[miketlse]

This post by @Amberlamps , raises the question in my mind, as to whether there is a latency issue, causing occasional breaks in the signal stream from the router to the TV.

 

[doraymon]

One of my fav’s, it was recorded in an old church in newyork if I recall.

Exactly.
I also love Amber Rubarth's "Sessions from the 17th ward", again from the Binaural+ series.
I have to say in the latter the voice of the singer is definitely positioned more forward, while in Macy Gray's album I feel her voice a bit further away and in my opinion too much.
Maybe just my impression anyway.

I think the DAVE was made for these albums. Spectacular.

 

[ecwl]

Regarding 1: I wasn't aware that L and R channel was of importance. Could you perhaps provide a little more info here?

You just have to be careful that the correct dual BNC cables are going into the correct DAVE inputs. As in BNC1 out of M-Scaler should go into BNC 1/3 in of the DAVE and BNC 2 out of MScaler should go into BNC 2/4 in of the DAVE. If you switch the two cables, the left and right channels will be switched. But it can also affect the syncing which can sometimes cause the odd pops. It’s fairly easy to test if you have a test track that plays left channel first then the right channel.

 

[sm60]

There is a audio latency program for audio, I think it was called dpc latency checker os something like it. It tested the latency aspect of how fast your pc was at sending and receiving data and it showed you the results in a easy to read gui.

I found it, its Roon Remote Killed my Schiit

Anything in green is good.

When I got my Dave/Blu 2 a few months ago, I suffered through a series of annoying glitches, including distortion and popping sounds like you described. I also felt these bugs were completely unacceptable in a $10k+ digital front end. However, this is par for the course for high end audio, sadly, especially digital. I’ve owned dozens of high end digital front ends over the past 20+ years (dCS, Mark Levinson, Theta Digital, Auralic etc.). I have yet to find a high end digital audio product that performs reliably as advertised. My conclusion is that reliability is a lost cause In high end digital audio. Finally, I have gotten my Chord combo to perform acceptably after upgrading to the Wave Storm cables. I don’t use the Blu Mk2 transport at all. It is by far the worst CD transport I have yet experienced in 25+ years. It rarely plays a CD without distortion. I understand Chord has discontinued the Blu transport. I’m not surprised. I use a much more reliable massively built belt drive CD transport (CEC TL0), which works very well when connected to the M-scaler in the Blu Mk2. I hope the combo continues to work reliably, minus the Blu transport, but I’m not holding my breath.

 

[jlbrach]

my blu2 has been essentially flawless and the transport works perfectly as well

 

[Bonesy Jonesy]

Both of my Chord Blu MK1's (one I bought brand new in 2014 with a beautiful custom chrome CD lid, the other second hand in 2016) have both worked without any problems too.

 

[sm60]

Both of my Chord Blu MK1's (one I bought brand new in 2014 with a beautiful custom chrome CD lid, the other second hand in 2016) have both worked without any problems too.

If your Blu transport works reliably, consider yourself lucky. From what my dealer tells me, they have a high failure rate, one reason Chord has discontinued making them. But I’m not singling out Chord here. Take dCS, another British boutique manufacturer of overpriced digital products. I owned their trio of digital front ends named after dead composers: Elgar DAC, Purcell upsampler and Verdi transport. If you think Chord has a complex hookup, the dCS trio required a PhD in theoretical physics to connect together with swaths of BNC and FireWire cables. dCS sourced their SACD transport from Sony, and boy was it unreliable. I sent it back twice to England twice to get it repaired, each time it took a few weeks to get fixed. It never was reliable. Chord sources its transports from Philips and ultimately boutique high end manufacturers are at the mercy of their source vendors. My CEC belt drive transport stopped working recently and fortunately it was a simple enough repair for someone like me who has been trained as an engineer. I opened it up and one of the belts had snapped. As luck would have it, the US repair center for CEC is in the San Francisco Bay Area close to my house. I got a replacement belt and a spare one for future repairs as well, and the CEC is now working fine. I don’t care anyway for the Blu transport. It’s not in the same class as the CEC transport or the other high end ones I have owned, like the Esoteric. My dealer warned me to stay away from the Blu and get the M-scaler instead. But I liked the matching design of the two units and got the Chord stand as well (the older design, not the newer one). At some point I assume I’ll have to send the Blu back to England to get it fixed, assuming they still have spares for the transport, I know other manufacturers like Audio Research use the same Phillips transport, and carry a large set of spares to fix them down the road. I don’t know if Chord has the same bulletproof insurance policy of servicing anything they sold, even if it was decades earlier.

