[Amberlamps]

As I plan on upgrading, I clearly think it can be bettered, but for considerably more money. With that in mind, and the fact that Dave is already a bit old and does require some improvements, I wouldn't buy one new. I'd use the savings from buying a used one to improve the areas where it does need improving, or I'd audition better (sadly more expensive ) alternatives. As biased as that may sound from a guy currently selling his Dave.

Being 6 year older than TT2 and HMS, that was the main niggle I had regarding buying a new dave. At 10k there is not a chance of me buying it, as previously it was 8500 when it was 6 years old, now its 10k and its now 7 or 8 years old. I just wished I could of demoed one before buying my TT2, ( which btw is excellent for my needs ) but I live in the sticks and the nearest approved dave retailer is like 120 miles away from me.

I suppose my best bet is to sell either tt2 on its own or tt2 and hms together on ebay and try and pick up a second hand one. I did that with my Hugo 2 and both sides walked away happy from that deal, but then I got scalped on ebay before xmas for a sealed nvidia 3070ti.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

Blast to the past

 

[CBR954RR]

Completely agree with the posts regarding Fanthorpes

Purchased all my Chord products from them starting with the Hugo when the product was launched.
Hugo long gone, now own HMS / DAVE / Wave Storm cables.

Done now I think

 

[Rob Watts]

Im sure this gives you much more freedom to chase your ideas and truly innovate

It was a fun read that you designed TT2's output with such high currrent availabillity just cause you wanted to use speakers with it yourself.. John only didnt wanted to fit some speaker terminals on his designed casing

Btw: how is the DX amp progressing? Or is it moved down the list of Ultima and Choral scaler?

Ultima DAC and the Choral scaler is, and has been, taking up a huge amount of my time. These are not incremental projects....

I was wondering Rob, I presume that you are in your 60’s, forgive me if I’m wrong, but it’s a well known fact that hearing loss occurs with age. So what does one do to get around the hearing loss equation. Your hearing may not be as good as it was say 20 plus years ago, so how do you get around hearing loss when testing new products.

I’m not trying to troll you rob, seriously I’m not, I’m just curious how you do your testing, as every single day I wake up my hearing is different from the day before, sometimes better or somedays worse. And I’m only 47, 48 soon. When creating a new product, is the testing all done with your physical hearing tests ? or is there a machine tester in the loop, also, QC @ Chord, I’ve noticed many posts over the years from people with technical problems with chords new products, does yourself or chord have beta testers who sign a nda contract to test for any problems before the product goes live, or is it just a case of release x product and we’ll see how much failure returns we get.

Again I’m not poking you Rob as you have always been legit in my eyes, but I’m genuinely interested in the process. If you don’t want or are to busy to reply its all good, as I was just wondering how the process went from start to finish.

Yes I just turned 62. But I am physically fitter than when I was in my 30's! Last time I checked out my hearing I could hear 15kHz both ears, and sense 16kHz, so not too bad on the high frequencies. But HF hearing loss does not affect critical sensitivities - like the perception of depth and location, or being able to perceive instruments as sounding real, as these qualities depend more on transient timing, and that factor does not age so much as high frequency hearing loss does.

If I did lose my hearing sensitivity, then that would not be a major disaster - my son could easily take over my objective listening tests, as he has good sensitivity and has been trained by me, so can objectively describe things. What worries me more is cognitive decline, and being able to design and come up with new creative solutions. So far my experience vastly outweighs the fact that I am not as intellectually sharp as when I was young; and the fact of the matter is that I am still improving my understanding, and coming up with sound quality improvements, for digital audio. I just hope that continues for as long as possible.

Sure Chord put new products through an initial test batch process, so that reliability, user functionality, looks and feel and sound quality can be assessed by NDA third parties, well before mass production.

 

[zen87192]

Ultima DAC and the Choral scaler is, and has been, taking up a huge amount of my time. These are not incremental projects....

Excellent... Choral Scaler... knew I heard that somewhere a while back. Now for that price please... are we all sitting down ?

 

[GuiltyRocker]

Excellent... Choral Scaler... knew I heard that somewhere a while back. Now for that price please... are we all sitting down ?

Hahahaahhahaha

 

[seaice]

Ultima DAC and the Choral scaler is, and has been, taking up a huge amount of my time. These are not incremental projects....

Any chance of becoming a beta tester?

... To help the good thing and to get a prototype

 

[Amberlamps]

mmUltima DAC and the Choral scaler is, and has been, taking up a huge amount of my time. These are not incremental projects....



Yes I just turned 62. But I am physically fitter than when I was in my 30's! Last time I checked out my hearing I could hear 15kHz both ears, and sense 16kHz, so not too bad on the high frequencies. But HF hearing loss does not affect critical sensitivities - like the perception of depth and location, or being able to perceive instruments as sounding real, as these qualities depend more on transient timing, and that factor does not age so much as high frequency hearing loss does.

