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Chord DAVE Measurements (With MScaler) by GoldenSound

MaxBuck

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“Audibly perfect?” It’s already been proven more than once via rigorous evidence on this site that Chord’s idiosyncratic DAC designs are anything but perfect, and measure inferiorly to newer DACs that cost less than 10% of what the DAVE does. I’m not sure we’re bent out of shape so much as dismayed that Chord swindles the hard-earned cash from unwitting buyers entranced by their marketing schemes. That may not make them vile humans per se, but it certainly suggests the motives of greedy, bad actors in the business sense.

It seems to me that one of the salient aims of this site is to expose such felonious hypes to sunlight—it is the obfuscating sciency talk spouting from the mouths of self-knighted royalty like Rob Watts and Paul McGowan that fools folks into believing that there is such a thing as “perfect” performance to begin with. I know the collective efforts of the very smart folks here sure saved me a ton of wasted cash, and steered me towards a setup that performs as perfectly as I could have hoped.

And if I sound a little testy, please be aware that I just got chased out of town by torch-wielding angry villagers over at Head-Fi’s DAVE thread for meekly suggesting that the piece might no longer live up to its price.

*Whew*. Time to go get centered in the comforts of my cheap, imperfect Chinese DAC. Peace!
I doubt that I would hear any differences between the Chord products and the excellent Topping offerings. Whether you or anyone else reliably would is something I don't need to consider.
 

JSmith

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But your wallet would! ;)
Very much so... this DAC is $18000 here in Australia. I'm going out on a limb here to say that anyone who purchases a DAC for this kind of money is a complete idiot regardless of features or measurements... now I'd better pop my flame suit on just in case.

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JSmith
 

Killingbeans

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“Audibly perfect?” It’s already been proven more than once via rigorous evidence on this site that Chord’s idiosyncratic DAC designs are anything but perfect, and measure inferiorly to newer DACs that cost less than 10% of what the DAVE does.

The key word here is 'audibly'. There's a very good chance that both the DAVE and a cheap DAC at 1% of its price will perform way better than what human hearing is capable of appreciating under any reasonable conditions.
 

Arnas

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Very much so... this DAC is $18000 here in Australia. I'm going out on a limb here to say that anyone who purchases a DAC for this kind of money is a complete idiot regardless of features or measurements... now I'd better pop my flame suit on just in case.

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JSmith
Its really amazing... How can guys who have great jobs or own business you would think they are smarter? You would have to be a little bit smart to earn that amount of money that they spend right? Yet they believe everything ''God Rob Watts'' bullshiting.
This Chord or more correctly ''Rob Watts Cult'' Is something else when it comes to snake oli buyers.
 

Killingbeans

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You would have to be a little bit smart to earn that amount of money that they spend right?

Being smart is often a prerequisite, but being willing to take huge risks and face the consequences is far more important. You don't win the lottery if you don't play the game.

The Dunning-Kruger effect doesn't do us any favors either. If you use you wealth as proof of your superhuman abilities, you probably also have no problem imagining your hearing as infinitely sensitive.

Besides, even if you gain great wealth by being an effective businessman with intimate knowledge of your trade, you can still easily be ignorant about the physics behind audio reproduction. Ignorance and low intelligence are not the same thing.
 

Chester

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Sadly, I am starting to see just as much ignorance over here as I’d find over at Head-fi.

It’s all starting to feel very tribal when we don’t apply the rules consistently to all brands and categories.

People seem to feel very strongly about the audibility of DACs, but paying 10 times the price for power amps that are beyond audibility is perfectly fine and often encouraged. I wonder how many could tell a Behringer A800 from a Benchmark AHB2 in a blind test?

It doesn’t matter who is designing the thing (Rob Watts, Bruno Putzeys, God himself), £9000 is a idiotic amount of money to spend on a hifi component. Just because a company can sell a product in that price bracket though, doesn’t make it snake oil.

One thing I will say for Rob Watts, he had an APX555 analyser and was posting measurements of his designs years before anyone else was or had much interest. He is a very capable designer and cares about measurements. It is often overlooked that he and Chord are not the same. He is an independent and just designs their DACs. He doesn’t decide how they are marketed etc, although I’m sure his talks and following help Chord out a lot in that department.

For the record, I own Chord, RME and Topping DACs. To me they all sound the same.
 

Music1969

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One thing I will say for Rob Watts, he had an APX555 analyser and was posting measurements of his designs years before anyone else was or had much interest.
Correct. He said he had the 2nd one in all of Europe.
 

srkbear

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Sadly, I am starting to see just as much ignorance over here as I’d find over at Head-fi.

