[jlbrach]

Just out of curiosity has anyone been satisfied with the Susvara driven direct by DAVE?

nope, the dave is a great DAC/amp for easy to drive HP's but the susvara is beyond the amps abilities

 

[DJJEZ]

i tried the abyss 1266tc out of the DAVE and its very underwhelming lol

 

[jlbrach]

actually it depends what music you listen to...I think it sounds pretty darn good if listening to modern remastered music but since I listen to tons of acoustic jazz and other music that requires more volume the dave doesnt work well alone with my TC....when listening to quiet jazz recordings I would need to turn the volume north of +4 on the dave which will introduce clipping etc...so an amp is neccesary

 

[Ciggavelli]

So, I got the trial version of PGGB. It's very good and similar to the M-Scaler. I remastered DJ Quik's "Nobody" and it sounds like there is increased resolution and more instrument separation. I chose that song because it is mixed and mastered extremely well.

If you don't have an M-Scaler, I think PGGB can almost emulate the M-Scaler effect. I'm going to keep experimenting with different settings and listening to different albums.

While this is a great product, the extremely large file sizes are an issue. Single songs range from 1gb to 4gb (depending on the length). That is crazy, and not feasible with current ssd sizes. The M-Scaler is the better practical option. But still, PGGB is pretty cool. If I had unlimited ssd space, I might consider using PGGB over the M-Scaler. However, current ssd storage space (even HHD too) is nowhere near large enough to convert your whole music collection to 32-bit and 705.6 resolution. I guess you could do it just for your favorite albums, but that's a compromise. With the M-Scaler all of your albums get upscaled.

 

[The Jester]

Big HDD’s are fairly cheap these days and using a NAS drive with Raid ensures file security … and with current system speeds importing a batch of albums to the local SSD for replay would be feasible, but that gets away from the “instant access” that makes ripping a CD collection to PC so attractive, that’s one reason I bought the M Scaler to start with as it upgrades everything ”on the fly” …

 

[tunes]

What do you have the HSA-1b's input-level attenuation set to?

For what you're doing, you'll want it set to 0 dB (mine came set at -10 dB by default if I remember correctly).

That means opening up the amp and flipping some DIP switches. They are located on a small board at the back of the amp (the blue switch block in the picture, though yours may be red):



The settings are as follows:



So flip them all to "OFF".

If you're turning DAVE's output up above 0 dB, then you may run into digital clipping - which would be the distortion you're hearing. Don't do that. And if you can, run the XLRs into the HSA-1b instead of the RCAs.

It seems that the input attenuation dip switches only affect the XLR inputs. If I had been using RCA input then the dip switch settings shouldn’t matter. Still don’t get why there is so little headroom for RCA input when using Susvara?

 

[mammal]

Big HDD’s are fairly cheap these days and using a NAS drive with Raid ensures file security … and with current system speeds importing a batch of albums to the local SSD for replay would be feasible, but that gets away from the “instant access” that makes ripping a CD collection to PC so attractive, that’s one reason I bought the M Scaler to start with as it upgrades everything ”on the fly” …

While this is a great product, the extremely large file sizes are an issue. Single songs range from 1gb to 4gb (depending on the length). That is crazy, and not feasible with current ssd sizes.

Depends how geeky you want to get, but there are ways how one can truly optimise and squeeze out performance out of traditional HDD systems, if they are paired with SSDs and a lots of RAM. For example, you can build a system (NAS) using Open Source "TrueNas Core" and have a tiered disk system. You would use HDDs for your raw data storage (all the FLACs and PGGB files), then for Roon purposes (indexing of your library) you would use a fast SSD (preferably PCIe connected, not SATA) and then for further optimisation, you would give it 128GB+ memory (which is cheap these days, you can get as high as a TB of RAM), as the OS optimises (aka caches) files that have been accessed recently. Then, you are not really bottlenecked, as sequential read is very decent on HDDs. And if you were to write to your NAS a lot, you could use Intel Optane for TrueNas ZIL persistent write caching. My point being, there are options how to get incredible amount of storage space for cheap, while keeping performance as close as SSDs (for sequential reads, so songs and movies are fine, not Virtual Machines or multitenancy systems), for a good price by tiering technologies.

 

[Another Audiophile]

For the fellow headfiers owning a Dave and m scaler I am selling the absolute BNC interconnects. A pair of Nordost Tyr 2

 

[penguin69]

Hi all,

I've not posted in a good while due to ill health, so go easy on me!

Due to some amplifier issues which I cannot quickly resolve due to being housebound currently (aforesaid ill health), I recently decided to configure my Dave in pre-amp mode and connect it directly into my loudspeakers, a pair of second-hand Kudos Titan 808's.

As it happens, I very rarely listen to music at loud volumes and this new set-up actually plays music to a loudness level that I find adequate.

What I would like to know is whether there is any risk either to my speakers or to the Dave itself through using this approach. I have looked at some previous posts on this subject and it seems that the speakers could be at risk, however I could not find any detail on what that risk might be.

For information, the Titans have 91db sensitivity.

Thanks in advance,
Pat

 

[Torq]

So, I got the trial version of PGGB.

Coincidentally, I got the trial version of PGGB up and running earlier this week and have today carved out to evaluate the results.

Yesterday I processed my standard 100-track evaluation list up to 16FS/32 bits.

I’ll be spending some time today doing proper, software-administered, ABX comparisons with processed vs. non-processed files. I’ll use my DAVE, without the M-Scaler in the chain, for this - as the first comparison I want to do is PGGB vs. non-PGGB rather than PGGB vs. M-Scaler. That should provide the biggest delta between untouched files and processed ones.

