CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[AndrewOld]

I thought I had seen something that said one couldn't turn off the autosensing /auto changing but that it could be manually set back to 1m taps setting. If HMS can effectively have the autosensing/auto change turned off then all is well - is this the manual video mode in the Rob Watts quote?

I think I didn’t read Robs quote carefully enough when he first made it.

I now understand it as

There are two modes, manual video mode and auto video mode.

In manual video mode you can choose between video off - 1m taps, .63sec delay, or video on, - 2/3m taps .1s delay.

In auto video mode a 48kHz inout will put video on ie low latency, and any other kHz i out will put video mode off, ie 1m taps.

So, if you have no video you would set manual video mode, and leave video off to always get the full monty taps. That way no issues with 48kHz rips or streams.
If you do have video you can decide. If you choose auto sensing you run the (small) risk of some 48kHz downloads/rips/streams not using the full 1m taps.

100 ms is still a large delay, it just might not be acceptable for some people to use an M Scaler even in video mode for video audio playback depending on how fussy you are about lip sync and what compensating delays you might have on the video side. And it would be pretty hopeless to play say a digital keyboard through such a long delay (unless you were an organist maybe). .1sec is about the time sound takes to travel 33 meters.

Since I only intend to play music through my HMS/DAVE I am not worried. My keyboard goes through a very low latency Focusrite Scarlett, and I have a separate AV system with a center channel and fine control over latency.

 

[Triode User]

I think I didn’t read Robs quote carefully enough when he first made it.

I now understand it as

There are two modes, manual video mode and auto video mode.

In manual video mode you can choose between video off - 1m taps, .63sec delay, or video on, - 2/3m taps .1s delay.

In auto video mode a 48kHz inout will put video on ie low latency, and any other kHz i out will put video mode off, ie 1m taps.

So, if you have no video you would set manual video mode, and leave video off to always get the full monty taps. That way no issues with 48kHz rips or streams.
If you do have video you can decide. If you choose auto sensing you run the (small) risk of some 48kHz downloads/rips/streams not using the full 1m taps.

100 ms is still a large delay, it just might not be acceptable for some people to use an M Scaler even in video mode for video audio playback depending on how fussy you are about lip sync and what compensating delays you might have on the video side. And it would be pretty hopeless to play say a digital keyboard through such a long delay (unless you were an organist maybe). .1sec is about the time sound takes to travel 33 meters.

Since I only intend to play music through my HMS/DAVE I am not worried.

Thanks for employing some brain cells. That all seems sensible and thought through to be user convenient.

 

[AndrewOld]

Thanks for employing some brain cells. That all seems sensible and thought through to be user convenient.

Since 100ms is a long time, it might be smarter to use one of the other inputs on your DAVE/TT2 for video anyway.

 

[seaice]

Is the delay always the same or variable?

There is as possible solution for a constant delay: You can set 1M taps and try to delay the picture part of the video in your video player by the delay caused by the 1M taps setting and have a perfect lipsync then... I am not sure how I will achieve this in my video players but it is definitely something to consider...

 

[Triode User]

Since 100ms is a long time, it might be smarter to use one of the other inputs on your DAVE/TT2 for video anyway.

The whole point is that the room where I will use HMS is that it does not have video and never will have so I wanted an easy way of avoiding accidentally ending up with 2/3M taps every time a 48k stream was played.

I agree though about your suggestion though. In the other room with my telly I just have an optical lead into Dave which is fine for the amount of TV I watch. That also took away any issue of trying to get the telly audio into Blu2.

 

[AndrewOld]

Is the delay always the same or variable?

There is as possible solution for a constant delay: You can set 1M taps and try to delay the picture part of the video in your video player by the delay caused by the 1M taps setting and have a perfect lipsync then... I am not sure how I will achieve this in my video players but it is definitely something to consider...

I think some DVD/Blu-Ray players have negative lip sync. JRiver Media Center does too. But that won’t help you with Netflix. To some extent the issue depends on your screen - some have a lot of video delay, which is why it is often necessary to delay audio be some tens of milliseconds. But the kazillion taps of the Chord DACs delay audio far too much.

I suppose if you watch opera and imagine you were sitting well back in the stalls, the delay would be just about right!

 

[Rob Watts]

For me, the autosensing assumption of 48kHz being video is not helpful. I have a dab radio for when the broadband gets flakey (which it often does here in our remote village) and I will not be helped by autoswitching to 2/3M taps when 48kHz is detected. You might say that it can be manually switched to 1M taps but that is a pain. I suppose I will have to bow to the greater good if video is deemed to be an important feature for the market but I just wanted to put in my 2p worth if I have correctly understood the input and autosensing arrangement.

This issue was answered by:

I think I didn’t read Robs quote carefully enough when he first made it.

I now understand it as

There are two modes, manual video mode and auto video mode.

In manual video mode you can choose between video off - 1m taps, .63sec delay, or video on, - 2/3m taps .1s delay.

In auto video mode a 48kHz inout will put video on ie low latency, and any other kHz i out will put video mode off, ie 1m taps.

So, if you have no video you would set manual video mode, and leave video off to always get the full monty taps. That way no issues with 48kHz rips or streams.
If you do have video you can decide. If you choose auto sensing you run the (small) risk of some 48kHz downloads/rips/streams not using the full 1m taps.

100 ms is still a large delay, it just might not be acceptable for some people to use an M Scaler even in video mode for video audio playback depending on how fussy you are about lip sync and what compensating delays you might have on the video side. And it would be pretty hopeless to play say a digital keyboard through such a long delay (unless you were an organist maybe). .1sec is about the time sound takes to travel 33 meters.

