rkt31
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2014
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i have been checking a number of videos. denafrips dacs sound unnaturally sharp. as compared to denafrips chord dacs sound lot cleaner in highs. this is not in one or two videos. this is evident in all videos of denafrips dacs.during the past week, a friend of mine who owns the dave kept it with me to try it while he was away. he and a couple of other audiophile friend praised the chord sound to me which made me very intrigued. I have heard dave /dave + mscaler combo in their systems various times and I was impressed, mostly by dave + mscaler combo. I have experienced the dave also for short listening sessions in my system earlier few times. but I knew having the dave for a week of A/B vs my terminator would be the ultimate test. even though I'm not that good with audiophile terms/descriptions, I will try my best to covey what I have put my fingers on during this week.
briefly, my system (speakers - not headphone rig) consists of: furutech rhodium wall adapter - Audioquest hurricane HC power cord into titan audio unfiltered styx strip - 3 X audioquest firebird HC and source power cords feeding a gryphon diablo 300 integrated amp, aurender n10 server connected via Audioquest vodka to an asus 88U router, and denafrips terminator dac. digital signal from aurender via wel signature AES into terminator, analog signal from terminator via Audioquest Fire XLR to diablo 300. Audioquest firebird Zero speaker cables to KEF reference 5 speakers. all fuses in equipment and cables are SR blue fuses. in short, I like to believe my system is very transparent and its very easy to detect changes by swapping cables/components. I have had the terminator for more than a year now, and I listen to it mostly in NOS mode, which feels more dynamic and musical to me.
I switched to Dave for the first time - the immediate feel is its a notch or two brighter and more open / NOT a bright awful sound, but compared to terminator, its bright-er. it sounded cleaner/clearer lets say. I selected all kind of tracks that I would listen to, from classical/deep house/jazz/blues/rock even some pop. I had just listened to the same list of tracks on my terminator before I do the swap. the next thing I noticed is even though vocals are more clear and defined, they are less enjoyable, less "romantic" sounding. highs on dave sounded slightly more detailed, noticed few cymbals that sounded different on my terminator for sure, but without the ability to decide which sounded better. my "musical" experince is limited of sort, I don't play instruments or listen to live music that often to consider myself an expert, to be honest. then the next observation was; I noticed that with terminator, the music sounds flowing as its one body - with lots of details that is embedded in that unified body. with dave, which sounded a tad more detailed, it felt more distributed out in space but less "unified" as a whole in comparison to terminator. which presentation is more accurate? I don't know. which one I preferred? the terminator's. technically, the dave might be superior with its "most complicated digital filter algorithm etc", and it impresses. but did it make me feel closer to the music? that I want to keep going from one track to the next? in short, in my setup, with my cables (I like audioquest cables for being transparent, dead neutral, effortless with almost zero distortion, in my humble opinion), the dave sounded "soulless" in comparison to terminator, hugely capable, but no character if you know what I mean. I put the terminator back for few hours, switched again to dave and kept doing that for the past few days. more observations consisted that even I love the thunderous bass that terminators spits out, the bass in dave was something special. extended, with more detail. even felt slightly MORE in quantity as well, but not in its punch/solidity. it was softer. it doesn't bleed into mids by any means though. in general, dave will impress you at the first listen for sure. the amount of detail it spits, its accuracy, its speed, it sounds digital for sure but some of the best digital out there. but living with it for longer than couple of hours session, in my own case, made me less impressed. i stress on that being a personal feeling.
adding the m scaler, which I have not done during the past week test, but heard what it does to dave first hand multiple times, could change the game, makes the chord sound more "enjoyable". it immediately makes the sound warmer. BUT doesn't mask the impressive details coming out of dave, which is a good thing. it also makes the sound more musical, coherent and real. but that is much more money that DT. also more cables required for that (3 BNCs). good cables cost money.
long story short, I still have the dave for few more days. but is it playing in my system? no, its in my closet waiting to be collected. my terminator is back in the rack, and mind you, I still have not received my DSP upgrade yet. its just more pleasing to me, to my ears, in my system. I love how the music sounds out of it. even a non- audiophile friend who is into deep house, visiting me from time to time to listen, he choose the DT presentation/sound not even knowing what happened exactly when I paused to swap dacs. this confirms to me that at least in my setup, I should keep the terminator. mainly cause it sound like a whole body with soul, with bags of details embedded in it. I don't want to sound like a cliche, but it sounded more "analog". does it have less timbrel accuracy that dave? maybe. but I listen to enjoy. and I enjoyed things more with terminator.
if I had an m scaler during this week, would things have been different? maybe, who knows. it does really elevate the dave performance. gives its sound more "feelings" and emotional connection which lacks on its own, in my opinion.
in defense of the dave, my friends who own it say that my cables do NOT help making it sound at its best. they pick cables which has a hint of warmth to color the sound. does it work? probably yes, cause hearing the dave in their systems was more enjoyable than in my rig. but I like to feel that my cables are invisible without obvious coloration. my streamer/DAC/AMP are the ones to be adding flavor, not the cables.
one more thing to add, I believe terminator is way more sensitive to electricity condition/ power cord than dave. also more sensitive with digital input, so your mileage will vary. dave might be less prone to bad signal/bad power cord, even though they change its sound as well.
something I would love to try, is terminator with chord m scaler. I wish terminator had two BNCs that could work in tandom, but it doesn't. and the maximum is 192 khz on its single BNC, so not much "scaling" is possible. that vs dave's ability of 384 khz on each of its BNCs. with the new DSP update, we can use dual AES, which allows for 192 +192 bandwidth. but for that I will need some sort of BNC to AES adaptor to test with m scaler. I found some on the internet, but I'm skeptical that an adapter will hinder the sound quality. yet I'm curious to try.
in the end, its a matter of preference, and these are my PERSONAL findings. I shared them only because I always felt such comparison is rarely found in forums, which I prefer over reviews. there was a comparison done by audiobacon, few others, but I still wanted to experience that myself then share my own findings. hope its of help
note: during the actual test, I was removing DT and placing Dave on the rack - not on the floor as attached pictures show. these photos I took today, I re-connected the Dave temporarily as its owner wanted to listen to it in my setup before he takes it. cheers
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