[alxw0w]

How about newer recordings? Non classical? 80s-90s music? Electronic, hip hop, Rock, etc. Thanks.

Hard to say. As I barely listen to that kind of music.
But I'll agree with @TheAttorney:

There are some recordings where no CF would be acceptable to me, but these are sufficiently few that I don't bother ever changing the CF setting. It could be my OCD tendencies, but once I've noticed the broken sound stage characteristics of no CF, I just can't stand hearing it at even minor levels. CF does bring it's own issues, as has already been noted, but these are less annoying to me than a broken sound stage.

Especially this sentence:

It's strange that I find that the central image benefits from CF, being more solid, realistic and 3D - you'd think it should be the edges of the sound stage that would be most affected.

Exactly. Even singers voice is much better with CF. Like it has shape, edges of the center images are rounded more 3D if you will.

Strong left right panning like it is happening with headphones and to some degree with speakers is just unnatural and plain wrong - to some degree of course.
Stereo was invented so you can place sounds between speakers in the space not on left or right side - like it's happening with headphones or many lesser speaker systems.
So as @TheAttorney said, I keep my CF on like 90% of the time and don't really care what type of music is being played. Sometimes when I hear that it's really off (too congested) I turn it off.

ps. this track is really nice example where I just love crossfeed even though it changes the sound so it sounds almost like a mono recording, but with amazing depth, layering and just positioning in the 3D space. You can really hear event hapening in front of you it's really an expierence.

 

[Sajid Amit]

I was just writing to Rob and I stumbled upon this thread after many months.

Thought I would post a photo of Rob and I from CanJam Singapore earlier last month.

It was really lovely to meet and speak to Rob.

He's such a gentleman!

I conducted a brief interview with him. Sharing it as follows.

 

[Somatic]

As a dedicated CF fan, I use CF on all my recordings all of the time. There are some recordings where no CF would be acceptable to me, but these are sufficiently few that I don't bother ever changing the CF setting. It could be my OCD tendencies, but once I've noticed the broken sound stage characteristics of no CF, I just can't stand hearing it at even minor levels. CF does bring it's own issues, as has already been noted, but these are less annoying to me than a broken sound stage.

It's strange that I find that the central image benefits from CF, being more solid, realistic and 3D - you'd think it should be the edges of the sound stage that would be most affected.

All this applies to headphones directly driven by DAVE. The same headphones driven by a lesser DAC/Amps don't seem to need CF as much. I guess this is because the accuracy of the sound stage is already blurred by the lesser DAC/Amps, such that the lack of CF is less obvious.

Thanks for your thoughts. I think you are able to discern the differences better than me. How does the broken soundstage sound to you? Any tell tale signs to hear out for?

Which intensity of CF are you using? Can you briefly explain the differences you hear between each level?

@alxw0w I also love classical. Any favorite recordings you recommend? I use Qobuz at the moment.

 

[TheAttorney]

Thanks for your thoughts. I think you are able to discern the differences better than me. How does the broken soundstage sound to you? Any tell tale signs to hear out for?
Which intensity of CF are you using? Can you briefly explain the differences you hear between each level?

Well, you asked for it, so here goes...

CF on headphones doesn't replicate the sound stage of a live event, or of well positioned speakers, but it doesn't need to. What it can do is reproduce a more realistic 3D sound stage within that smaller "head stage" such that your imagination can do the rest to give you an immersive live performance experience. If that's CF on a good day, this is what I particularly notice when I switch off CF....

Hole-in-the-middle effect
Sound images to the left and right are a bit too prominent compared to those in the middle. There is no actual hole in the middle, but it just feels as if there's a bit missing. The end result detracts from the illusion of being at a live performance. As others have noted, this can be very noticeable on classical music. Obviously, this is most noticeable with those early stereo recordings with hard left/right panning, but still there to varying levels on any recording.

Solidity of images
Each voice and instrument becomes slightly more diffuse, more spread out, it's less easy to "see" a defined 3D image within a 3D sound stage. It's a bit like (but not the same as) being out of phase. Unexpectedly, this is particularly distracting for the central image, where it's harder to "see" the female vocalist singing in front of you.