It’s all starting to feel very tribal when we don’t apply the rules consistently to all brands and categories.

People seem to feel very strongly about the audibility of DACs, but paying 10 times the price for power amps that are beyond audibility is perfectly fine and often encouraged. I wonder how many could tell a Behringer A800 from a Benchmark AHB2 in a blind test?

It doesn’t matter who is designing the thing (Rob Watts, Bruno Putzeys, God himself), £9000 is a idiotic amount of money to spend on a hifi component. Just because a company can sell a product in that price bracket though, doesn’t make it snake oil.

One thing I will say for Rob Watts, he had an APX555 analyser and was posting measurements of his designs years before anyone else was or had much interest. He is a very capable designer and cares about measurements. It is often overlooked that he and Chord are not the same. He is an independent and just designs their DACs. He doesn’t decide how they are marketed etc, although I’m sure his talks and following help Chord out a lot in that department.

For the record, I own Chord, RME and Topping DACs. To me they all sound the same.
I’m inclined to agree with everything you said—I’m just not sure whose comments you were invoking when detecting ignorance on this forum equivalent to Head-Fi’s. I think your points are in line with the majority of folks on this thread—with the exception of one particular contrarian who has proclaimed measurements to be foolishness and high prices a true benchmark for quality. Or rather, his ears as being “the best reviewer that there is”. Since no evidence was presented to shore up these claims I think he represents an outlier here…
 

srkbear

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Perhaps you missed "I wouldn't buy it" in my post.
I saw it, and I wasn’t intending to be contentious—my point all along here has been to underscore the results of the question posed on this thread—namely are the lofty claims of superiority these manufacturers promote to justify their outlandish prices valid? The results suggest that the answer is no.

Thus I just didn’t know what to make of your statement that it’s “not your concern” whether I or others could audibly detect a difference between the lavishly-priced DAVE and newer, far cheaper alternatives—if such questions don’t interest you then I’m unclear why you are posting such insouciance on a thread pertaining to Chord DAVE measurements in the first place.

The entire tenor of this thread has been about whether the performance of the DAVE justifies its price, not whether the cheaper stuff sounds better. And I would think that that information would be of use to anyone sharing this hobby who cares about making wise investments.
 

srkbear

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Rob Watts is now over at Head-Fi post long, inscrutable arguments proclaiming that optical connectors are significantly, audibly superior to USB, and his audience is slavishly agreeing that yes, they now hear the differences in their own setups.

Does anyone know if there is any evidence to support this claim?
 

KSTR

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Optical SPDIF offers full galvanic isolation for the digital input, whereas USB usually does not. That alone might give rise to noise problems in real-world setups with USB (as compared to the test bench) which make TOSLINK appear as being better and that of course would be easily confirmed by measurement (in situ, obviously) once it has been found to be the case in controlled blind listening tests...
 

Killingbeans

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Funny. I was under the impression that toslink has been out in the cold among audiophiles for years, because "OMG, the jitter!" and the fact that it doesn't support idiotically high sample rates. But then some guru says something positive about it, and suddenly it's the bee's knees :facepalm:

Does anyone know if there is any evidence to support this claim?

If they are being plagued by a ground loop, it might disappear when they switch to toslink, but forget about veils being lifted and other nonsense like that. To me it sounds like an emperor trying to make nudism fashionable.
 

srkbear

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Funny. I was under the impression that toslink has been out in the cold among audiophiles for years, because "OMG, the jitter!" and the fact that it doesn't support idiotically high sample rates. But then some guru says something positive about it, and suddenly it's the bee's knees :facepalm:



If they are being plagued by a ground loop, it might disappear when they switch to toslink, but forget about veils being lifted and other nonsense like that. To me it sounds like an emperor trying to make nudism fashionable.
…or like Paul McGowan claiming that IIS is the best audio signal solution ever. Funny how nobody who believes him realizes that he managed to convince Sony, for the first time in 40 years, to allow PSAudio access to their SACD DRM rights—permitting them to port the native digital from their SACD transports to their DACs—via, you guessed it, IIS…
 

srkbear

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Optical SPDIF offers full galvanic isolation for the digital input, whereas USB usually does not. That alone might give rise to noise problems in real-world setups with USB (as compared to the test bench) which make TOSLINK appear as being better and that of course would be easily confirmed by measurement (in situ, obviously) once it has been found to be the case in controlled blind listening tests...
Does that not depend on whether the other circuitry in the device is galvanically isolated?
 
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