[mackie1001]

As a non-expert but an entry-level Mojo customer the appeal for me was the independent, novel, over engineered approach and superior build quality of their products - not just a $10 commodity chip in a nice box. I guess you'd call it boutique appeal? If they just said "yeah, everything at this level basically sounds the same but just look at the pretty milled aluminium!" then they'd not sell as much. The high end hifi market is an arms race and any gain, perceptible or not must be shouted from the hilltops to gain traction.

As for price point, the Dave is kind of like a Pagani Huayra vs a McLaren 720S or 488 - you're paying for the bespoke design and attention to detail of it and the performance is a bonus but not head and shoulders above cheaper offerings. The refinements and over-engineering are insane though - why use titanium bolts with logo-etched heads *everywhere*? That's $70k on bolts alone in the car. Mad.
I'm tempted to do a Fiio Q1 vs Mojo (pretty much opposite ends of the portable headphone DAC market) proper blind test somehow and prove once and for all I spent £300 more than I needed to (except I need optical too)

Would I buy a Dave? If I was a multi-millionaire I'd probably guy a whole Chord stack just to look at mainly.

From a science PoV, can noise as such low levels manifest in audible "grit" or is pre-ringing really audible and worth worrying about? I think there's other threads in this forum covering that.

 

[bigshot]

I suppose you could take a $30 DAC and put it in a 14k jewelry box and have pretty much the same thing if you wanted. But honestly, do you really think that the people who buy a DAC in this price range don't expect it to sound better than a cheap DAC? I think the price point is part of the technique for planting the expectation bias.

 

[colonelkernel8]

I suppose you could take a $30 DAC and put it in a 14k jewelry box and have pretty much the same thing if you wanted. But honestly, do you really think that the people who buy a DAC in this price range don't expect it to sound better than a cheap DAC? I think the price point is part of the technique for planting the expectation bias.

“I can like, totally hear the rosin on the bow, man.”

 

[Glmoneydawg]

As a non-expert but an entry-level Mojo customer the appeal for me was the independent, novel, over engineered approach and superior build quality of their products - not just a $10 commodity chip in a nice box. I guess you'd call it boutique appeal? If they just said "yeah, everything at this level basically sounds the same but just look at the pretty milled aluminium!" then they'd not sell as much. The high end hifi market is an arms race and any gain, perceptible or not must be shouted from the hilltops to gain traction.

As for price point, the Dave is kind of like a Pagani Huayra vs a McLaren 720S or 488 - you're paying for the bespoke design and attention to detail of it and the performance is a bonus but not head and shoulders above cheaper offerings. The refinements and over-engineering are insane though - why use titanium bolts with logo-etched heads *everywhere*? That's $70k on bolts alone in the car. Mad.
I'm tempted to do a Fiio Q1 vs Mojo (pretty much opposite ends of the portable headphone DAC market) proper blind test somehow and prove once and for all I spent £300 more than I needed to (except I need optical too)

Would I buy a Dave? If I was a multi-millionaire I'd probably guy a whole Chord stack just to look at mainly.

From a science PoV, can noise as such low levels manifest in audible "grit" or is pre-ringing really audible and worth worrying about? I think there's other threads in this forum covering that.

Titanium bolts are lighter and will translate to quicker track times(marginal I'm sure)....not sure the dac thing works that way at the high end of things....i own a $10,000 dac...it sounds the same as my cambridge cxu player(volume not withstanding)the car thing is diminishing returns....the dac thing is no returns.Having said that,there are some clever people who are legitimately trying to advance the state of our hobby. ....i think you will likely find them in the transducer arena at this time.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

I suppose you could take a $30 DAC and put it in a 14k jewelry box and have pretty much the same thing if you wanted. But honestly, do you really think that the people who buy a DAC in this price range don't expect it to sound better than a cheap DAC? I think the price point is part of the technique for planting the expectation bias.

Hey now!....my sonic frontiers dac looks amazing and i know you are at least a little jealousit really is quite beautiful......to look at.

 

[Phronesis]

I can present myself as a case study. I own the Mojo and Hugo 2. I was pretty convinced that the Hugo 2 sounds better than the Mojo, then I added controls in sighted testing and found that the differences I had previously perceived pretty much disappeared. I don't view my testing so far as 100% conclusive, but it does make me suspect that Chord is benefitting from effective marketing and especially favorable reviews and word of mouth, rather than a significant sound quality benefit. It's all too easy to perceive a sound quality benefit that isn't really there, hence all the crazy claims about 'night and day' differences from changing cables, headphone break-in, etc.

Chord claims that their technology improves sound quality, so they should conduct some proper studies and publish the results to back up their claims. Rob has said in posts that he plans to do blind testing - where is it? It would be naïve to simply 'trust' Rob and Chord, because they have an obvious financial incentive to sell a product.

 

[Whitigir]

Sound performances are hearing senses, and when it comes to human senses physically, the brain does very funny thing. Have you ever touched something and reflexes so much that you jumped back or pulled back so fast thinking it was “hot and dangerous” ? And then took a moment to analyze it with all 5 senses to allow your brain to process, and turned out that object was “cold” and not “hot” ?

The same thing as Blind testing in audio performances. You can blind test between Beats by Dre and HD800 top setup and people can tell it almost 90% of a time. However, if you just Blind test Hd800 in a setup with only different amplifier, volume matches, and 0 discussion about the rest, I doubt you are getting 10% that can tell, and even so, to get a consistent people who can give out a consistent vote would be less than 1%. This will stand true in the “high-end” equipments because the differences are so negligible, but many people are willing to pay the sky is the limit for these single digit %

I can’t imagine DAC differences in short A/B tests...etc....

