[Mediahound]

$100k? I will not get that, at some point it gets silly and if that's the price I am not even looking at it.

Well Chord has always had an expensive flagship Ultima line. Their current Ultima monoblock amp retails for something like $88k. for example.

It's when that tech. later trickles down their lines that most of us mere mortals can afford to benefit with more reasonably priced products.

 

[Somatic]

Waiting for choral mscaler

 

[Christer]

$100k? I will not get that, at some point it gets silly and if that's the price I am not even looking at it.

Hmm, I suspect that there is an element of "Marketing Psychologly" involved here. Ie when it arrives , some will say, "Oh good, not quite as ridiculously priced as we first feared".
For me personally Dave is already priced new after all these years! it's been available at a price that I can not any longer afford to pay for the very last bits of resolution it offers over TT2 or even my humble Qutest. Of course with ALL three used in combination with the Mscaler. Diminishing returns kicks in already at the current imho ridiculous pricing of both TT2 and Dave for me.
But Chord is most probably still going to try to squeeze every cent and penny they can out of those for whom money is no object and/or owning the most enviable expensive audio toys is a Status symbol they can boast about, even if all they ever listen to is badly recorded highly compressed synthetic pop and rock music.
As far as the reviewer is concerned I do agree with what he had to say comparing TT2 and Dave with and without an mscaler and interesting too that he mentions Dave's limitations driving Susvara even on its own apparently? I only ran into audible problems with the Mscaler also connected with my non compressed large scale hi res symphonic music recordings refererence tracks where I have direct reference points both to how things sounded from various points live in the hall at the recordings.
And also at masterfile playback at sessions and via some high quality systems.
It was not mentioned in this video but in another one here recently Rob said he had still not even once? auditioned Susvara?
I wonder what he has against it?
Must be its ridiculous price?
Or is it because it is not a closed back headphone? Rob obviously prefers closed back headphones.
SQ wise via Dave /Mscaler and a high quality headphone amp added,Susvara rates as the best and most resolving planar headphone I have heard.
Mind you, I have not yet auditioned Dan Clark's Stealth or Expanse.
But if I would eventually buy either of those two, I strongly suspect I would buy the open Expanse, not the Stealth . I do not often listen to music via headphones on flights ,but at home late at night or first thing in the morning . And a big not closed-in or boxy soundstage matters a lot to me also via headphones.
My ideals for open headphones as far as soundstage is concerned are Raal SRHA1 or Jecklin Float electrostatic helmets. But my trusty old HD 800 are still one of the best headphones on the market for big REAL sounding soundstage with acoustic music.
And it is Not and never WAS ridiculously priced!
Binaural recordings can sound very convincing via HD800.

"Sour said the fox" I guess? Or am I just being ridiculous?
Cheers Christer

 

[sm60]

Hmm, I suspect that there is an element of "Marketing Psychologly" involved here. Ie when it arrives , some will say, "Oh good, not quite as ridiculously priced as we first feared".
For me personally Dave is already priced new after all these years! it's been available at a price that I can not any longer afford to pay for the very last bits of resolution it offers over TT2 or even my humble Qutest. Of course with ALL three used in combination with the Mscaler. Diminishing returns kicks in already at the current imho ridiculous pricing of both TT2 and Dave for me.
But Chord is most probably still going to try to squeeze every cent and penny they can out of those for whom money is no object and/or owning the most enviable expensive audio toys is a Status symbol they can boast about, even if all they ever listen to is badly recorded highly compressed synthetic pop and rock music.
As far as the reviewer is concerned I do agree with what he had to say comparing TT2 and Dave with and without an mscaler and interesting too that he mentions Dave's limitations driving Susvara even on its own apparently? I only ran into audible problems with the Mscaler also connected with my non compressed large scale hi res symphonic music recordings refererence tracks where I have direct reference points both to how things sounded from various points live in the hall at the recordings.
And also at masterfile playback at sessions and via some high quality systems.
It was not mentioned in this video but in another one here recently Rob said he had still not even once? auditioned Susvara?
I wonder what he has against it?
Must be its ridiculous price?
Or is it because it is not a closed back headphone? Rob obviously prefers closed back headphones.
SQ wise via Dave /Mscaler and a high quality headphone amp added,Susvara rates as the best and most resolving planar headphone I have heard.
Mind you, I have not yet auditioned Dan Clark's Stealth or Expanse.
But if I would eventually buy either of those two, I strongly suspect I would buy the open Expanse, not the Stealth . I do not often listen to music via headphones on flights ,but at home late at night or first thing in the morning . And a big not closed-in or boxy soundstage matters a lot to me also via headphones.
My ideals for open headphones as far as soundstage is concerned are Raal SRHA1 or Jecklin Float electrostatic helmets. But my trusty old HD 800 are still one of the best headphones on the market for big REAL sounding soundstage with acoustic music.
And it is Not and never WAS ridiculously priced!
Binaural recordings can sound very convincing via HD800.

