[adrianm]

I still think there is untapped quality headroom and Farad3, SJ, and even people's home-grown designs are earnest and respectable attempts to realise this potential.

You are correct in that general assertion, however, having glanced at Farad website and read their Tech Talk , they do implement RF filters throughout. From input stage, all the way to output. Apart from choice of transformer and rectifying diodes, to three distinct filters, they call HF filter at pre, intermediate & post .
They are aware and point a finger at RF noise coming from outside (the mains), and point a finger at ground loop HF noise.

While I did like the Farad as a PSU with the SOTM streamer over their own PSU (clearly much worse) , it was still improved considerably by my mains filter, just like my Genesis. So not quite a one stop shop either.

 

[Lgn3]

I dont doubt that DAVE sounds different when one of these custom power supplies are fitted. Whether better is surely subjective, in the same way as some prefer to use a preamp or headphone amp with DAVE whereas others believe this causes a loss of transparency.
As my experience with Chord dacs goes back to DAC 64 I tend to believe that Rob Watts genuinely thinks the fitted smps does exactly what he needs it to do.

 

[Reactcore]

Would love Rob's take, too, but wouldn't have put the question quite so antagonistically. Perhaps we can all chip in and pay Rob's petrol costs to get him over to @Triode User for an A/B listen!

Rob might have heard a SJ solution on Dave in 2018. @Triode User pointed me to this post of user @romaz (If its him)

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...dio-streaming/?do=findComment&comment=1149407

Quote from that post:
"In November of 2017, while in he U.K. visiting Rob Watts, he was kind enough to share with me the necessary specifications for building an external PSU for DAVE. In exchange, he had expressed a desire to hear this PSU during his planned visit to my home in March of 2018"

Not sure if Rob visited Romaz or if its a repost of someone else..

Sidenote: i wonder what kind of specifications that have been (a schematic?)

Edit:
I found it on Headfi:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chord-electronics-blu-mk-2-the-official-thread.831343/post-14374000

It was the explenation of TT2's supercaps that brought me on track of my upcoming experiment

 

[adrianm]

Didn't get a chance to watch it myself yet, but i hear our favorite influencer has a guest spot

 

[MvRBE10]

Question i use dave directly into my amp with rca which is briljant but i use the xlr output to my subwoofer. I got the feeling this does something to my sound?

Is there a sort of source dx thing for xlr to seperate the signal!

 

[SteveHulk]

Certain devices can almost fully be objectively measured, a power supply, an amplifier, a filter network . . . .
Remember, people in a room full of measuring devices, built, measured and manufactured the DAVE!
It is a mathematical device, with a small analogue output section.

The phrase "mathematical device" is redolent of the old and now discredited "bits are bits" argument.

This supposed digital purity is always gatecrashed by analogue reality.

The DAVE might well be a mathematical device but power supplies are firmly analogue.

Analogue rules such as an ideal psu being a constant voltage current source still apply.

To suggest that somehow the performance of any device, DAVE or whatever, would be degraded in some way by uprating the psu to be closer to an ideal psu simply makes no sense.

The worse that can happen is no change. In that case the limit of the device itself has been reached and further improvements to the psu will definitely be futile.

My take from the many comments and reviews of Farad3 and ARC6 with DAVE, and my own experience with the Farad3 + DAVE is that this limit is nowhere near being reached.

 

[chesebert]

Didn't get a chance to watch it myself yet, but i hear our favorite influencer has a guest spot

To be honest, his videos are always way too long, too boring and too convoluted (no pun intended). Rob could have simply responded to Amir on his website and be done.

 

[Reactcore]

Question i use dave directly into my amp with rca which is briljant but i use the xlr output to my subwoofer. I got the feeling this does something to my sound?

Is there a sort of source dx thing for xlr to seperate the signal!

The source DX is a optical converter which is useless for a electrical audio signal. You can do galvanic isolation but that would degrade the signal too much (specially the low frequencies)

But what is it you hear is wrong?

 

[chesebert]

The phrase "mathematical device" is redolent of the old and now discredited "bits are bits" argument.

This supposed digital purity is always gatecrashed by analogue reality.

The DAVE might well be a mathematical device but power supplies are firmly analogue.

Analogue rules such as an ideal psu being a constant voltage current source still apply.

To suggest that somehow the performance of any device, DAVE or whatever, would be degraded in some way by uprating the psu to be closer to an ideal psu simply makes no sense.

The worse that can happen is no change. In that case the limit of the device itself has been reached and further improvements to the psu will definitely be futile.

