CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[icebear]

...Perhaps we may see music being re-released as 705/768 kHz M scaled...

 
...yeah great, yet another new music format

 

  ....
  It's gotta be exciting time once we realize the quality of 705/768 kHz M scaled music. They're already selling tons and tons of "Hi-Res" downloads in Japan after they've upscaled Redbook with K2HD Mastering

 
There you go: it involves a different MASTERING.
 
And the yes, the few K2HD CD's (indeed red book format !) that I own, do sound fantastic. But the K2HD editions generally start with excellent quality recordings to begin with. What has not been captured in the recording can not be interpolated with what ever magic scaler, no matter how many values are being fed through a custom FPGA. If it hasn't been captured during the recording session, it can not be calculated "out of thin air" eh ... silicone, of course. K2HD just shows how good the red book format can sound if all boundaries are pushed.
 
Why is it that classic recordings from the early 60's still sound impressive today and give you the impression that the orchestra is actually moving the air in that hall? Not because they had some kind of magic scaler but because the sound engineer worked with conductor and orchestra and had an idea how to capture their sound in a live session w/o too much interference afterwards. And it was done into 2 or 3 track machines not spliced together or nowadays calculated from 48 tracks of close miked intruments.
 
The basis for a captivating sound reproduction is 95% at the recording and not in a chip or rezz'd up format.

 

[Crgreen]

[quote name="icebear" url="/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave/8340#post_.

Why is it that classic recordings from the early 60's still sound impressive today and give you the impression that the orchestra is actually moving the air in that hall? Not because they had some kind of magic scaler but because the sound engineer worked with conductor and orchestra and had an idea how to capture their sound in a live session w/o too much interference afterwards. And it was done into 2 or 3 track machines not spliced together or nowadays calculated from 48 tracks of close miked intruments.

The basis for a captivating sound reproduction is 95% at the recording and not in a chip or rezz'd up format.
[/quote]

I'm not sure I'd put the percentage that high but by and large, I agree. What the DAVE has shown me is how much better so many recordings are than I'd ever realised. Although the 60s was something of a golden age for classical recordings, many fine recordings were made in the digital age. Try the Decca set of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Dutoit recorded in the sympathetic acoustic of St Eustache. The balance was achieved by the conductor and orchestra rather than the engineers, but they caught the sound beautifully.

 

[rkt31]

@icebear, almost all DACs employ upsampling and filtering . not all upsampling algorithm are same. some do it better and hence those DACs sound better. Davina/ m scalar will do it still better and other dacs won't require their own upsampling inside. so the idea is not exactly to create any missing information by interpolation ( upsampling) but to allow better filtering within the original available frequency band like all DACs do inside but davina/m scalar will do it with much better accuracy .

 

[icebear]

The particular recording that gave me the impressions that they literally move the air, not just that the air transport the music was this one:

And the format is the lowly red book CD.

People complain about digital music being harsh. How does a piano sound if your are right next to it bending over to be about 8 to 10 inches above the strings and the artist is playing forte? At that distance it will sound harsh but often that's where the mics are positioned.

So does it matter in this case how much the resolution is? No, not really, the mistake was the position of the microphone inside the piano. Once the harm is done, it can't sound beautiful just because of some up-rez. DAC or different playback format.

 

[rkt31]

no dac can correct the recording inaccuracies as it is not supposed to do that. DAC ( source ) is supposed to reproduce the original recording as faithfully as possible. accurate upsampling here plays a big role. there is a website which displays the plots of various upsampling algorithm . there are some extremely poor plots with lot of aliases and some are extremely clean with pitch black background indicating no aliases. so a good upscalar like Davina will not introduce the information which was not already there but get you lot closer to the original performance.

 

[LouisArmstrong]

What is currently the best solution to play Internet-streamed music on Dave? The app that I use (Moov) has lossless only on either iOS or Android, not on computer. In this case, is AK380 the best solution for a transport that runs the streaming app? Other than that, I find that most flagship Android phones are now USB-C, and I am now aware of any high end USB-C to USB-A on the market. iPhone is out of the question (although I have the latest red iPhone 7+) because the Camera Kit will become the very obvious weakest link.
 
