Chord DAVE Review (DAC & HP Amp)

[PeteL]

I agree with what you said, the thing with those kinda audiophiles is there is an imbalance in which direction they are leaning in. They can easily doubt and dismiss this site's method of testing but rarely they ever ask themselves if the stuff they bought do work as they were advertised.

In this example with RW, he is definitely an EE, knowledgeable folk and so on yet the issue is a large part of the audiophile crowd (f.e headfi, sbaf, stevehoffman etc...) are already satisfied with his previous materials (before the measurement of ASR) and they fully believe in him instead of now asking him to explain or debunk ASR's verdict.

What ASR verdict? This is a well measuring product, exceptional on some metrics (reconstruction filter) and devoid of obvious flaws on other, with an unexplainable issue on one channel. Beyond that nothing can be claimed. What is there to debunk? I think that if the goal is to bring the audiophile community to be more open to hard facts, it's not on the narrative of "we at ASR have the knowledge, you should not argue and listen". That's not how we open a discussion. I am exxasgerating your word a bit but you get the point. At the end of the day. We should always remember that. Whether we don't like the Chord company colorful marketing lingo or whether what Mr Watt think he is hearing is real or not, He is a pioneer in digital audio evolvement, he has decorticated the signal inside and out to the last bit. He knows more than me, you, Amir or anybody in this community about the digital audio signal. It's important to remember that you know, questioning some claim is one thing. But taking a piss on his work like some do (not you) will not do much in increasing the credibility of ASR.

 

[AudioSceptic]

I am gonna try.
You seem to hear what you want, put words in other people's mouths, and then draw your own conclusions.
(I believe) Chord has to pay income tax (call it corporate tax, whatever) on any money it makes in US to the US government, and then the UK government charges them tax again on the same income.
I may be wrong, but that is what I believe.
Where did you pull worker's tax from?
I am beginning to misspell your name.
Don't like my posts? Ignore button is your friend, if you can not be friendly.

I've never heard of anything like that. You must think it applies to all UK goods exported to the USA, yes?

 

[Lukino]

What ASR verdict? This is a well measuring product, exceptional on some metrics (reconstruction filter) and devoid of obvious flaws on other, with an unexplainable issue on one channel. Beyond that nothing can be claimed. What is there to debunk? I think that if the goal is to bring the audiophile community to be more open to hard facts, it's not on the narrative of "we at ASR have the knowledge, you should not argue and listen". That's not how we open a discussion. I am exxasgerating your word a bit but you get the point. At the end of the day. We should always remember that. Whether we don't like the Chord company colorful marketing lingo or whether what Mr Watt think he is hearing is real or not, He is a pioneer in digital audio evolvement, he has decorticated the signal inside and out to the last bit. He knows more than me, you, Amir or anybody in this community about the digital audio signal. It's important to remember that you know, questioning some claim is one thing. But taking a piss on his work like some do (not you) will not do much in increasing the credibility of ASR.

What about the engineers at Topping...we forgot about them...could they have done better for $150? We appreciate the work of engineers if they strive for a real shift in the field of sound and do not spread various myths that create a placebo when listening.

 

[Dealux]

The audiophile simps and influencers will discredit this review because "measurements don't tell the whole story" even though this incredibly expensive DAC is super underpowered as a headphone amp like holy shit.

 

[BDWoody]

Why would you post this in head-fi?

Trying to score cheap points with his tribe.

Funny how often people feel they need to lie about you and ASR.

I was reading about how Adam and I scour other fora looking for people to either not allow membership here or to just ban if they ARE members for the fun of it.

There is a lot of disingenuousness out there. Most are simply following the examples set by too many manufacturers/reviewers.

 

[PeteL]

What about the engineers at Topping...we forgot about them...could they have done better for $150? We appreciate the work of engineers if they strive for a real shift in the field of sound and do not spread various myths that create a placebo when listening.

They are absolutely great at what they do but they never designed a in house digital to analog converter, at least as far as I know they use what's on the market.

 

[Trell]

I've never heard of anything like that. You must think it applies to all UK goods exported to the USA, yes?