If I did lose my hearing sensitivity, then that would not be a major disaster - my son could easily take over my objective listening tests, as he has good sensitivity and has been trained by me, so can objectively describe things. What worries me more is cognitive decline, and being able to design and come up with new creative solutions. So far my experience vastly outweighs the fact that I am not as intellectually sharp as when I was young; and the fact of the matter is that I am still improving my understanding, and coming up with sound quality improvements, for digital audio. I just hope that continues for as long as possible.

Sure Chord put new products through an initial test batch process, so that reliability, user functionality, looks and feel and sound quality can be assessed by NDA third parties, well before mass production.

Hi rob and thanks for answering my post.

It’s good to hear that you are fitter more now, than you were before;

“HF hearing loss does not affect critical sensitivities - like the perception of depth and location, or being able to perceive instruments as sounding real, as these qualities depend more on transient timing”


It’s good to hear that HF hearing loss does not affect critical sensitivities. And that transients doesn’t age like HF hearing loss does. As I thought that losing HF would lead to more hearing loss and that everything you just mentioned in bold would of also been badly affected, so it’s good to know that HF hearing loss doesn’t work like that.

Training your son to get in to this game is a genius chess move, keep the IP in the family so that you all will benefit from it now and in the future. Hopefully he is just as focused in this game as you are…which I’m sure he is, as I seem to recall you mentioning him in one of your posts a while back.

The last time I tested my hearing was via some app on my ipad, my hearing topped out at circa 12khz so it said, whether thats legit I have no idea however, I did have a test a year or so ago at the ENT clinic, whilst in the cool sound proof booth, me being me, after a wee while I closed my eyes and forgot to keep pushing the button when I heard something, the room made me relax kinda too much. They did notice a difference from earlier tests but I forgot to ask them how many khz I could hear, which was the main reason I went there in the first place.

Don’t worry too much about Cognitive Decline, as by the time you notice it, you will have already forgotten about it.

I’m sure you still have many years in front of you to dedicated to making new improvements, designs and products. Also the 60’s are the new middle age so no need to worry just yet.

I had a feeling that Chord handed out new products to test to third party NDA participants, my guess would be that it’s authorised chord retailers, or possibly some of chord workers.

Anyway, thanks for replying and maybe just maybe I will get me some Dave 2 goodness.

 

[Lgn3]

Hi rob and thanks for answering my post.

It’s good to hear that you are fitter more now, than you were before;

“HF hearing loss does not affect critical sensitivities - like the perception of depth and location, or being able to perceive instruments as sounding real, as these qualities depend more on transient timing”


It’s good to hear that HF hearing loss does not affect critical sensitivities. And that transients doesn’t age like HF hearing loss does. As I thought that losing HF would lead to more hearing loss and that everything you just mentioned in bold would of also been badly affected, so it’s good to know that HF hearing loss doesn’t work like that.

Training your son to get in to this game is a genius chess move, keep the IP in the family so that you all will benefit from it now and in the future. Hopefully he is just as focused in this game as you are…which I’m sure he is, as I seem to recall you mentioning him in one of your posts a while back.

The last time I tested my hearing was via some app on my ipad, my hearing topped out at circa 12khz so it said, whether thats legit I have no idea however, I did have a test a year or so ago at the ENT clinic, whilst in the cool sound proof booth, me being me, after a wee while I closed my eyes and forgot to keep pushing the button when I heard something, the room made me relax kinda too much. They did notice a difference from earlier tests but I forgot to ask them how many khz I could hear, which was the main reason I went there in the first place.

Don’t worry too much about Cognitive Decline, as by the time you notice it, you will have already forgotten about it.

I’m sure you still have many years in front of you to dedicated to making new improvements, designs and products. Also the 60’s are the new middle age so no need to worry just yet.

I had a feeling that Chord handed out new products to test to third party NDA participants, my guess would be that it’s authorised chord retailers, or possibly some of chord workers.

Anyway, thanks for replying and maybe just maybe I will get me some Dave 2 goodness.

I have posted before about hearing loss so found @Amberlamps original post on this topic very welcome. Rob is very lucky as most over 60's can hear nothing over 12khz, and many may not hear even that frequency. It would be interesting to play a younger person who could hear up to 18khz, a hi res recording, then the same recording stripped of all frequencies above 12khz and finally a red book version and ask them which of the two sounded most degraded compared to the original. In effect you would be giving a 25 year old the listening experience of a typical over 60 year old, at least of the higher frequencies. By the way I am in my late 60's and have no high frequency hearing over 12khz.

 

[SteveHulk]

I think the situation is rather more complex than that.

Firstly, let's check back and remember that the perceived pitch of a sound is a logarithmic function of the frequency.

If you consider the frequency range from 10kHz to 20kHz (ie more or less the red book limit) that is just one octave. The young person maybe gets to 17/18kHz which is much less than the whole octave. Probably barely half of it. If the older person is getting 12kHz then in terms of that octave they have lost just a few notes from that octave compared to the younger guy. Losing 6kHz sounds terrible but in terms of the musical scale it is really not a big deal.