 

[Bonesy Jonesy]

If your Blu transport works reliably, consider yourself lucky. From what my dealer tells me, they have a high failure rate, one reason Chord has discontinued making them. But I’m not singling out Chord here. Take dCS, another British boutique manufacturer of overpriced digital products. I owned their trio of digital front ends named after dead composers: Elgar DAC, Purcell upsampler and Verdi transport. If you think Chord has a complex hookup, the dCS trio required a PhD in theoretical physics to connect together with swaths of BNC and FireWire cables. dCS sourced their SACD transport from Sony, and boy was it unreliable. I sent it back twice to England twice to get it repaired, each time it took a few weeks to get fixed. It never was reliable. Chord sources its transports from Philips and ultimately boutique high end manufacturers are at the mercy of their source vendors. My CEC belt drive transport stopped working recently and fortunately it was a simple enough repair for someone like me who has been trained as an engineer. I opened it up and one of the belts had snapped. As luck would have it, the US repair center for CEC is in the San Francisco Bay Area close to my house. I got a replacement belt and a spare one for future repairs as well, and the CEC is now working fine. I don’t care anyway for the Blu transport. It’s not in the same class as the CEC transport or the other high end ones I have owned, like the Esoteric. My dealer warned me to stay away from the Blu and get the M-scaler instead. But I liked the matching design of the two units and got the Chord stand as well (the older design, not the newer one). At some point I assume I’ll have to send the Blu back to England to get it fixed, assuming they still have spares for the transport, I know other manufacturers like Audio Research use the same Phillips transport, and carry a large set of spares to fix them down the road. I don’t know if Chord has the same bulletproof insurance policy of servicing anything they sold, even if it was decades earlier.

I have had servicing and some minor repairs done for some of my older second hand Chord Choral units undertaken by Chord Electronics a couple of time over the last 5 or so years with no issues at all. I have found their customers service and speedy turnaround to be excellent.

 

[penguin69]

Thanks for the replies on the 'popping' issue.

As part of my testing yesterday, I removed the Opto-DX and replaced it with the Chord stock BNC cables that came with the M-Scaler. I listened straight for six hours using the same source, at all resolutions, and no more popping. Hurrah.

However, the problem is absolutely NOT the Opto-DX. This has worked fine for months and up until I disconnected my system last week. Also, this same stock Chord cable was in place when I originally experienced the problems described, i.e. just after purchase of the M-Scaler.

In sum, I am pleased the problem has (temporarily?) gone away. However:
1) Everyone now has to tiptoe around the house. And I am absolutely terrified that heavy breathing or moderate flatulence will disturb the cables and bring back the problem.
2) I now have a great product, the Opto-DX, which is redundant because I am too afraid to change the working configuration.

I've had DM's in the past from others who have experienced this intermittent popping, so I know it is not a unique problem. Having ruled out the source and the cables being the issue, and having reconnected optical and BNC cables multiple times to make the problem go away, I have to conclude that the BNC connectors on one of my Chord devices are either very sensitive or slightly warped. (I suspect it's the M-Scaler as the problem was apparent with both Dual BNC inputs 1+2 and 3+4 on the Dave.)

If the problem comes back then I will contact Chord through my dealer.

Cheers
penguin69

 

[AndrewOld]

Thanks for the replies on the 'popping' issue.

As part of my testing yesterday, I removed the Opto-DX and replaced it with the Chord stock BNC cables that came with the M-Scaler. I listened straight for six hours using the same source, at all resolutions, and no more popping. Hurrah.

However, the problem is absolutely NOT the Opto-DX. This has worked fine for months and up until I disconnected my system last week. Also, this same stock Chord cable was in place when I originally experienced the problems described, i.e. just after purchase of the M-Scaler.

In sum, I am pleased the problem has (temporarily?) gone away. However:
1) Everyone now has to tiptoe around the house. And I am absolutely terrified that heavy breathing or moderate flatulence will disturb the cables and bring back the problem.
2) I now have a great product, the Opto-DX, which is redundant because I am too afraid to change the working configuration.

I've had DM's in the past from others who have experienced this intermittent popping, so I know it is not a unique problem. Having ruled out the source and the cables being the issue, and having reconnected optical and BNC cables multiple times to make the problem go away, I have to conclude that the BNC connectors on one of my Chord devices are either very sensitive or slightly warped. (I suspect it's the M-Scaler as the problem was apparent with both Dual BNC inputs 1+2 and 3+4 on the Dave.)

