[Reactcore]

DAVE sounds amazing, I just leave it way it is, Rob Watts knows what he's doing. I mess with the Qutest by using batteries, that's about it. When you go down the rabbit hole it just makes you go nuts. To me it's not worth it.

I understand.. i was a real disbeliever too.. how can such thoroughly engineered product be improved.

It was after a friend came with his Fared'ed Dave when my opinion got forced to change.

But i had alot of fun with my tinkerings and got greatly rewarded in the process.. i dont see a bad side.

 

[569424]

Transient timing reconstruction is a huge issue for digital - but it's also an issue for analogue. Reel to reel use HF bias on the recording heads, set to around 100kHz and this has the effect of distorting the timing of transients. I have often thought that perhaps that is why people like the sound of reel to reel, that it's not just down to 2nd harmonic distortion which of course does fatten up the sound for bass. Also, any out of band distortion will degrade transient timing too; I should imagine that vinyl and reel to reel has pretty horrendous linearity at 1MHz... Anyway, people may like vinyl, but it sounds nothing like real acoustic instruments.

Does not Direct-to-Disc vinyl recording technique solve this speculation entirely?

So I guess we’re just going to let this slide. Again.

 

[JTbbb]

the point of going into the dave thread to post over and over that the dave is no good to a bunch of happy owners and others who think it is terrific is what exactly?...I have had my dave for years now and love it and heard nothing appreciably better in any price range within reason...

I put the guy on ignore couple years or so ago…I have no intention of redacting it.

 

[Rob Watts]

I think you conveniently forgot about Direct-To-Disc vinyl recordings.

Agreed direct cut disks can sound very good - but how many recordings are available in this format? The reality to vinyl is that you are either listening via reel to reel, or digital - and it's nuts to use vinyl to reproduce digital.

You've said in the past that TT2 didn't come as close to DAVE as you were hoping, presumably with both fed by M Scaler.

These thoughts about amplifier gain and pulse array element count make me wonder if the much higher gain in TT2 coupled with fewer elements in the pulse array might be crucial in the perceived difference between the two. Sure, we expect that fewer elements will reduce performance, but I'm wondering if the increased gain at the same time magnifies the shortfall?

The gain change certainly isn't the reason for Dave having much more resolution compared to TT2 - it's only a 3dB change in gain.

 

[569424]

Agreed direct cut disks can sound very good - but how many recordings are available in this format? The reality to vinyl is that you are either listening via reel to reel, or digital - and it's nuts to use vinyl to reproduce digital.

For best sound quality, Is it also nuts to use digital to reproduce pre-1980 (analog) albums?

 

[FunkyBassMan]

You know what they say, buy it nice or buy it twice. The uncomfortable truth is that Dave doesn't sound all that great technically or all that musical. People bought it based on "reviews", "sentiment" and forum "impressions" or they for some reason lacked the knowledge or experience of what "good sound" actually is - they eventually figure it out. Some have taken the step of getting rid of their Dave to buy something that sounds good. Others go down the rabbit hole of adding more boxes, "fixes" and tweaks to Dave hoping it would sound good.

Lol, so all the people out there who auditioned it and bought it because they loved and continue to love what they're hearing are idiots?

I'm guessing they're not the idiots in this conversation, someone else may be.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

Lol, so all the people out there who auditioned it and bought it because they loved and continue to love what they're hearing are idiots?

I'm guessing they're not the idiots in this conversation, someone else may be.

DAVE is an amazing DAC, when you have something this good you have to accept there will always be haters, it's the nature of the game. This will keep happening, it is what it is.

 

[SoupRKnowva]

You know what they say, buy it nice or buy it twice. The uncomfortable truth is that Dave doesn't sound all that great technically or all that musical. People bought it based on "reviews", "sentiment" and forum "impressions" or they for some reason lacked the knowledge or experience of what "good sound" actually is - they eventually figure it out. Some have taken the step of getting rid of their Dave to buy something that sounds good. Others go down the rabbit hole of adding more boxes, "fixes" and tweaks to Dave hoping it would sound good.

