[CaptainFantastic]

@Rob Watts Regarding what you responded above, a question comes to mind, sorry if you have been asked this before. Does essentially all sound quality testing of Chord DACs rely solely on one set of ears, yours? Or do you work with a team who can also test some things regarding sound quality to validate your findings, etc.?

I think we can all say that of course the community is validating your findings and tweaking by buying your products, but I just wonder about these finer points at production stage because in your posts you always speak of your testing and your testing alone as you develop these DACs.

 

[Rob Watts]

On the design/development side the listening tests are just me. Sometimes, when I can hear something that defies rational explanation (like the error is ridiculously small) I will conduct blind listening tests usually with my son Daniel. He has been trained so that he can describe sound quality in terms we both understand. When a product is close to production, Chord conduct their own tests and evaluations.

 

[GuiltyRocker]

My experience of warm-up period is limited, as all my desktop DACs are powered 24/7. But when using my portable DACs (with or without Hugo M scaler) when on flights, things do sound a bit bright and flat in soundstage for the first 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, the sound is warmer with better depth - everything snaps into focus. Now this maybe my ears settling in to the pressure equivalent of 6,000 feet altitude, or the headphones, or the DACs themselves.

As to measurements, the DACs measure identically from cold. But measurements only tell you how bad something is, not how good it is. The kind of subjective effect warm-up creates would easily be obtained from effects that are well below -200 dB - something that will never be measurable with analogue hardware.



Temperature (and other effects) can have huge measurable problems, and my DACs 30 years ago all measured differently with time of day or break-in, with some needing hand tweaks to get consistent results. These issues with DACs are myriad, and it's something I have eliminated - certainly from a measurement perspective. Given my comments above, 10 minutes for SQ warm-up with no break-in period is not something I worry about, so I would say this issue is not a problem. Next time I am listening to a cold desktop DAC I will check to see if there is any warm-up problems, as I rather suspect my issues are down to planes rather than anything else.

Thanks for taking the time to answer Rob.

 

[andrewd01]

I find my TT2 sounds better after some warm up. I have never done any scientific tests but after some time into a listening session I really notice the TT2 sounding particularly good. My gut feel is that the warmup time is about half an hour.

 

[Arnold Schwartz]

I find it amusing that some people assume their hearing (brain) is a constant. What if the equipment is fine and maybe it’s YOU?

 

[OCC7N]

I find it amusing that some people assume their hearing (brain) is a constant. What if the equipment is fine and maybe it’s YOU?

No. This is very evident to my ears. I even noticed it on my RME DAC FS.

On TT2 I can literally taste the Chip/components. The dry becomes smoother with warm up.

 

[ra990]

I find it amusing that some people assume their hearing (brain) is a constant. What if the equipment is fine and maybe it’s YOU?

Most of the time, I'm sure it is. Same with burn-in.

 

[MgMGM]

I find my TT2 sounds better after some warm up. I have never done any scientific tests but after some time into a listening session I really notice the TT2 sounding particularly good. My gut feel is that the warmup time is about half an hour.

Ill defo second that, ill say around 30/45 minutes. Although, must say, stop stressing you folks, watch the news and whats happening in the uk and world right now and have a word with yourselves. Does is it REALLY matter enough to waste time arguing with strangers on the internet about does it or doesnt it sound better after 0 minutes 10m 30m or however many minutes. Just be grateful your in possession of a piece of Hi Fi of this calibre,,,,,,

 

[Kentajalli]

Ill defo second that, ill say around 30/45 minutes. Although, must say, stop stressing you folks, watch the news and whats happening in the uk and world right now and have a word with yourselves. Does is it REALLY matter enough to waste time arguing with strangers on the internet about does it or doesnt it sound better after 0 minutes 10m 30m or however many minutes. Just be grateful your in possession of a piece of Hi Fi of this calibre,,,,,,

It is called "Escapism ".
We all know, see, suffer from war, injustice , inflation . . . .

 

[MgMGM]

It is called "Escapism ".
We all know, see, suffer from war, injustice , inflation . . . .

Yes defo escapism. Dont know were id be without my TT2 and Mojo2. (Especially the M2 and been able to get out of the house,) LISTENING TO MUSIC is escapism. Its not necessarily system dependant. Our TT2's, Daves Mojo's and mscalers top dollar headphones and iem's are all nice expensive cherry's on the cake. Just enjoy that cake and have a good weekend....................

 

[Reactcore]

I just posted the making of a optic dual data link for the TT2 and Mscaler in my thread.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/my-choral-housed-chord-mscaler.964931/post-17337052

 

[Scrum92]

@Rob Watts

I use the optical out of my Z690 AORUS ELITE motherboard to feed my TT 2. It supports up to 192KHz just fine, and I never have issues, though I can't play 88.2 or 176.4 files. That's an ALC1220-VB codec.

Every time I have briefly used USB I end up back with optical. I find USB to sound bright and harsh, which supports your thinking around RF of course. Something I am concerned about is whether my optical output is actually "bit perfect" or whether it is resampling before sending to the TT 2. Roon tells me it is bit perfect, but I don't know if it would know what's happening. I saw previous postings around trying DSD conversion over DoP as a test, but I do not have that option in my Roon settings.

Do you have a view?

 

[Rob Watts]

That sounds very strange - all sample rates (44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192) would be supported if it was bit perfect. I don't use Roon, but would suggest you try JRiver on a 30 day trial, and that will tell you if it's bit perfect and will also enable DoP for DSD tracks so you can test it that way.

 

[Currawong]

I can't play 88.2 or 176.4 files

That's no good. You might want to sort out a better optical transport in that case.

 

[Kentajalli]

That sounds very strange - all sample rates (44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192) would be supported if it was bit perfect. I don't use Roon, but would suggest you try JRiver on a 30 day trial, and that will tell you if it's bit perfect and will also enable DoP for DSD tracks so you can test it that way.

Many of onboard optical outputs are limited to any sampling rates up to 192, but not 88.2 nor 176.4.
That's just the optical out hardware.
There are hardly any recordings at those sampling rates.
On my jRiver, I have set it to upsample those sampling rates to 96 and 192.
No choice! otherwise it is bit perfect.
Another option is to use a streaming device such as wiim mini.
wiim mini has optical out, that is capable of 88 and 176. just stream to it instead.
But then again, I have heard Roon doesn't like wiim!
But jRiver has no issues, nor does a couple of players I have tried, on my Android phone.