audiophile two-mic DSD recordings the sound engineer wanted to know my opinion of. They all sounded quite lifelike, but recorded like from a bad listening place in a too small room or too close to a corner – with reverberation of short runtimes alltogether. They reminded me of my own documentary recordings of stage performances with my fusion band, although technically they were better (microphones, sound format) – musically they were rather uninspired. Most of the commercially available audiophile recordings I own or have heard tend to sound like that, to a minor degree. I belong to the people who like to sit in one of the front rows, especially with classical concerts, and I can't stand the sound in the middle of the hall, let alone in the rear – I can't follow the musical information when it's masked by the massive reverberation there. Unfortunately two-mic recordings are prone to this feature – they often sound distant and (thus) unmusical to my ears. I guess I prefer multimic recordings for this very reason and am less interested in a concert-hall perspective. (I like the analogy to some sports events, such as motorcycle races: Do I really want a broadcast with the perspective of a spectator at the venue?) On the other hand runtime stereophony is essential to me – fortunately many of the good (multimic) recordings manage to juggle both. In fact when it comes to the musical information, many recordings fair better than most live events I've attended; after all the last concert with a word premiere of Jan Esra Kuhl's «And again» sounded phenomenal from the first row, better than on the (excellent) recording that was made from it and the composer kindly sent to me, but purely from the musical information the recording is still more significant. Well, that's the crux of a front row: some instruments are much closer to your ears than others.

 

[PhiQuanTu]

Anybody knows a good contact to check on the price of a new Dave? Would you pm me some numbers?

Thanks

 

[romaz]

Anybody knows a good contact to check on the price of a new Dave? Would you pm me some numbers?

Thanks

This depends on what country you live in.  Prices in North America seemed to be higher compared to elsewhere (including Europe and Australia) but I have noticed that prices are now beginning to drop here in the U.S.  I paid $13,300 + tax for mine from a dealer in San Francisco when the DAVE was first released and this same dealer is now selling them new for $11,900 which is probably a reflection of a more favorable exchange rate.  You can buy them least expensively in the U.K. it seems but I believe you would have to personally travel there to buy one and export it to your home country.  Furthermore, for warranty service, you would be forced to post your DAVE directly to Chord in the UK. as your local Chord dealer or your country's distributor will have no obligation to help you.  Something to keep in mind.

 

[romaz]

  Hi all,
 
I know I'm the new guy and I'm probably gonna get shot down to oblivion with this question, but can we put all the Davina questions into its own thread and out of this one?  I just got my Chord DAVE, and I LOVE it, but looking for information in this thread is impossible with all of the off topic comments.  

Thanks, and happy new year to you all!  I learned a lot by reading most of the comments on this thread.  I would love some how-to's about settings from anyone else here if they have any!  

  

Congratulations on getting a DAVE.  I agree, reading through nearly 6,500 posts is not an easy undertaking.  The most important posts are from Rob himself.  Start there.
 
In almost any setup you come up with, DAVE will not be the limiting factor or the weak link and so while DAVE will improve almost any system it is placed in, with proper care and attention, you will find it will have much more to offer.  It depends how high you want to take it.  While talk about Davina, Blu mk2 and Chord's new digital amp can be distracting, these units will be designed to especially shine on the DAVE and will allow the DAVE to show its truer potential and as these devices are expected to be released in the coming months, their discussion on this thread will probably be inevitable.
 
For speaker use, the single-ended outputs are a bit more transparent but balanced outputs sound excellent so go with what your speaker amp prefers.  For headphone use, feel free to experiment with other headphone amps and go with what sounds best but I believe you will find that nothing will sound as transparent as connecting your headphone directly to DAVE's headphone jack. 
 
There aren't a whole lot of settings to concern yourself over.  With the HF filter on, you get a touch more smoothness but at the compromise of timing.  Go with what you prefer.  
 
Same thing with crossfeed.  This is obviously applicable only to headphone listening.  There's no right or wrong and you will find people will have different preferences or no preference at all.  
 
Regarding the phase switch, you'll be surprised to find how many recordings are out of phase which can lead to a thinner and more bass-shy sound.  Out of phase recordings can also sound more diffuse with poor localization of instruments.  If you question the quality of what you're hearing, try inverting the phase.  
 
PCM Plus and DSD Plus are self-explanatory.  Unfortunately, you have to toggle from one to the other when you go from PCM to DSD if you want either to sound their best and there is a normal gap of silence that ensues as the DAVE switches from one mode to the other.  While DAVE plays back DSD very well in my own experience, it is well documented that Rob much prefers PCM and that he believes with everything else being equal, PCM at 16/44 sounds better than even DSD512.  I happen to agree with this and so the only time I seek out DSD recordings are if they were natively recorded with a DSD recorder.  
 
While it has become very chic to upsample PCM to DSD with HQPlayer, feel free to try it yourself and see what you get.  I believe you will find that DAVE does a much better job upsampling than HQPlayer.  Feel content to send DAVE a bit-perfect signal and let DAVE do the rest.  The exception to this would be digital equalization to correct for deficiencies with your headphones or speakers.  JaZZ can tell you all about what a difference this can make.
 
Should you decide to connect the DAVE to a preamp or an amp with its own volume control, you would do best to use the DAVE's volume control.  It is completely lossless and you won't find anything that will attenuate better.
 
As far as digital inputs, they all can sound good but Rob will tell you that USB sounds best followed by Toslink and that BNC has the potential to sound the worst.  With BNC and AES/EBU, the quality of the cables matter more as these inputs aren't galvanically isolated.