You're incredibly patronizing attitude that you know better than everyone else is obnoxious. Having compared Dave to many high end dacs for extended periods of time in my own home on my own rig, I've continued to find it the best dac on the market and wouldn't trade it for anything else regardless of price.

Its cool you found something you like, but acting like this is juvenile.

 

[chesebert]

You're incredibly patronizing attitude that you know better than everyone else is obnoxious. Having compared Dave to many high end dacs for extended periods of time in my own home on my own rig, I've continued to find it the best dac on the market and wouldn't trade it for anything else regardless of price.

Its cool you found something you like, but acting like this is juvenile.

I am sorry you feel that strongly about your dac purchases that you have resorted to personal attack. You should feel free to just ignore my post if you don't like what I have to say - use the ignore button.

 

[Mediahound]

I am sorry you feel that strongly about your dac purchases that you have resorted to personal attack. You should feel free to just ignore my post if you don't like what I have to say - use the ignore button.

You don’t have to like Chord stuff, but what you’re doing is akin to someone going into a Jaguar dealership and screaming “Jaguar sucks!”: as if the patrons there are going to take you the least bit seriously.

Go participate in the head-fi threads for products you like, otherwise you’re simply trolling here.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

You don’t have to like Chord stuff, but what you’re doing is akin to someone going into a Jaguar dealership and screaming “Jaguar sucks!”. As if the patrons there are going to take you the least bit seriously.

Go participate in the head-fi threads for products you like, otherwise you’re simply trolling here.

The hate for Chord is strong, I really don't get it. A lot of people like Chi-Fi, I say go enjoy it. I don't go to their forums to trash their stuff, I just don't buy it. Crazy world.

 

[569424]

What’s the audible difference between chord mojo2 and Dave? Don’t you get the same performance if you run mojo 2 on optical? At least measurement wise they are as close as can be. the numbers but even they have almost identical curves and patterns. (Very rare to see between two “different” products)
Plus the mojo 2 has a much better power source (battery)

 

[Somafunk]

You don’t have to like Chord stuff, but what you’re doing is akin to someone going into a Jaguar dealership and screaming “Jaguar sucks!”

To be fair, jaguar does suck, terrible build quality poor electrics/electronics and abysmal dealer support.

 

[Mediahound]

To be fair, jaguar does suck, terrible build quality poor electrics/electronics and abysmal dealer support.

That's not the point. You may substitute literally any maker for Jaguar.

 

[Crgreen]

Compression is a major thing with classical recordings too. My son Daniel is studying the Tonmeister sound recording course at Surrey Uni, and he helps me when we do our recordings of an amateur orchestra. The first recording (which I published on my blog Watts up?) had some clipping issues - mostly when the audience clapped (not that you would notice it). So on the next recording, we set it up so that clipping didn't happen (actually it hit -0.6dB FS). But for various reasons we didn't publish it - and one was that it was impossibly quiet. I had to run Dave at +19dB for listening at reasonable levels. So I said to Daniel what was going on here - and he answered that classical recordings always use mild compression. That frankly blew my mind. So either we accept that we will get occasional clipping (I don't care about clapping but it also happens with percussion) or you will need to ramp up the volume (in which case it will then clip in the DAC...). How we get over this issue remains to be seen - but I certainly won't use compression.

The use of compression doesn’t surprise me, nor the issues that can arise when it’s not applied.

Many highly regarded recordings use compression of some kind, though it might depend on the overall sound levels and dynamic range. For example: I understand the ECM label almost always uses mild compression. There are some small labels that claim to use no compression at all, stating that they provide the full dynamic range of a performance, but even with recordings of small ensembles they can sound much too quiet, and rather flat, much as Rob describes.

I’m not sure why this is, and I’m no expert, but it may have something to do with the ability of playback equipment to genuinely reproduce the dynamic range of what’s recorded — compression provides the necessary boost — or that our ears/brains work differently to microphones.

In short, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with compression, and if it improves the listening experience and gets one closer to what “seems” like the real thing, in a convincing fashion, I don’t have any ideological concerns. I’m more of a pragmatist I suppose.