Cheers,
Louis Armstrong

 

[LouisArmstrong]

-double post-

 

[ecwl]

I brought my iPad Air 2, my Apple camera connection kit, the cheapest USB cable I could find and connected to my Chord DAVE at the last local Head-Fi meet. Worked like a charm. I let people stream off my Tidal account with the iOS Tidal app.

 

[Rob Watts]

 

...Perhaps we may see music being re-released as 705/768 kHz M scaled...

 
...yeah great, yet another new music format

 

  ....
  It's gotta be exciting time once we realize the quality of 705/768 kHz M scaled music. They're already selling tons and tons of "Hi-Res" downloads in Japan after they've upscaled Redbook with K2HD Mastering

 
There you go: it involves a different MASTERING.
 
And the yes, the few K2HD CD's (indeed red book format !) that I own, do sound fantastic. But the K2HD editions generally start with excellent quality recordings to begin with. What has not been captured in the recording can not be interpolated with what ever magic scaler, no matter how many values are being fed through a custom FPGA. If it hasn't been captured during the recording session, it can not be calculated "out of thin air" eh ... silicone, of course. K2HD just shows how good the red book format can sound if all boundaries are pushed.
 
Why is it that classic recordings from the early 60's still sound impressive today and give you the impression that the orchestra is actually moving the air in that hall? Not because they had some kind of magic scaler but because the sound engineer worked with conductor and orchestra and had an idea how to capture their sound in a live session w/o too much interference afterwards. And it was done into 2 or 3 track machines not spliced together or nowadays calculated from 48 tracks of close miked intruments.
 
The basis for a captivating sound reproduction is 95% at the recording and not in a chip or rezz'd up format.

I was thinking of replying to this explaining why I think technically you are wrong.
 
But here is an easier reply: Have you actually heard what an M scaler does to the sound?

 

[theveterans]

 

 
Fundamentally, digital audio is quantized so whatever mastering has been done (K2HD or low-fi) is still stored as digital audio. With my limited knowledge in electronics, the M scaler should be closer to the correct representation of the analog signal (from the source) therefore sounding better. If a DAC chip has fewer computations in processing (e.g oversampling, filtering, noise shaping, etc) the original samples, it wouldn't sound truer to the source. So if you play the K2HD disc from an iPod, it wouldn't sound as good as it does with the DAVE. Thus, M scaler should represent the sound closer to the source and is beneficial to all audio formats.

 

[seeteeyou]

  What is currently the best solution to play Internet-streamed music on Dave? The app that I use (Moov) has lossless only on either iOS or Android, not on computer.

 
That depends on the definition of "best" since we've got limited options for getting MOOV Hi-Fi on Android devices.
 
Sony NW-ZX2 runs on Android 4.1.2 while MOOV Hi-Fi should require 4.1 or above. Add that BCR-NWH10 dock and you could connect that to DAVE with Skogrand Beethoven if you want
 
https://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?id=521546984012
https://www.amazon.co.jp/ソニー-SONY-BCR-NWH10-ウォークマン純正クレードル/dp/B00S94R5RK
 

 
Finally add tX-USBultra between DAVE and BCR-NWH10 for a much better SQ
 
https://www.sotm-audio.com/sotmwp/english/portfolio-item/tx-usbultra/
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/31470-sotm-tx-usbultra-impressions/
 

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If you weren't satisfied with that, maybe talk to May Park and find out if they're able to replace the clocks on any audiophile Android devices
 
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/27617-sotm-sms-200-unveiled-at-munich-hi-end/?page=28#comment-649011
 
There's a thread started by romaz and he already tried TONS of megabuck music servers and endpoints, so far he's a big fan of sCLK-EX
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/787020/review-comparison-of-5-high-end-digital-music-servers-aurender-n10-cad-cat-server-totaldac-d1-server-auralic-aries-audiophile-vortex-box
 