Secondly, in real life these high frequencies are not heard in isolation, but as the harmonic components of sounds that are much lower in pitch.

This is where psychoacoustics kicks in and we have to remember that perceiving sound is a learned experience.

The human brain is excellent at fixing low quality input from the sensory organs, filling in missing pieces and recreating the original. If we weren't capable of doing this most audio systems would be completely unlistenable.

As the older person's ears deteriorate, they learn to re-interpret the changes in the signals from the nerves in the inner ear in terms of their additional decades of learning how to interpret those same sounds. Even though the signal from the ears themselves has degraded, what will be presented to the older person's conscious mind will be still close to what would have been presented when that person was still young.

In short, even though the older person's ears have deteriorated in absolute terms, the deterioration of the listening experience will be much less than the raw frequency numbers might suggest.

The younger person in your experiment would miss those higher frequencies much more than the older person does.

Simply chopping off those high frequencies will not recreate in the younger person's mind the same listening experience as in the older person's mind.

 

[Jawed]

Ultima DAC and the Choral scaler is, and has been, taking up a huge amount of my time. These are not incremental projects....

Does the design brief for Ultima DAC include headphone output, or is it purely a fixed level DAC?

 

[marcmccalmont]

Is anyone aware of a digital to digital converter that supports dual bnc output?
My Gustard U18 is a noticeable improvement over the src dx but it is limited to a single coax output.

 

[LucyWu]

Is anyone aware of a digital to digital converter that supports dual bnc output?
My Gustard U18 is a noticeable improvement over the src dx but it is limited to a single coax output.

I haven't come across anything other than the SRC.DX that conforms to the Chord dual bnc arrangement. I am unclear whether Rob's approach conforms to dual-wire AES, which is not widely supported but there are a few devices that cover that.

I am surprised you find improvement with the U18. I've tried that arrangement too and found that (with the best power supply for the SRC.DX that I have available) the SRC.DX (with a Matrix Element H USB card and no USB cable - so SRC.DX plugged directed into the USB port by a hard adapter) was exceptional.

The Gustard device is a good device and works well with the Gustard X26pro so I don't doubt good results.Just that every change of power supply to the SRC.DX and every change in connecting USB link made a big difference, in single or dual output mode.

 

[Lgn3]

I think the situation is rather more complex than that.

Firstly, let's check back and remember that the perceived pitch of a sound is a logarithmic function of the frequency.

If you consider the frequency range from 10kHz to 20kHz (ie more or less the red book limit) that is just one octave. The young person maybe gets to 17/18kHz which is much less than the whole octave. Probably barely half of it. If the older person is getting 12kHz then in terms of that octave they have lost just a few notes from that octave compared to the younger guy. Losing 6kHz sounds terrible but in terms of the musical scale it is really not a big deal.

Secondly, in real life these high frequencies are not heard in isolation, but as the harmonic components of sounds that are much lower in pitch.

This is where psychoacoustics kicks in and we have to remember that perceiving sound is a learned experience.

The human brain is excellent at fixing low quality input from the sensory organs, filling in missing pieces and recreating the original. If we weren't capable of doing this most audio systems would be completely unlistenable.

As the older person's ears deteriorate, they learn to re-interpret the changes in the signals from the nerves in the inner ear in terms of their additional decades of learning how to interpret those same sounds. Even though the signal from the ears themselves has degraded, what will be presented to the older person's conscious mind will be still close to what would have been presented when that person was still young.

In short, even though the older person's ears have deteriorated in absolute terms, the deterioration of the listening experience will be much less than the raw frequency numbers might suggest.

The younger person in your experiment would miss those higher frequencies much more than the older person does.

Simply chopping off those high frequencies will not recreate in the younger person's mind the same listening experience as in the older person's mind.

I agree there is much more to the listening experience than an ability to distinguish higher frequencies. For most music we are talking about overtones and harmonics, as you say. However which do you think would be most noticeable to our theoretical younger listener, a recording stripped of musical information he/she can hear I.e. 12 -18 khz, or those our subject cannot i.e. everything above 18khz which are present in a hi res recording? Or to turn our thought experiment around if our older listener could have his/her high frequency hearing loss restored would that be more noticeable than the perceived difference between red book and hi res ?
At any rate the best hi fi upgrade I have experienced in the past 20 years was having my ears syringed and it was free, courtesy of the NHS !

 

[LucyWu]

Hi Rez does not really contain any more meaningful content over and above red book files - which were specified to capture the widest audible frequency band. So our theoretical youth wouldn't glean much above 18khz. Whether musical instruments contain harmonics above 18khz (even 21khz) is meaningless to pretty much everyone unless you're an audiophile dog or bat. The frequencies that most people complain about in respect of harshness or overly bright are generally under 10kz and often result from distortion in the presence band.

I remember the same effect from having my ears syringed - a great, if short-lived upgrade.