Interruption to the sound stage
This is related to the hole-in-the-middle effect, but with a different perspective: You're immersed in a performance and suddenly a sound pops out from the left headphone. Your you-are-there experience is interrupted by sounds coming directly out of a headphone driver instead of being integrated within a coherent sound stage.

It could well be that I'm more sensitive to sound stage affects than others. For example, I can immediately notice the effects of DAVE's phase switch, whereas some others have expressed difficulties in noticing any differences. Also, the effects are more noticeable on headphones with wider sound stages. My extra-wide HEK's benefit enormously from CF, whereas my narrower Elites still benefit, but less so.
.
I've explained the differences of CF1, 2 and 3 on the DAVE CF thread (which I can't find at the moment). But in short, CF3 gives the most realistic 3D sound stage, but at a cost of the most downside (e.g. reduced width). Although different CF's can be best for different recordings, I like to keep things simple by sticking to CF2 as the overall best compromise for most situations.

As an alternative to DAVE's CF, I'm very interested in Zahl HM1 headphone amp's "sound stage knob", which does this very differently and can add CF and increase stage width (all done in the analogue domain). Some have raved over this function, but it's the sort of thing I have to listen for myself to know if it's right for me. I've listened to other CF's that have not been as effective as DAVE's. Until I can get my own demo (not easy), have any DAVE CF users tried the Zahl, particularly for the 3 effects I've described above?

 

[GOKYO]

As a Labor Day gift to myself, I bought an inexpensive linear tracking Technics turntable for $500 on Audiogon just to see if I wanted to get back into vinyl. Huge mistake! The sheer musicality of this little elegant device shocked me. Well, one thing led to another and now I have got back into vinyl in a serious way. Got a far better turntable and phono stage and a high end cartridge. Almost all my listening these days is vinyl. My Dave and Blu Mk2 give me guilty looks from their now relegated positions on my equipment stands. I’m reminded of the scene from Toy Story.

Bottom line: for listening to music recorded in the 1950s-1970s, from jazz to folk to rock to classical, I find vinyl far more pleasurable sonically than Qobuz streamed bits decoded by M-Scaler/Dave. I’ll continue to use Dave for listening to new high Rez recordings, but that forms a small part of what I like to listen to.

Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Ben Webster, Milt Jackson, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Sarah Vaughan, and countless other jazz and popular music recorded in the 1950s-1960s sounds beautiful on vinyl, but excruciatingly bad on digital to my ears. I don’t know why, but I don’t care to. If this is the music you like to listen to, vinyl is it as far as I’m concerned.

Newly recorded classical music is of course only possible to listen to via streaming and Dave, so that’s what I’ll continue to use here.

I find I’m much happier with vinyl back in my house. I have discovered the joys of listening to mono recordings. The Beatles and Bob Dylan hated the horribly made stereo versions of their great albums. Hearing these on mono vinyl makes you understand why. These sound fabulous in original mono, not reprocessed stereo (Dylan’s voice and guitar and harmonica stay together in mono, not arbitrarily separated in fake stereo).

Obviously this is a personal choice. YMMV, as they say!

yes!....this is exactly where i am at as well.

 

[Reactcore]

Read my mod of placing my Dave's original PSU in an external box in my thread here:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/supercharging-chord-daves-internal-amplifier.966040/post-17501293

Now some time passed playing alot with the PSU external out of Dave's casing.
I never had so much turning my head to sounds popping out of sudden directions.
My brain gets fooled so more often into believing the scene because now again less noise enters Dave.

Where with Mscaler before i could hear reverb and bouncing sounds in the treble region on double miked tracks.. now, combined with the latest cap mod and using optical, the Mscaler got 'boosted' Its now also the middle frequency region that shows its effect clearly.. its not a subtle effect anymore.

The difference between a unaltered or bad mixed/processed recording is just bigger and easy to point.

This Dave and its amp drive transformed alot giving mighty powerful and natural sound.. nothing like it was in stock form. And thanks again to @esmit for having me using your TT2 extendedly to do rigorous comparings that gave me insight to what was to be achieved.. and i did.

