Funny because everything I've heard about Dave seems to suggest it makes everything sound "out of your head"
Reading back through my emails...
Two things surprised me about the Hugo TT and the Dave (and I'll include the Hugo 2 in my list, as I listened to it later). Listening to my Mojo, I was not particularly impressed with the headphone output. The sound I liked, such as for DAC purpose, or on easily driven headphones. But when directly connected to my normal headphones, I tended to find the sound tiring. So my listening sessions were done on an LCD-4 they had, and the headphone amplifier was actually good!
The second thing was the overall balance did not strike me as typical Chord house sound. A lot of people speak of the Hugo having more depth, but leaning towards the higher end of the frequency spectrum. It's like you have to take the good with the bad. That did not seem to be the case, as in there was not sacrifice of bass or just good overall balance from the highs to the lows. And the depth of sound was there.
Now as far as going through the progression from Hugo TT up to Hugo 2, and last up to Dave - I did not feel any of these had an "out of head" experience. They all sounded similarly in where the music came from. But on the purely electronic, clean music I played, there was just more stuff! What was a clear sound through the Hugo TT became even deeper and more detailed on the Hugo 2, and even more (!) on the Dave. I felt like I could reach around and almost see the back side of each sound. I was no longer looking at just the front of a fuzzy, pixilated sound, but could sense the size and shape, and depth in full high resolution detail. Unfortunately this likely reads as gibberish, but it is how I heard it.
The experience had me talking about the filter and FPGA software through the evening. I was wondering, what are they doing in recreating the sound from the FLAC. I truly was hearing more, and was curious if the Dave was spitting out garbage, which it was making up? Adding notes between the notes, which weren't originally there? Or is that original sound truly there in the recording?