If the problem comes back then I will contact Chord through my dealer.

Cheers
penguin69

BNC connectors are perhaps more sensitive than many connectors, as they are sprung. And some of the BNC cables that Chord shipped were poor and could easily be provoked into losing contact by touching them. But you can get perfectly well made, fairly priced BNC leads from the likes of BlueJeans Cable. https://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/digital-audio/index.htm

 

[Ragnar-BY]

For coaxial cable BNC connectors are technically superior to RCAs. BNCs have lock, 360 degree screen contact and controlled impedance.

 

[ecwl]

However, the problem is absolutely NOT the Opto-DX.

I don’t think the problem will come back. There is a reason why I listed several things to try because all of them I have seen personally to cause the popping issue. So to say why I think you had popping issues, these are my guesses:
1) When you initially used the stock dual BNC cable, I suspect you weren’t using optical to feed your M-Scaler exclusively. So there is a ground loop somewhere from say your USB or S/PDIF source into the M-Scaler and the ground loop leakage current noise is causing the popping. Replacing that with the Opto DX would mean that the ground loop from your USB/ or S/PDIF source would go into the transmitter of the Opto DX and is isolated from M–Scaler so no more popping.

As for why now changing Opto-DX to stock dual BNC cables stopped the popping, the possibilities are:
1) When switching things around, suddenly the Opto-DX broke. Say a power surge to the receiver. (Although I think that’s highly unlikely)
2) When switching things around the power supply to the Receiver end of Opto-DX is now plugged into a different area compared to where you had your M-Scaler and DAVE power supply. So you’ve created a new ground loop between the Opto-DX receiver into M-Scaler and DAVE and the low level random noise this loop generates is what is causing the popping.

That said, I agree with your approach of not changing the dual BNC cables for now. If I am wrong and your M-Scaler truly is broken, after a month or so, you’ll find the popping returns with increasing frequency. If it’s not broken, you’ll find that you should be able to safely re-install Opto-DX assuming you don’t re-create the ground loop. You could try to power your Opto-DX Receiver end with batteries of sufficient watt and voltage to confirm that the Opto-DX is not broken. But I’d definitely wait a month on the stock dual BNC first. Especially if you’ve got a new amp coming that you want to enjoy trying out.

 

[penguin69]

Thanks again for the reply ecwl, I will take all that on board.

 

[miketlse]

Thanks again for the reply ecwl, I will take all that on board.

I think there are quite a few posts on the DAVE, Blu2 and MScalar threads, about the dual BNC operating at the cutting edge, and being sensitive to the quality of the electrical connection created by the connectors.
There are plenty of posts recommending cables, and good connectors to use, to ensure a good quality connection.

In an ideal world, owners could use almost any cable, and get dual bnc to work.
In the real world, if owners are prepared to pay a lot of money for DAVE, Blu2 or MScaler, then I believe that they owe it to themselves to use cables with good quality connectors.
Anything less is just throwing money away.

 

[DaveRedRef-III]

Going back many years, I had the good fortune (and privilege) to listen to a 44.1/16 'rip' taken directly from the master tape of Buddy Holly's 'True Love Ways' and played back through the Chord DAC64. I don't think I can over-state what I heard. It was 'the' seminal moment in a long history of Hifi listening for me and I was staggered tbh. Taking a simple direct rip seemed to have taken away all veils. It was like Buddy was brought to life 3 feet in front of me. Really brought to life. Like I could reach out and literally touch the man. It still sends shivers down me just thinking of that moment.

Though hifi has improved over the years I have not had an experience as profound as that one again. It probably spoiled me for the rest I guess. Anyway I have since regarded True Love Ways as the definitive vocal recording in my collection and I have bought a number of remasterings looking for that holy (or Holly) grail. I have failed but enjoyed the experience. Finally, it was with a 'lot' of cynicism and a sense of almost betrayal that I listened to Abbey Road engineers recent recovery work and overlay of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of that said track along with 11 other Buddy Holly tracks on a new 96/24 recording. My thoughts were 'should anybody be allowed to mess with these songs?' Well I have to eat humble pie here because I absolutely love this album. I think it brings a new slant on things and is a body of work in its own right. Its given me a new appreciation of Buddy's timeless works and despite the Holy Grail of True Love Ways still proving elusive its a work of true love for sure.

Just thought I would mention it.