JSmith
Major Contributor
... for that sort of money one would expect a 100% SOTA DAC and surely a more luxurious look.
Here is under the hood;
JSmith
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Chord DAVE Review (DAC & HP Amp)
- Thread starter amirm
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... for that sort of money one would expect a 100% SOTA DAC and surely a more luxurious look.
Here is under the hood;
JSmith
OP
- Thread Starter
- #22
It gives you full spectrum to 22 Khz and less ultrasonic noise.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #23
I forgot to mention this thing runs warm. Even the XLR cables were warm when I tried to disconnect them.
uwotm8
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Well a good transparent AQ cable just shoved all these imperfections
respice finem
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Confirms my attitude of regarding "moon prices" as an IQ test
BTW: I can't vote on this (the piggybank panther is missing).
BTW: I can't vote on this (the piggybank panther is missing).
DonR
Major Contributor
A switcher PSU. The purists' heads will explode.
... for that sort of money one would expect a 100% SOTA DAC and surely a more luxurious look.
Here is under the hood;
View attachment 220047
JSmith
With the M Scaler review you merely left the shit door ajar, with this DAVE review you’ve removed the door from its hinges, took It down the bottom of your drive, lit a signal fire and thrown the door atop, stood back admiring your work then whistled your way back up the drive and constructed a huge neon sign with the power equivalent of Las Vegas with 50ft lettering saying……
BRING IT ON biatch
Only joking but it’s gonna happen,
BRING IT ON biatch
Only joking but it’s gonna happen,
By the way here are the measurements from Goldensound with M Scaler too.
goldensound.audio
Chord DAVE Measurements (With MScaler) - GoldenSound
Technical measurements and analysis of the Chord DAVE DAC. This is a high end DAC with some great and not so great aspects
goldensound.audio
Lol, my JDS Labs Atom Amp at around $100 outperforms this by a whole 10 dB in this test!
Well, this DAVE DAC has about as a ridiculous name as that of the price, lol, $14,000......you've got to be having a giraffe!
Hehe, I could see another support thread shaping up in the Head-Fi world with evangelists flocking
I have no idea how to rate this because the piggy bank panther is missing. Objectively it's in the top quartile. Also Objectively it is ridiculously overpriced and not competitive with the rest of the occupants of the top quartile. So I think that makes it a piggy bank panther in my pantheon...
bidn
Active Member
Thank you very much, Amir, for your excellent, much needed corrective work in the ocean corrupted by all the paid reviews, paid forums, and influencers who get these expensive devices for free (high resale value).
This is the test I had been waiting for all the time!!
I was always hoping for someone to ship you his Dave.
Many many thanks to the nice person (Jomungur ?) who shipped his expensive device for testing.
Because this thing was praised so much as the absolute flagship, absolute top.
I auditioned it a number of times, without and without the M-Scaler.
In my first auditions, I had the subjective feeling that the Dave was making the Utopia headphone sound much better than anything else. At some point I also felt that the M-Scaler was bringing in additional improvement.
Such is the psycho-social power of paid internet reviews and especially of company-sponsored sites such as Head-Fi, all the praise had conditioned me in a high expectation bias.
Luckily, the crazy price and the awful (so unpractical) design of the Dave had holden me back from a wrong purchasing decision.
At a later audition, I was disappointed by the M-Scaler, and at another one I felt the Benchmark DAC3 was cleaner with the Utopia than the Dave. I guess I had started to be less deluded by the group effect of these influences, and was less unconsciously biased.
So I am still there with my RME ADI-2 Pro as my desktop device, the volume button doesn't do what it should do when I turn it, but the RME allows me to control so many things, that I have kept it, and not even bought yet a Topping.
Thank you again, Amir!
There are so many people still unfortunately psychologically misled by Web influencers and company-sponsored sites with a strong (marketing induced) group-think. Hopefully they will be helped with such a review and have their eyes open, people can for sure waste their money, but hopefully not by being deceived.
The king of the so-called audiophile "summit-fi" (= extracting the most money from customers), so much praised, up to heaven (including by me years ago, shame on me...) has been weighted and found wanting, swept away. The king is definitely naked, so many thanks to you, Amir.
And be gone all the paid reviews and the too delusive impressions.
(I now voted "poor" because it is way too expensive, and yet does not even deliver as very cheap devices = unacceptable on the take, a mere audiophile myth for which the company gets all the hardly earned money of many deceived persons).
This is the test I had been waiting for all the time!!
I was always hoping for someone to ship you his Dave.
Many many thanks to the nice person (Jomungur ?) who shipped his expensive device for testing
.Because this thing was praised so much as the absolute flagship, absolute top.
I auditioned it a number of times, without and without the M-Scaler.
In my first auditions, I had the subjective feeling that the Dave was making the Utopia headphone sound much better than anything else. At some point I also felt that the M-Scaler was bringing in additional improvement.
Such is the psycho-social power of paid internet reviews and especially of company-sponsored sites such as Head-Fi, all the praise had conditioned me in a high expectation bias.
Luckily, the crazy price and the awful (so unpractical) design of the Dave had holden me back from a wrong purchasing decision.
At a later audition, I was disappointed by the M-Scaler, and at another one I felt the Benchmark DAC3 was cleaner with the Utopia than the Dave. I guess I had started to be less deluded by the group effect of these influences, and was less unconsciously biased.
So I am still there with my RME ADI-2 Pro as my desktop device, the volume button doesn't do what it should do when I turn it, but the RME allows me to control so many things, that I have kept it, and not even bought yet a Topping.
Thank you again, Amir!
There are so many people still unfortunately psychologically misled by Web influencers and company-sponsored sites with a strong (marketing induced) group-think. Hopefully they will be helped with such a review and have their eyes open, people can for sure waste their money, but hopefully not by being deceived.
The king of the so-called audiophile "summit-fi" (= extracting the most money from customers), so much praised, up to heaven (including by me years ago, shame on me...) has been weighted and found wanting, swept away. The king is definitely naked, so many thanks to you, Amir.
And be gone all the paid reviews and the too delusive impressions.
(I now voted "poor" because it is way too expensive, and yet does not even deliver as very cheap devices = unacceptable on the take, a mere audiophile myth for which the company gets all the hardly earned money of many deceived persons).
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Amir’s reasoning in the past is the Piggy Bank is for products that say they do things they don’t. Or serve zero purpose or make things worse by using them. In this case the product mostly does some of what they say it does. Might be a poor performer but it is a functional DAC and such. @amirm will correct me if I have this wrong.
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JSmith
Major Contributor
What I found interesting is this is a pulse array DAC, which is supposedly meant to assist with noise floor modulation... yet Amir measures a modulating noise floor. Further from what I recall reading this is a single ended design (like all Chord DAC's I believe) and the XLR is there for convenience only via an inverting opamp, so this is why Amir is measuring slightly better performance via RCA.
JSmith
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