Interested to see how that goes.

And then when that's done, if I like the results, I'll do comparisons against HQPlayer (which I don't use in my normal listening, more for when I did reviews and/or with NOS or certain DSD converters) and my M-Scaler.

However, current ssd storage space (even HHD too) is nowhere near large enough to convert your whole music collection to 32-bit and 705.6 resolution.

Based on the 100 files I processed, and comparing before/after sizes, I'd need ~200 18TB drives (3.5 PB) to store a 16FS/32-bit copy of my full local library*. WAVPACK would roughly halve that, but Roon won't play it. Sticking to 8FS/24-bit and using FLAC, that'd become a more tenable 25 (or so) drive array and Roon will work with it. Though lowering the processing level seems to defeat the point a bit.

I think some level of automation would be required for me to use PGGB effectively, if I decide I like the results. Some that let me NOT keep the processed files around, but instead I'd queue up the albums I want to play, let those process (it'll do that now, if I manually copy the albums to the input folder, of course), and then have the necessary playlist automatically generated (such that the files could still be processing, since they process at more than 1x, while I was starting to listen to the first one that was completed). And then have it clean them up post-play.

I'll have to look at the integration options for Roon to see if that can be done - directly as a proper extension or indirectly via clever tricks.

---

*Don't let this spook you too much, while the output files are large I also have an unusually large library.

 

[edwardsean]

Coincidentally, I got the trial version of PGGB up and running earlier this week and have today carved out to evaluate the results.

Yesterday I processed my standard 100-track evaluation list up to 16FS/32 bits.

I’ll be spending some time today doing proper, software-administered, ABX comparisons with processed vs. non-processed files. I’ll use my DAVE, without the M-Scaler in the chain, for this - as the first comparison I want to do is PGGB vs. non-PGGB rather than PGGB vs. M-Scaler. That should provide the biggest delta between untouched files and processed ones.

Interested to see how that goes.

And then when that's done, if I like the results, I'll do comparisons against HQPlayer (which I don't use in my normal listening, more for when I did reviews and/or with NOS or certain DSD converters) and my M-Scaler.



Based on the 100 files I processed, and comparing before/after sizes, I'd need ~200 18TB drives (3.5 PB) to store a 16FS/32-bit copy of my full local library*. WAVPACK would roughly halve that, but Roon won't play it. Sticking to 8FS/24-bit and using FLAC, that'd become a more tenable 25 (or so) drive array and Roon will work with it. Though lowering the processing level seems to defeat the point a bit.

I think some level of automation would be required for me to use PGGB effectively, if I decide I like the results. Some that let me NOT keep the processed files around, but instead I'd queue up the albums I want to play, let those process (it'll do that now, if I manually copy the albums to the input folder, of course), and then have the necessary playlist automatically generated (such that the files could still be processing, since they process at more than 1x, while I was starting to listen to the first one that was completed). And then have it clean them up post-play.

I'll have to look at the integration options for Roon to see if that can be done - directly as a proper extension or indirectly via clever tricks.

---

*Don't let this spook you too much, while the output files are large I also have an unusually large library.

There is one additional factor that may come into play, esp. for comparisons with M-scaler. Users have been finding that feeding PGGB files into Dave’s dual-BNC via Audiowise SRC-DX is superior to USB. This is despite the fact that over USB you are able to convert at 32bit rate, while over S/Pdif you are limited to 24bit rate.

The more technical discussion can be found on the AS threads for PGGB and SRC-DX. Put simply, going into the BNC gets around the high latency of the Amanero USB receiver chip in Dave. The benefits of this hold for both PGGB and of course M-scaler, which may come into consideration when you compare.

I’ve found the difference fairly dramatic myself and switched over to dual-BNC. As a bonus you are saving quite a bit on storage requirements.

Looking forward to your impressions of PGGB!

 

[Torq]

There is one additional factor that may come into play, esp. for comparisons with M-scaler. Users have been finding that feeding PGGB files into Dave’s dual-BNC via Audiowise SRC-DX is superior to USB. This is despite the fact that over USB you are able to convert at 32bit rate, while over S/Pdif you are limited to 24bit rate.

I'm familiar with the SRC-DX unit (and PGGB's author had mentioned it as well). I tried their Opto-DX product between my M-Scalers (both the HMS and the Blu-Mk2) and DAVE (and Hugo TT 2) a while back and found that yielded no difference that I could perceive.

The storage-size reduction using SRC-DX would be useful, but since there isn't a scenario in which I am realistically entertaining dropping tens of thousands on drive arrays for this, it's a bit moot. I'd have to come up with some other way to employ it (e.g. coding up some automation, along the lines I described). Whether it is worth the effort to do that will depend on the listening results.

Even if PGGB proves to beat the M-Scaler at its own game, my Blu-Mk2 won't be going anywhere. For one thing, I'd still want it for streaming content, and for another convenience, if my automating around PGGB doesn't wind up being convenient enough for use in every listening session.

But that's all cart-before-the-horse - I've got to finish my straight PGGB to non-PGGB ABX comparisons first, before I put anything else back in the chain. I'm not JUST using DAVE for this step, either, but that's where I'm starting since that's what all the initial discussion was about (and I own one).

Certainly interesting stuff. Probably should have a dedicated thread.

 

[Triode User]

Certainly interesting stuff. Probably should have a dedicated thread.

There is :-

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/pggb-offline-remastering.958100/

 

[Torq]

There is :-

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/pggb-offline-remastering.958100/

I'll post any further updates there, then (and maybe on the original thread on AS).

 

[Sampajanna]

Check out which device they are using to promote this product: https://hifipig.com/chord-groundaray-grounding-devices/