I cant imagine how this could be improved further.. its just so right and grabbing me.. lifting my 'humble' HD800 to such enormous hights it disappears from my head leaving only the space with the music. Im eager to hear what other headphones now sound like on my stack.

 

[PierreHPfan]

M Scaler on the cheap?​

I spent some time the last week playing with Roon & HQ Player. I know HQ Player has fans in 2 channel, and some of my audio buddies convert all PCM to DSD and swear it sounds better. This may be Dac dependant though, I am not sure.

Anyway, I decided to install Trial HQ Player, and use it through Roon. I am latest Mac Mini M1 with latest system and Roon Core.
I normally use a 432 Evo music server in my 2 channel, but that won't support HQ Payer. So for this test, I used the Mac Mini into the DAVE via USB, LCD4 and both powered off the PS Audio P10 (which upgrades the Mac Mini sound a LOT).
I have been using Audirvana+ for 2 months and prefer it to Roon, even though Roon looks pretty and is nicer to find new tracks. Roon has a smearing of transients to my ears, and a muddy image / soundstage. It sounds a bit thick and gets confusing once the music gets busy. It got me thinking - maybe using Roon as an interface only, with HQ Player as a player will fix that?

After a few days testing here are my thoughts. I do think HQ player open up things a bit on base Roon, though it is not a huge improvement. I can hear more details and depth, layering ect. The soundstage is not popping as it is reputed to do with M Scaler for example. HQ Player never gets to catch up to Audirvana+ to my ears (on the DAVE).

I have HQ Player set to upsample to 768k, and have tried all the filter options, and like Sinc-N filter and NS9 dither the best. The computer loads is about 12% so not a big deal. In fact I ended up using the same settings as the AudioBacon review (pic above) did. I also agree with them on the results.

The effect of HQ Player is an upgrade inside Roon, but v Audirvana+ playing the straight PCM files at 44.1k or 96k, it simply sounds cleaner, clearer and less flat / smeared.

So my conclusion, no cheap path to the M Scaler unfortunately. Maybe on other Dacs that have DS chips, and can handle DSD, it may sound preferable? A certain extra weight to the mids and a smoothing of treble details may suit some systems. DAVE prefers PCM and converts DSD back so no point doing that here. But the DAVE's magic is the detail and soundstage, depth of the image. I can't loose any of those things or the magic disappears for me. On 2 channel, my server is Linux and uses Logitec Media Server, which is very transparent v Roon, it is way ahead, and sounds just ahead of Audirvana+.

Maybe the unique FPGA and filters in DAVE don't mix well with others - processing over processing? Quite possibly the purpose built M Scaler fits DAVE better.
Anyone else tried HQ Player and have any feedback on it with the DAVE?

 

[iDesign]

M Scaler on the cheap?​

I spent some time the last week playing with Roon & HQ Player. I know HQ Player has fans in 2 channel, and some of my audio buddies convert all PCM to DSD and swear it sounds better. This may be Dac dependant though, I am not sure.

Anyway, I decided to install Trial HQ Player, and use it through Roon. I am latest Mac Mini M1 with latest system and Roon Core.
I normally use a 432 Evo music server in my 2 channel, but that won't support HQ Payer. So for this test, I used the Mac Mini into the DAVE via USB, LCD4 and both powered off the PS Audio P10 (which upgrades the Mac Mini sound a LOT).
I have been using Audirvana+ for 2 months and prefer it to Roon, even though Roon looks pretty and is nicer to find new tracks. Roon has a smearing of transients to my ears, and a muddy image / soundstage. It sounds a bit thick and gets confusing once the music gets busy. It got me thinking - maybe using Roon as an interface only, with HQ Player as a player will fix that?

After a few days testing here are my thoughts. I do think HQ player open up things a bit on base Roon, though it is not a huge improvement. I can hear more details and depth, layering ect. The soundstage is not popping as it is reputed to do with M Scaler for example. HQ Player never gets to catch up to Audirvana+ to my ears (on the DAVE).



