CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE

[thePhones]

Can someone post their HQPlayer settings for the Dave? Thank you in advance

Off

 

[GuiltyRocker]

Off

 

[miketlse]

Can someone post their HQPlayer settings for the Dave? Thank you in advance

different tweakers like different settings.
this post is probably a reasonable start point for you
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hug...nics-the-official-thread.885042/post-15186447

 

[Meridian7]

PSA: Toslink is often a suboptimal choice for connecting digital gear. It’s 2025 and it’s time to move on.

Toslink uses an LED and receiver to convert electrical signals into optical signals and back to electrical. This conversion process introduces distortion, phase noise, and latency due to the imperfections of the LED’s response time and the photodiode sensitivity. Optical cables suffer from chromatic dispersion and modal dispersion, further degrading signal integrity.

While optical transmission eliminates electrical ground loops and EMI, the source’s power supply and clocking circuitry still introduce noise into the digital stream before it is converted to optical. Jitter is introduced in the transmission process due to inconsistent timing in the toslink output.

Toslink carries audio data using the S/PDIF protocol, which multiplexes both the clock and data within the same stream. This means the receiver must extract the clock from the data stream instead of having a dedicated clock line.

Since toslink does not carry a dedicated word clock and is not asynchronous, the dac must extract and reconstruct the clock using PLL (I don’t care what the manufacturer calls it for marketing purposes).

The PLL must track variations in the data stream timing, which introduces jitter and phase noise. The quality of the PLL in the dac determines how well this jitter is suppressed, but even high-quality PLLs struggle to achieve the precision of dedicated clocked systems or asynchronous system.

You may like how toslink sound in your system (I would say your digital is not well sorted if toslink sounds best), but if you compare toslink with asynchronous connection (USB and other proprietary protocols) from a good source you will hear toslink as having lack of resolution, spearing, lacking dynamics and other problems.

Theory is not enough, too bad that it isn't. I wish it did. Start to listen and theory starts to fall apart here and there. That's the sad story of ASR in a nutshell.

@AussieMick is right, you can't expect one theory to prevail in all the different contexts. Theory is a nice starting point though.

Trial of different inputs ends me with toslink as the best sounding. Not saying that should be in anyone's setup just the same, but proves the swamp base of strict theory.

 

[MSwiss]

With my previous dac, USB was superior but with Dave Toslink is superior. I don’t claim to know why, it just is on my system.

Use the one that you like, everyone hears differently and wants different things.

But toslink is better

 

[Reactcore]

For the ones that can follow italian, heres a recent review. Theyre also take a look inside (around 15min '30)

 

[icnaiwhimor1975]

Better to make its voltage rock solid with very low ESR buffercaps

maybe someone had the idea to use capacitors similar to those that stand tt2?) or it will not fit here? they seem to be 5 farads each))

 

[Reactcore]

maybe someone had the idea to use capacitors similar to those that stand tt2?) or it will not fit here? they seem to be 5 farads each))

I started with supercaps, but i found that its not the capacity thats the most important for voltage stabillity but their ESR, the TDK automotive caps i used have better specs for my purpose.

 

[dsyzling]

Can someone post their HQPlayer settings for the Dave? Thank you in advance

You could try:

Adaptive rate to up sample to 705.6 or 768kHz depending on source content.
Sample rate 768
Filters
Sinc-L for both
or
1x - poly-sinc-gauss-long, Nx - poly-sinc-gauss-hires-lp

You could also try Sinc-M or Sinc-MG

Dither LNS15

Preferences may vary with recording quality or genre.

 

[Jxnkz]

You could try:

Adaptive rate to up sample to 705.6 or 768kHz depending on source content.
Sample rate 768
Filters
Sinc-L for both
or
1x - poly-sinc-gauss-long, Nx - poly-sinc-gauss-hires-lp

You could also try Sinc-M or Sinc-MG

Dither LNS15

Preferences may vary with recording quality or genre.

Thank you!

 

[Ike1985]

What is PCM Plus on Dave? Is HF Fil the same as the red filter on Hugo2? What is Phase Neg/Pos?

I also need a cable to connect my Macbook pro to Dave, currently using a 20 year old Monster USB cable connected to a samsung USB to USBC adapter. I need a cable with whatever ancient USB protocol is on Dave that will go directly to USBC. Adapters lower sound quality.

Also how do you turn crossfeed on with Dave.

TY

 

[theveterans]

What is Phase Neg/Pos?

Absolute phase, either blows in or sucks out. It's to align the absolute phase of a recording that were recorded in negative phase and so has to be reproduced "in-phase". The effect is usually perceiving a more coherent image within the recording with the correct absolute phase with the recording

Stereophile has a nice article about it: https://www.stereophile.com/content/absolute-phase-fact-or-fallacy

 

[Ike1985]

Absolute phase, either blows in or sucks out. It's to align the absolute phase of a recording that were recorded in negative phase and so has to be reproduced "in-phase". The effect is usually perceiving a more coherent image within the recording with the correct absolute phase with the recording

Stereophile has a nice article about it: https://www.stereophile.com/content/absolute-phase-fact-or-fallacy

So i'm interpreting what you said as leave it on positive as most recordings were recorded correctly?

Big bummer that crossfeed is ony available in headphone mode, meaning I cant send that crossfed signal to my Envy.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

What is PCM Plus on Dave? Is HF Fil the same as the red filter on Hugo2? What is Phase Neg/Pos?

I also need a cable to connect my Macbook pro to Dave, currently using a 20 year old Monster USB cable connected to a samsung USB to USBC adapter. I need a cable with whatever ancient USB protocol is on Dave that will go directly to USBC. Adapters lower sound quality.

Also how do you turn crossfeed on with Dave.

TY

PCM plus is the filter to use, just leave that on. The high frequency filter is like using the green filter on Qutest/Hugo 2, it uses a filter after 20khz to remove high frequency noise usually present on DSD, or high-res PCM. I woud leave that on. As far as Phase, just leave it on positive, it is impossible to know how the recording was recorded, so to keep changing that based on records is just nuts. Unless you know of a specific album recorded in a certain way.

 

[Hiyono]

What is PCM Plus on Dave? Is HF Fil the same as the red filter on Hugo2? What is Phase Neg/Pos?

I also need a cable to connect my Macbook pro to Dave, currently using a 20 year old Monster USB cable connected to a samsung USB to USBC adapter. I need a cable with whatever ancient USB protocol is on Dave that will go directly to USBC. Adapters lower sound quality.

Also how do you turn crossfeed on with Dave.

TY

PCM plus is the full taps Dave can do. Cross feed only works with the headphones jack