FYI - here are some links to sCLK-EX
 
http://www.sotm-audio.com/sotmwp/english/portfolio-item/sclk-ex/
http://www.review33.com/news/news.php?news_id=20170104214918
https://www.highend-audiopc.com/shop/en/accessories/sotm-sclk-ex
 

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If they weren't able to replace the clocks on any audiophile Android devices, maybe simply ask them to replace the clocks on a Micro-ATX motherboard and then you could turn Windows 10 / optimized Server 2016 into Chromecast receiver with Google Cast for Education
 
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-cast-for-education/bnmgbcehmiinmmlmepibeeflglhbhlea
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/how-to-turn-your-pc-into-a-chromecast-receiver/
 
Get MOOV Hi-Fi up and running on a flagship Android phone and then stream that to Windows 10 / optimized Server 2016 via Chromecast.

 

[LouisArmstrong]

Looks like using the Dave is a little bit more complicated than I thought... This whole USB chain isolation / dejitter thing is totally another world that I haven't explored. Was I naive to think that using the Dave is just to hook up my Macbook Pro with a Wireworld Starlight Platinum USB cable and then play songs with Amarra?

 

[seeteeyou]

Given how revealing DAVE really is, it should be well worth the investment to investigate the improvements when a better source component is introduced.
 
Basically the best clocks out there are DuCULoN and sCLK-EX
 
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/31572-superclocks/#comment-654721
 

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And then we've gotta power that with a clean source and the output impedance should be very low, Paul Hynes Design should be one of the best and then we've got some options with ultracapacitor banks
 
http://www.vinnierossi.com/mini/
https://uptoneaudio.com/products/ultracap-lps-1
 

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If you're just looking for a plain and simple audiophile OTG cable since that might be good enough for a flagship Android phone, maybe you could talk to PhilW and find out if Vertere Acoustics were able to do something
 
http://www.head-fi.org/u/145703/philw
 
This is the flagship USB cable called Pulse-HB with an optional micro USB config, sometimes they could be willing to make something different such as OTG cables
 
https://www.audiosanctuary.co.uk/vertere-pulse-hb-double-usb-cable.html
https://vertereacoustics.com/product/digital-cable/pulse-hb-usb-digital-cable/
 
You could read some impressions of Pulse-HB below
 
http://www.hiendy.com/hififorum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=92003
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?16660-Vertere-HB-Series-usb-cable
http://audioexotics.vanillaforums.com/discussion/12150/vertere-the-best-turntable-tonearm-cable-maker-of-uk/p6
http://audioexotics.vanillaforums.com/discussion/13004/skogrand-and-usb-cables
 
Simply ask PhilW about the possibilities of making an OTG version that's looking just like this one here
 
https://www.startech.com/eu/Cables/usb-c/usb-2-0-c-b-cable~USB2CB1M

 

[AndrewOld]

  Commercial ADC's are not very good or transparent; hence why Davina's ADC.
 
Davina will also allow redbook conversion to M scaled files; I plan to M scale some of my music to play back on planes with Hugo 2. Of course, its pure digital to digital transfer, so in effect I will be listening to M scaled music without carrying around an M scaler. Perhaps we may see music being re-released as 705/768 kHz M scaled...

Would it be possible to make some M scaled material available as WAV files so that DAVE/Hugo owners can make useful comparisons?

 

[Rob Watts]

 

  Commercial ADC's are not very good or transparent; hence why Davina's ADC.
 
Davina will also allow redbook conversion to M scaled files; I plan to M scale some of my music to play back on planes with Hugo 2. Of course, its pure digital to digital transfer, so in effect I will be listening to M scaled music without carrying around an M scaler. Perhaps we may see music being re-released as 705/768 kHz M scaled...

Would it be possible to make some M scaled material available as WAV files so that DAVE/Hugo owners can make useful comparisons?

It will be technically possible to do - and I would love to do it. But I don't know what the legal situation regarding clips and copyright. I guess I would need permission from the copyright owner.