@Rob Watts
Have you recently changed any of the components within the Daves you are currently shipping? Perhaps Chord changed to a different type of BNC input connectors?
Here’s my issue....
I sold my Dave and BluMK2 a while back and bought a TT2 and HMS. A few months later I was missing Dave’s amazing transparency so bought another Dave and HMS for a different room. I’ll quickly summarize what was actually countless hours of trouble shooting. BNC input 1 and 2 are horrible. The music cuts in and out and there is a constant crackling noise that sounds more like direct contact electrical interference. With Input 3 and 4 it’s much better, but there is a popping / clicking noise in the right channel that can occur every few seconds, every 30 seconds, and it’s even disappeared for a few mins at times. It’s completely silent when the music is paused. When you start the music the noise begins in the right channel. Pause the music again and the pops and clicks continue for a couple seconds. It almost sounds like there’s a short or a charge is being released. My dealer was kind enough to send me his personal Dave which is fairly old (with the curved glass over the screen vs the flat glass on the new models). Dropping his Dave in place the problem went away. Dropping my TT2 in place the problem went away. I received another new Dave but the exact same problem was there again. Horrible on 1 and 2, better but still not acceptable with 3 and 4. I’ve taking every step you imagine to isolate the problem. From cutting power to unused circuits in my house, to moving the system to other rooms and testing each component in the chain. With HMS in bypass mode there are no issues. The same goes when I upsample to 176. As soon as it goes into DBNC the problem appears (just in the right channel) I’ve used the stock cables which exaggerated the issue. Pulse AG cables which helped but just a little, and I used the Wave BNC cables with the same results. I finally brought my AudioWise OPTO DX into the mix and the problem goes away. So now I have a working Dave, but I shouldn’t have to spend on OPTO DX and two UpTone LPS 1.2’s just to get HMS and Dave working. I tend to rotate my gear fairly quickly so now I am concerned about resell. It’s working for me, but as is I couldn’t sell it to someone without disclosing the issue.
Has anyone else experienced this problem with a new Dave? I suspect Chord changed something and Dave is simply more sensitive than TT2. The fact that an older Dave works and two new Daves have the same problem is quite telling. However, I really do not want to send it off to be repaired. This process has taken nearly two months and I’m tired of either going without music, or only being able to partially upsample the music. Dave on it’s own works just fine. The problem only arises when in dual BNC mode.
Thoughts will be appreciated....
(Edit - making a long post even longer - Even with the OPTO DX in place, I still hear an occasional pop/click in the right channel (and no, it’s not the HP or cable))