Human senses are very funny, and the brain is there to process and make senses of things, but it too can also be fooled. The reason why magic shows and illusions can more than often trick many people.

Now, this mechanism of human being and their senses can be exploited too! Just like @bigshot mentioned, you slap on a brand, put into a jewelry box, give it diamonds and exotic materials here and there, using fancy advertisements, expensive prices. You will fool many people into a conditional biased bases. I bet you have heard “it is expensive because it sound good”

I am not so much rooted for A/B blind tests as human always need all of their 5 senses to be able to process many different things. However, I am totally against phony and BS advertisements, rip off marketing , and that is the reason why I am in here reading for entertainment

 

[bigshot]

The same thing as Blind testing in audio performances. You can blind test between Beats by Dre and HD800 top setup and people can tell it almost 90% of a time. However, if you just Blind test Hd800 in a setup with only different amplifier, volume matches, and 0 discussion about the rest, I doubt you are getting 10% that can tell, and even so, to get a consistent people who can give out a consistent vote would be less than 1%. This will stand true in the “high-end” equipments because the differences are so negligible, but many people are willing to pay the sky is the limit for these single digit %

I'm afraid I can't puzzle out what you're saying here.

 

[Whitigir]

Simply put, it is easier in most of the case that the differences are night and days, you could blind test and tell the differences. But even as simple as blind testing a cold/hot object on touch senses, the brain also gets confused. So I used beats by Dre vs Hd800 good setup as an example in this hobby to say that people may be able to tell the differences in blind test the majority of the time.

However, when it get into 1-2% differences, human eventhough has the capability to tell them apart, they will need all 5 senses or somehow, they need to know and understand exactly what they are looking for. Simply saying that such people even trained persons, they will have to have full knowledge of what they are blind testing and looking for. But I understand this is not what people seek for....simply A/B blind test in music.

 

[Phronesis]

I'm afraid I can't puzzle out what you're saying here.

He's saying that, in blind testing, it's easy to tell the difference between headphones, but not other gear (DACs, amps, etc.).

 

[bigshot]

He's saying that, in blind testing, it's easy to tell the difference between headphones, but not other gear (DACs, amps, etc.).

Ah, OK. That is quite true. It's sometimes easy to tell the difference between headphones in sighted testing too. Thanks for the translation. I think folks around here have problems speaking clearly sometimes. Maybe English isn't their primary language.

 

[billqs]

A Toyota or a Porsche will get you where you're going. If you asking about quality, long term reliability and resale value somewhat surprisingly the Toyota wins them all. Yet tons of Porsche's are bought by people with the money to afford them (and some who don't and get in trouble.) This is also very clearly demonstrated in Hi-Fi audio. Ultimately, people will buy a $10k DAC because they can. And, more power to them. They aren't the folks hanging in this sub forum for the most part and are looking to justify their purchases other ways. They aren't going to get superhuman hearing- as a matter of fact most of them are relatively old (40s and 50s) to have amassed enough money to purchase this kind of purchase, and if they can hear much beyond 12k they're doing better than me at 53 with tinnitus. I will say I have had the Mojo and it was a solid build and a great sounding DAC. I didn't use it for amps. I did a series of tests between the Mojo and an SMSL M8 and it was more or less a tie as to final sound, so with the Mojo at $500 and the SMSL at $179 I kept the SMSL. Now that used Mojos are turning up at around $300 and I'm looking for a successor the SMSL, suddenly the Mojo is a much more cost efficient decision, so I may get one. Unless a Dave or Hugo accidentally landed in my lap I don't think there would be a benefit in owning one.

 

[Phronesis]

A Toyota or a Porsche will get you where you're going. If you asking about quality, long term reliability and resale value somewhat surprisingly the Toyota wins them all. Yet tons of Porsche's are bought by people with the money to afford them (and some who don't and get in trouble.

I get the point, but not the best analogy. To set the record straight, some Porsches hold value much better than any Toyota, and even increase in value. Porsches can also be quite reliable, especially for track use, where they're pretty much the most reliable cars you're going to find, whereas Toyota doesn't offer any trackable cars. Porsche's engineering is world class, and the performance they deliver relative to their costs makes many Porsches almost a bargain - for those who're looking for and can appreciate that performance. And yes, some people who buy Porsches can't really afford them.

 

[billqs]

Well, my favorite expensive automobile is actually Jaguar, which is why I drive Toyota

 

[gregorio]

A Toyota or a Porsche will get you where you're going. If you asking about quality, long term reliability and resale value somewhat surprisingly the Toyota wins them all. Yet tons of Porsche's are bought by people with the money to afford them (and some who don't and get in trouble.) This is also very clearly demonstrated in Hi-Fi audio.

No one buys a Porsche solely on the basis of reliability and resale value, performance is a significant and probably far more significant part of the decision making equation. The same is true of the so called high-end audiophile world, just look at the threads and comments in the other forums. It's clear that virtually without exception everyone believes that with an expensive, audiophile DAC they're buying superior performance. The only difference in opinion is whether it's a relatively small, incrementally superior performance or a "night and day" superior performance. This is where the analogy breaks down, with a Porsche you are getting an actual and obvious improvement in performance, with an audiophile DAC you're either getting a performance improvement which is inaudible, no improvement at all or, surprisingly often, actually poorer performance than far cheaper units. Therefore, a better analogy might be between say an Apple watch and a diamond encrusted Rolex. The Rolex costs about 100 times more but as far as it's basic function of telling the time accurately is concerned, it's performance is inferior to an Apple watch. The difference is that people buy a Rolex solely as a status symbol and/or for the enjoyment of ownership, Rolex don't market their watches as having more accurate performance than far cheaper digital time-pieces and consumers don't buy one under any illusion that they're getting superior performance.

G