He's very confused about this but that doesn't stop him from doubling down on it. All of this started with him trying to justify the large price differential between UK and USA for Chord products. The likely reason is that Chord has set a higher price for USA so that its dealers have a large enough margin.

But this topic is sidetracking the thread, so I'll stop.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

Trying to score cheap points with his tribe.

Funny how often people feel they need to lie about you and ASR.

I was reading about how Adam and I scour other fora looking for people to either not allow membership here or to just ban if they ARE members for the fun of it.

There is a lot of disingenuousness out there. Most are simply following the examples set by too many manufacturers.

FWIW, I thought that was wrong, and replied to the post as soon as I saw it and objected to it (within minutes).
Personal attacks and accusations are wrong.
I stated that apart from Amir and RW not getting on, there is no agenda, Amir has been open about his company and declared it openly on many occasions.
Last sentence was: Amir is honest!
I distance myself from such things.

 

[Lukino]

They are absolutely great at what they do but they never designed a in house digital to analog converter, at least as far as I know they use what's on the market.

I understand what you mean... Sometimes in life you have to use things that have been mastered for a long time and you will achieve a better result. In our case, sound. But if you dare to do it all from the ground up, you have to be sure that for the price he is asking it will be better than the 150 dollar Dac... and not worse. He didn't get over it.

 

[Trell]

They are absolutely great at what they do but they never designed a in house digital to analog converter, at least as far as I know they use what's on the market.

So Topping made a sensible decision, like so many other manufacturers using DAC ICs. I certainly understand that Chord wants to recover their R&D costs and make a tidy profit on top of that, but that does not necessarily make economic or performance sense from a customer point of view.

 

[PeteL]

I understand what you mean... Sometimes in life you have to use things that have been mastered for a long time and you will achieve a better result. In our case, sound. But if you dare to do it all from the ground up, you have to be sure that for the price he is asking it will be better than the 150 dollar Dac... and not worse. He didn't get over it.

So Topping made a sensible decision, like so many other manufacturers using DAC ICs. I certainly understand that Chord wants to recover their R&D costs and make a tidy profit on top of that, but that does not necessarily make economic or performance sense from a customer point of view.

My point had nothing to do with price, value, economics, or smart business decisions.

 

[Lukino]

My point had nothing to do with price, value, economics, or smart business decisions.

The point here is that they are not smart..

 

[nyxnyxnyx]

What ASR verdict? This is a well measuring product, exceptional on some metrics (reconstruction filter) and devoid of obvious flaws on other, with an unexplainable issue on one channel. Beyond that nothing can be claimed. What is there to debunk? I think that if the goal is to bring the audiophile community to be more open to hard facts, it's not on the narrative of "we at ASR have the knowledge, you should not argue and listen". That's not how we open a discussion. I am exxasgerating your word a bit but you get the point. At the end of the day. We should always remember that. Whether we don't like the Chord company colorful marketing lingo or whether what Mr Watt think he is hearing is real or not, He is a pioneer in digital audio evolvement, he has decorticated the signal inside and out to the last bit. He knows more than me, you, Amir or anybody in this community about the digital audio signal. It's important to remember that you know, questioning some claim is one thing. But taking a piss on his work like some do (not you) will not do much in increasing the credibility of ASR.

For what it's worth I acknowledge Hugo, Mojo and this as great products (I simply do not care about price/performance like some others ppl, I also owned Mojo 1 and extensively listened to Hugo 2 on occasions.). The verdict here is Amir measured it, listened to it and he concluded that the sharp filter and other marketing claims of this product does not work as described. If you read posts in other forums many people dismissed this measurement and/or even say that Amir's hearing is wacked, only a minor few tagged or mentioned Rob Watts because they want to hear him explain why his theory was not shown in the measurement OR somebody's listening experience.