I have HQ Player set to upsample to 768k, and have tried all the filter options, and like Sinc-N filter and NS9 dither the best. The computer loads is about 12% so not a big deal. In fact I ended up using the same settings as the AudioBacon review (pic above) did. I also agree with them on the results.

The effect of HQ Player is an upgrade inside Roon, but v Audirvana+ playing the straight PCM files at 44.1k or 96k, it simply sounds cleaner, clearer and less flat / smeared.

So my conclusion, no cheap path to the M Scaler unfortunately. Maybe on other Dacs that have DS chips, and can handle DSD, it may sound preferable? A certain extra weight to the mids and a smoothing of treble details may suit some systems. DAVE prefers PCM and converts DSD back so no point doing that here. But the DAVE's magic is the detail and soundstage, depth of the image. I can't loose any of those things or the magic disappears for me. On 2 channel, my server is Linux and uses Logitec Media Server, which is very transparent v Roon, it is way ahead, and sounds just ahead of Audirvana+.

Maybe the unique FPGA and filters in DAVE don't mix well with others - processing over processing? Quite possibly the purpose built M Scaler fits DAVE better.
Anyone else tried HQ Player and have any feedback on it with the DAVE?

You should search for past discussions on this topic both here and Audiophile Style.

 

[alxw0w]

Thanks for your thoughts. I think you are able to discern the differences better than me. How does the broken soundstage sound to you? Any tell tale signs to hear out for?

Which intensity of CF are you using? Can you briefly explain the differences you hear between each level?

@alxw0w I also love classical. Any favorite recordings you recommend? I use Qobuz at the moment.

Hi. Here you have couple of classical/orchestral recordings that lately I really enjoy listening:






I found that I like listening to movie scores hence soundtrack from The Terminal - The Tale of Viktor Navorski is particularly an amazing piece. It has such an unique 'vibe' to it, kinda adventurous, mystery with some positive energy/moments, hard to put in words I just love it.
I can recommend City of prague philharmonic orchestra for all those who like movie scores, a lot of their albums are one of my favorites. For example:


Cheers

ps. you will find all above albums on Qobuz.

 

[PierreHPfan]

You should search for past discussions on this topic both here and Audiophile Style.

Yes I did read some on here. I wanted to check if anything had changed, as latest Roon is supposed to sound better.

 

[Ragnar-BY]

Maybe the unique FPGA and filters in DAVE don't mix well with others - processing over processing? Quite possibly the purpose built M Scaler fits DAVE better.
Anyone else tried HQ Player and have any feedback on it with the DAVE?

DAVE sounds best with the M Scaler. I've tried Sinc-M to PCM 768k when I had HMS-DAVE. In my opinion, the result was somewhat similar to the sound of the M-Scaler, but slightly worse. Now I use different DAC (Holo May, which have both PCM and DSD DACs inside) with HQP upsampling to DSD256 with poly-sinc-gauss-long filter and ASDM7 ECv2 modulators. This combination works much better. Holo May with HQPlayer's upsampling to DSD256 sounds way better than anything else I've heard.

 

[PierreHPfan]

DAVE sounds best with the M Scaler. I've tried Sinc-M to PCM 768k when I had HMS-DAVE. In my opinion, the result was somewhat similar to the sound of the M-Scaler, but slightly worse. Now I use different DAC (Holo May, which have both PCM and DSD DACs inside) with HQP upsampling to DSD256 with poly-sinc-gauss-long filter and ASDM7 ECv2 modulators. This combination works much better. Holo May with HQPlayer's upsampling to DSD256 sounds way better than anything else I've heard.

Interesting, thank you. I suspect in a Dac with a dedicated DSD section, feeding PCM to DSD256 is missing out a conversion required in a DS Dac, according to a post I came across on this thread. I have heard the effect on my friends systems, and it seems to give a smoother treble character amongst other aspects. In your option, was it worth the cost of the HMS on the DAVE for the upgrade it gave?

 

[Somatic]

Well, you asked for it, so here goes...