My take from the many comments and reviews of Farad3 and ARC6 with DAVE, and my own experience with the Farad3 + DAVE is that this limit is nowhere near being reached.

I think you are confused and have talked yourself into a rabbit hole. Almost the entire high-end dac manufacturer cohort have gone from LPS to SMPS in the last 10 years.

For your background reading https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/31119-power-supply-8-group-test-lps-and-smps/

 

[griff500]

Rob could have simply responded to Amir on his website and be done.

Why on earth would he do that? I can only imagine the reaction from the mob on there. You seriously think he should start posting on a forum where people post that he is a liar that cannot be trusted and the owner of the website, Amir, likes those comments? No bias there...

 

[chesebert]

Why on earth would he do that? I can only imagine the reaction from the mob on there. You seriously think he should start posting on a forum where people post that he is a liar that cannot be trusted and the owner of the website, Amir, likes those comments? No bias there...

If Stereophile were to give Mscaler a bad review, the proper thing to do would be to post a manufacturer comment in the next issue and be done. It would make 0 sense for Chord to post their manufacturer comment in a competing magazine like Absolute Sound. Same logic with ASR.

 

[griff500]

If Stereophile were to give Mscaler a bad review, the proper thing to do would be to post a manufacturer comment in the next issue and be done. It would make 0 sense for Chord to post their manufacturer comment in a competing magazine like Absolute Sound. Same logic with ASR.

It is not the same thing at all. ASR is not a magazine. To post a response there, which would not receive any decent responses, would be to drive more traffic to a website where the owner and some members have such clear bias against him. It would simply add fuel to the fire and benefit nobody but Amir (traffic).

I suspect Stereophile might have discussed this with the designer prior to publishing to gain a full understanding from an open-minded starting point and perhaps incorporated that into the review ("we found x result and questioned the designer about it and he explained that").

We now have members from here who did not hear a difference misrepresenting their experience on this forum now they have found someone to tell them they were 'right' (stating that he was told to let the device burn in when he was actually just told to let himself get used to the sound and then try without the M-Scaler - if anything was being left to burn in it was his brain and not the device).

The internet seems to mostly be about people wanting to be right and wanting to tear others down to lift themselves up. For certain websites those are the majority of posters but, fortunately, they are the minority here.

 

[chesebert]

It is not the same thing at all. ASR is not a magazine. To post a response there, which would not receive any decent responses, would be to drive more traffic to a website where the owner and some members have such clear bias against him. It would simply add fuel to the fire and benefit nobody but Amir (traffic).

I suspect Stereophile might have discussed this with the designer prior to publishing to gain a full understanding from an open-minded starting point and perhaps incorporated that into the review ("we found x result and questioned the designer about it and he explained that").

We now have members from here who did not hear a difference misrepresenting their experience on this forum now they have found someone to tell them they were 'right' (stating that he was told to let the device burn in when he was actually just told to let himself get used to the sound and then try without the M-Scaler - if anything was being left to burn in it was his brain and not the device).

The internet seems to mostly be about people wanting to be right and wanting to tear others down to lift themselves up. For certain websites those are the majority of posters but, fortunately, they are the minority here.

Okay, I get what you are saying about reviewer conferring with manufacturers before publishing - I get that and I do the same when I write anything that resembles a review (rarely). I agree that often users no matter how experienced can miss things or fail to consider some parameter in the testing. In any case, my comment was that I don't want to watch a long as f video about Rob's response to Amir.

Coming back to MScaler. Not everyone can hear the effects of MScaler. I participated in a group demo of MScaler and I can tell you not everyone said they heard a different or heard an improvement. Some preferred just the dac without MScaler. The demo was obviously done with Chord dacs.

 

[griff500]

Coming back to MScaler. Not everyone can hear the effects of MScaler. I participated in a group demo of MScaler and I can tell you not everyone said they heard a different or heard an improvement. Some preferred just the dac without MScaler. The demo was obviously done with Chord dacs.

I agree with this. I found the difference with the TT2 very much worthwhile. I don't find the difference as great with the Dave and I might actually prefer it without, although sometimes I have preferred a sound initially and then found it to be fatiguing when listening for a longer period. That doesn't make others wrong of course.

 

[MvRBE10]

The source DX is a optical converter which is useless for a electrical audio signal. You can do galvanic isolation but that would degrade the signal too much (specially the low frequencies)

But what is it you hear is wrong?

I seems less open or a bit conjested if that is the word for it. I must add that the sub is not on the same power phase. I just ordered a kimber xlr. I was using a low cost xlr. And because i have to pull it under my floor will also pull a new power cord to my audio blok so everything is on the same phase. For now its switched off.