My point is not "ASR is all-knowing and logical, you should shut up and just listen to us", I am saying something like "It would be great if consumers can evaluate both sides (objectivity & subjectivity camps) in a fair manner. Fully believing in something and completely ignoring the other side is not good for this hobby IMO.
In this specific case currently it is Rob Watt's turn to "convince" us why and how the implementations he used in DAVE should work (and make audible differences). But the way he is handling it so far is not ideal IMO, he mostly talks to his crowd while minimally counterargue the other crowd (Amir's verdict). This is a bit similar to how Hegel handled it a few months ago, talk about great engineering and perfect precision and so on but they did not defend the backlash with objective proofs.

I much agree with you about the last sentence, some members here are too aggressive with their comments and I sometimes feel like it is uncalled for. I feel like some folks have a strong attraction with price/performance ratio so even great measuring products can still be easily dismissed and disrespected.

 

[PeteL]

The point here is that they are not smart..

OK, if you say so, but Knowledgeable in digital audio, Mr Watts is. Don't forget this DAC was launched in 2015. Also consider that we have yet to find a better reconstruction filter even on todays standard. You said "using things that have been mastered for a long time" But mastered by who? By people like Mr Watts and others that have worked in understanding it and created algorythms, you know, stuff that make the state of the art evolve. It is not "smart" anyway for a northern manufacturer to try to compete in price with Topping and the like, it is simply impossible.

 

[JSmith]

great measuring products

I think it's about time Chord address the modulating noise floor Amir found with this unit. If I had paid $14000 for this DAC, I'd be quite annoyed to see that in the model I had purchased and would be contacting Chord regarding same, also seeking to have my unit measured independently.

... or are Chord and Dave owners simply going to ignore this finding and not ascertain if the issue is widespread or not?


JSmith

 

[tomchris]

High-End has been taking a piss on consumers as long as I can remember. Half-deaf audiophiles usually piss themselves with excuses such as "not everything is measureable", and when something expensive has been measured as inferior...Well, they pull the "the unit is obviously defective" card out or "give the >poor< high-end manufacturer a chance to defend themselves". Just like every other high-end manufacturer Chord has been milking the gullible and will continue to do so.

A DAC with a steep reconstruction filter selling for US$14.000 in 2022 deserves disrespect.

 

[nyxnyxnyx]

I think it's about time Chord address the modulating noise floor Amir found with this unit. If I had paid $14000 for this DAC, I'd be quite annoyed to see that in the model I had purchased and would be contacting Chord regarding same, also seeking to have my unit measured independently.

... or are Chord and Dave owners simply going to ignore this finding and not ascertain if the issue is widespread or not?


JSmith

yes, I don't really think much about the price but the fact that they marketed this thing as like the closest thing to "real life sound" or something then Amir discovered issues that could easily be seen by an AP which Rob and his team should have and definitely know how to use.

I am not disappointed in just the price but more about the inaccurate marketing claims AND their lack of intention to encounter Amir's report directly. Rob Watts is a very active engineer on audio forums he and his team could have just hosted something like a 1-on-1 with Amir and tackle his measurement IF there were something missing that we weren't aware. If they could do so not only that would save Chord's face from the recent posts of "measurbators" (a term that some audiophiles use), they would also effectively calm down the situation and bring relief to their customers, ensuring them that Chord's products are as good as sound can be.

 

[Trell]

My point had nothing to do with price, value, economics, or smart business decisions.

What’s your point then?

 

[Lukino]

OK, if you say so, but Knowledgeable in digital audio, Mr Watts is. Don't forget this DAC was launched in 2015. Also consider that we have yet to find a better reconstruction filter even on todays standard. You said "using things that have been mastered for a long time" But mastered by who? By people like Mr Watts and others that have worked in understanding it and created algorythms, you know, stuff that make the state of the art evolve. It is not "smart" anyway for a northern manufacturer to try to compete in price with Topping and the like, it is simply impossible.

Agree that he is a good engineer if he does not put his head in the sand and tries to better show the benefits of this device from the competition, not to mention the price. If he doesn't, it's just a liar from the engineering title. The time will show...

 

[PeteL]

What’s your point then?

Great thing about this forum is that there's a little arrow on the quoted post you answer to, and it allows to move up and follow the discussion you decided to jump in.