CF on headphones doesn't replicate the sound stage of a live event, or of well positioned speakers, but it doesn't need to. What it can do is reproduce a more realistic 3D sound stage within that smaller "head stage" such that your imagination can do the rest to give you an immersive live performance experience. If that's CF on a good day, this is what I particularly notice when I switch off CF....

Hole-in-the-middle effect
Sound images to the left and right are a bit too prominent compared to those in the middle. There is no actual hole in the middle, but it just feels as if there's a bit missing. The end result detracts from the illusion of being at a live performance. As others have noted, this can be very noticeable on classical music. Obviously, this is most noticeable with those early stereo recordings with hard left/right panning, but still there to varying levels on any recording.

Solidity of images
Each voice and instrument becomes slightly more diffuse, more spread out, it's less easy to "see" a defined 3D image within a 3D sound stage. It's a bit like (but not the same as) being out of phase. Unexpectedly, this is particularly distracting for the central image, where it's harder to "see" the female vocalist singing in front of you.

Interruption to the sound stage
This is related to the hole-in-the-middle effect, but with a different perspective: You're immersed in a performance and suddenly a sound pops out from the left headphone. Your you-are-there experience is interrupted by sounds coming directly out of a headphone driver instead of being integrated within a coherent sound stage.

It could well be that I'm more sensitive to sound stage affects than others. For example, I can immediately notice the effects of DAVE's phase switch, whereas some others have expressed difficulties in noticing any differences. Also, the effects are more noticeable on headphones with wider sound stages. My extra-wide HEK's benefit enormously from CF, whereas my narrower Elites still benefit, but less so.
.
I've explained the differences of CF1, 2 and 3 on the DAVE CF thread (which I can't find at the moment). But in short, CF3 gives the most realistic 3D sound stage, but at a cost of the most downside (e.g. reduced width). Although different CF's can be best for different recordings, I like to keep things simple by sticking to CF2 as the overall best compromise for most situations.

As an alternative to DAVE's CF, I'm very interested in Zahl HM1 headphone amp's "sound stage knob", which does this very differently and can add CF and increase stage width (all done in the analogue domain). Some have raved over this function, but it's the sort of thing I have to listen for myself to know if it's right for me. I've listened to other CF's that have not been as effective as DAVE's. Until I can get my own demo (not easy), have any DAVE CF users tried the Zahl, particularly for the 3 effects I've described above?

Thank you for a detailed account of the diffrences between CF intensity and the percrived effect it has on the soundstage. I am now trying CF 2 as I have been using zero for over a year. I can hear what you mean about the hole in the middle effect. I also hear a stronger center image with CF on. Just wondering if you find instrument seoeration to be slightly diminished with CF on? My pet peeve is when music gets mushy with complex passages. That is what I want to avoid.

Curious, what phase do you have your Dave set at? I am set at POS. HF Filter OFF. My current chain is in my sig. Thanks.

 

[Somatic]

Hi. Here you have couple of classical/orchestral recordings that lately I really enjoy listening:






I found that I like listening to movie scores hence soundtrack from The Terminal - The Tale of Viktor Navorski is particularly an amazing piece. It has such an unique 'vibe' to it, kinda adventurous, mystery with some positive energy/moments, hard to put in words I just love it.
I can recommend City of prague philharmonic orchestra for all those who like movie scores, a lot of their albums are one of my favorites. For example:


Cheers

ps. you will find all above albums on Qobuz.

Thank you. Will check these out today.

 

[Somatic]

Well I quite like crossfeed 1 (or none at all), which just goes to show that it's good to have the choice.
With 2 and 3, the sound seems to lose some air and openness, which may be good thing on some over-wide recordings, but mostly these settings lose more than they gain for me.

I've long stopped serious listening to properly set up loudspeakers, so that probably affects my reaction to the cross-feed settings.
I do applaud Rob's aim to improve depth perception in headphones. As my system gradually improves, when I hear even a small improvement to depth perception - well it's a magical thing.

I see you switched to CF 2. I am still debating on CF 1 or 2. I like air, a bit sharper treble edge, wider soundstage. I do notice CF 1 is not giving me enough CF changes to make it apparent. I'll probably stick to 2 for a few weeks and change back to 0 and see what I hear.