Since I only intend to play music through my HMS/DAVE I am not worried. My keyboard goes through a very low latency Focusrite Scarlett, and I have a separate AV system with a center channel and fine control over latency.

So you can have your cake and eat it. I have a few audio tracks that are 48k, but the sheer convenience of not having to press the button when I watch you tube wins it for me.

Since 100ms is a long time, it might be smarter to use one of the other inputs on your DAVE/TT2 for video anyway.

My experience is that projectors and quality TV's have enough delay (image processing for frame interpolation) so that 100mS is ok - but you need to set your audio delay to 0. The brain can cope with a tiny audio delay, but has problems when audio is before the video.

 

[Triode User]

This issue was answered by:
So you can have your cake and eat it. I have a few audio tracks that are 48k, but the sheer convenience of not having to press the button when I watch you tube wins it for me.
My experience is that projectors and quality TV's have enough delay (image processing for frame interpolation) so that 100mS is ok - but you need to set your audio delay to 0. The brain can cope with a tiny audio delay, but has problems when audio is before the video.

Yes, thanks, I was getting in a stew about nothing. Thank heavens that someone (AndrewOld) actually pays attention to what you say!

 

[AndrewOld]

Here is a youtube video that helps you get the right delay



According to this report of some media standards committee, “the sound program should never lead the video program by more than 15ms and should never lag the video program by more than 45ms ±15ms“

https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1273833

 

[AndrewOld]

Talking of 48kHz, just happened to stream Laid Black by Marcus Miller from Qobuz. 24bit/48kHz it is, and virtuosically melodic intelligent bass playing too.

 

[Triode User]

Talking of 48kHz, just happened to stream Laid Black by Marcus Miller from Qobuz. 24bit/48kHz it is, and virtuosically melodic intelligent bass playing too.

Well done for finding that. It’s a really good album. I bought the high res version off Qobuz a few weeks ago. Turn up the volume until you can feel the bass notes in the pit of your stomach! I looked at the volume on Dave one night after playing track one and I had it at -16dB into the Pass Labs monos. It was lovely.

 

[AndrewOld]

Well done for finding that. It’s a really good album. I bought the high res version off Qobuz a few weeks ago. Turn up the volume until you can feel the bass notes in the pit of your stomach! I looked at the volume on Dave one night after playing track one and I had it at -16dB into the Pass Labs monos. It was lovely.

I’ve seen him a couple or three times live. When he played Tutu my brain fell out. Wonderful musician, so creative and intelligent. I used to listen to M2 a lot, and Tales. And you’re right, good to listen to at visceral levels.

 

[musickid]

The Ozell Tapes live by Miller rock too.

 

[WilliamWykeham]

Well, wound up selling my DAVE and buying a Qutest to free up some funds for a vpi Classic turntable (and the Vessel cartridge). With DAVE I was listening almost exclusively to classical music; I think this was because it revealed the problems with most modern pop masters, an assertion I didn't really buy into until owning a DAVE. Many pop albums that sound decent enough through my iphone or in my car were pretty unpleasant through my BluDave. I found using an external amp with these poor masters helped somewhat.

So I got my BluQutest set up last night and did some AB testing with a few records. Everything But The Girl's Idlewild, which I think has a decent digital master, sounded great both on vinyl and through the BluQutest, each format having its own strengths. Then I put on the White Stripe's Elephant and couldn't last 5 seconds listening to digital, it was so obviously an in-your-face master compared to the vinyl, which was far, far superior.

Will come back to DAVE one day as I do notice a loss in transparency with classical when playing through an external amp, in my case ifi ican pro.

 

[dakabali]

Trying to understand the relationship between the Mscaler, DAVE and the (future) DX digital amplifer. I have browsed through some forums and managed to find the following post from Rob Watts in the Qutest Official Thread (page 9):

I am somewhat surprised by the confusion on the DX amps.
So if you want to connect to a conventional linear power amp, use Qutest.
For power levels of 1W/8 use Hugo 2.
2W, use Dave.
For greater powers, when we want to preserve transparency, then we need a DAC that has a more powerful OP stage - the DX amp that uses power pulse array. So these DAC's are pulse array, promising pulse array levels of distortion and noise, but 20W to many hundreds of Watts. The DX amp can be a dedicated power amp using a DX signal from Dave - so Dave becomes a digitalonly pre-amp, controlling the volume, and the DX amp is a power amp. Or they will be like Hugo 2 but with on board volume controls - equivalent to an integrated amp.

So the DX amps are just DAC's, exactly the same as existing pulse array DAC's - but with very high power OP stages, and a very clever power supply arrangement (don't ask!).
Ihope that clarifies.

As I understand now: one should buy a Hugo2 or DAVE for a headphone or near-field speaker setup where the excellent SQ provided by the Chord DACs could be achieved without the need for power amp. Others with H2/DAVE who would like to enjoy loud music have two options: either take any existing power amp of their choice and accept the "compromized" SQ or wait for the DX amplifier (Certainly there are very good power amps on the market to get excellent results with the DAVE but I'm talking about the special SQ which some of you enjoy using the headphone output of the DAVE or by utilizing sensitive and fast loudspeakers).

Considering the Mscaler and the DX amplifier, the DAVE would remain only a rather expensive preamp in the chain. And that makes it not future prove at all for Blu2 owners, does it? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Cheers.