"Sour said the fox" I guess? Or am I just being ridiculous?
Cheers Christer

Keep in mind that a good chunk of London real estate is owned by Russian oligarchs, the so-called “London-grad” district. $100K DACs will be bought by these folks to go into their huge yachts. Chord is trying to keep up with the Joneses, as the saying goes. Naim has a $100K preamp, and so Chord follows. Linn follows and it’s a spiral. Next up, a million dollar DAC for the Saudi royals.

 

[jlbrach]

FWIW, no new DAVE any time soon. In this video, Rob Watts states that the product they are coming out with next is an Ultima DAC costing around $100k!:

100K,that is hilarious...I love my dave and stretched my budget to get it a few years back...I am old enough to remember when you could get a decent house for 100K lol

 

[GuiltyRocker]

Keep in mind that a good chunk of London real estate is owned by Russian oligarchs, the so-called “London-grad” district. $100K DACs will be bought by these folks to go into their huge yachts. Chord is trying to keep up with the Joneses, as the saying goes. Naim has a $100K preamp, and so Chord follows. Linn follows and it’s a spiral. Next up, a million dollar DAC for the Saudi royals.

Funny, to me Naim sounds like complete trash. I can't stand it.

 

[AnalogEuphoria]

$100k? I will not get that, at some point it gets silly and if that's the price I am not even looking at it.

The new Ultima DAC won't make everyones current Chord DAC bad all of a sudden, enjoy what you have.

 

[RustyGates]

So, after watching Sandhu's interview with Rob, it's very clear that given Rob is making a new reference DAC, the DAVE is obviously not the best he can do; there are definitely improvements and new things he has learnt over the past 8+ in DAC design, new digital features and architectural improvements he's made and that he can definitely do a better job with the power supply and regulation, RF filtering, improve noise performance (because Qutest and TT2 have better noise performance than DAVE), and bring UHD DSP into the mix and update the FPGA from that old Spartan 6 to an Artix UltraScale+.

I expect a trickle down from the Reference DAC into a "DAVE 2".

 

[Rob Watts]

Just to be clear - I have never said USD 100k for an Ultima DAC. Any talk on price (including me as I do not know) is speculation.

 

[Ards]

Ultima DAC costing around $100k

I recognise this is a bit of a blanket statement, but if it's necessary to buy a DAC costing $100k, in order to get the best from digital audio, then I'd argue there's something *fundamentally* wrong with digital audio. However, if we can get great sounding DACs for much less money, then perhaps this price is more about perceived buyer prestige than performance.

Either way, not for me.

 

[alxw0w]

if we can get great sounding DACs for much less money, then perhaps this price is more about perceived buyer prestige than performance.

well said

 

[esmit]

Waiting for choral mscaler

Check this out: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/my-choral-housed-chord-mscaler.964931/post-17333273

 

[Somatic]

Check this out: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/my-choral-housed-chord-mscaler.964931/post-17333273

I love what he has been up to. I wish he was local to me.

 

[number1sixerfan]

I recognise this is a bit of a blanket statement, but if it's necessary to buy a DAC costing $100k, in order to get the best from digital audio, then I'd argue there's something *fundamentally* wrong with digital audio. However, if we can get great sounding DACs for much less money, then perhaps this price is more about perceived buyer prestige than performance.

Either way, not for me.

Yea but this isn't anything new, and it applies to the Dave as well. Just obviously to a lesser degree. The more you climb tiers cost wise, generally speaking you pay more of a premium for actual performance jumps. I understand the disappointment however for Dave users that would rather see a successor to the Dave at a more accessible cost. We simply aren't the intended consumer group here.

 

[sm60]

I recognise this is a bit of a blanket statement, but if it's necessary to buy a DAC costing $100k, in order to get the best from digital audio, then I'd argue there's something *fundamentally* wrong with digital audio. However, if we can get great sounding DACs for much less money, then perhaps this price is more about perceived buyer prestige than performance.

Either way, not for me.

I think this statement applies broadly to all of audio. One can easily spend $100K on a turntable, a preamplifier or amplifier, and Magico here in the San Francisco Bay Area has just released their latest Q9 speaker that costs almost a million dollars. As the saying goes, if you have to ask for the price, it’s not for you.

But there are plenty of bargains in the hi fi world. I use a Technics SL10 linear tracking turntable that cost me a few hundred dollars. The Shure cartridge cost another hundred dollars. It sounds fabulous with a good phono stage. For DACs, there’s Topping that produces an affordable line of DAC products that start around a few hundred dollars.

No one here should be surprised the new Chord DAC costs $100K. The Dave is 7 or 8 years old and costs 15 grand. Sean’s LPS for the Dave costs around 7 grand. Throw in the M-Scaler and the ARC 6’s for both and good cables, you’re already almost half way to the new DAC’s price. And all this for an 8 year old DAC. The new Chord DAC might actually be a better buy if you’re going to dress up your 8 year old DAC with fancy power supplies!