Chord DAVE Review (DAC & HP Amp)

[AudioSceptic]

I hope somebody explains it to you, but its not me.

What do you think needs explaining? Are the graphs correct or not? Is Nyquist 22.05 or not?

Edit: the author of Golden Sound seems to agree with me (or vice versa!).

 

[JSmith]

You located NONE!

I'm not going to re-post the same things again, but clearly you're not looking at them properly mate. The image we've all been looking at since the beginning of the thread is the unit that has the problem and was sent back in for repair by SteveHulk. The following discussion after the cap was spotted was around the parts used... it was you that skewed the discussion away from parts to looking for a pattern of failures. I hope you don't have a continuing agenda on this.


JSmith

 

[Ken Tajalli]

They aren't

I am confused! are you agreeing with me, or are you saying that Chord various filters are indeed various reconstruction filters?

That's not so. Regardless whether or not they would be in front or after the reconstruction filter the effect will be there. So gentle roll-off and then sharp drop.

A gentle roll off starting at 20kHz or so, would be way down at 384kHz (Nyquist of 785 kHz upsampled from mScaler), still it wouldn't matter?

Nope... the gentle roll-off switched off may vs not in place may well be audible to young folks.
The Dave filter is equally steep to M-scaler so why would the gentle filter not be needed. That would make no sense.
Besides isn't the idea of high-res to get info >20kHz and not have it rolled off ?

A 96 kHz HiRes recording being sent to Dave (or any DAC) will have a bandwidth of 48 kHz or brickwall at 48 kHz, but it may contain some supersonics, Dave has the option to reduce them using its HF filter .
Send the same signal to mScaler first, it upsamples it to 785 kHz and the brickwall shifts to 384 kHz. activate the HF filter, and it might interfere with such a wide bandwidth signal.
That's what I think, it is not cool thing to do if I was a purist.
"Young folk" ? they can only afford a DAVE/mScaler if they inherit the money or win lottery (drug dealer perhaps ....). not many

 

[brandall10]

Performance is one thing, what I wonder though who is the target group of this product, as it is rather small and looks toyish which is not what a typical audiophile looks for at a five digit price.

As someone formerly in that target market (at least aspirationally) It's much bigger than the photos suggest, listed at 15 lbs. weight, 13" wide. It definitely has a heft that suggests you could bludgeon someone to death with it. Not seen here is the nutty stand it usually sits in that gives it shades of funky alien technology vibe that audiophiles crave. I listened to one at the 2017 LA CanJam, prior to encountering ASR, and was impressed by it. I wasn't the type that would blow $10k+ plus on the DAC but I routinely had a $5k desktop setup w/ a $1-2k DAC for years.... if I had the $$ for something like this I could have very well spent it.

As I've said to my buddy who went to that CanJam with and has been considering getting one since (even just weeks ago), "you were listening with your eyes". So happy that this was finally measured.

 

[AudioSceptic]

It's bigger than the photos suggest, listed at 15 lbs. weight. I listened to one in person at a CanJam years ago and it seemed to have a fairly impressive physical presence.

It's trivial to get the specs <https://chordelectronics.co.uk/product/dave>
7.8cm (H) 33.5cm (W) 15.2cm (D)
5 kg

 

[majingotan]

Yep, I think so. It is at -100dB with a bandwidth of less than 100Hz, ofcourse if you zoom to a scale of 10Hz, you can see a lot of weird things. Third graph is down to Hertz!
Name another DAC that does better, or even 90% as good.

That’s nothing special. Any NOS DAC, that accepts NativeDSD at 11.2MHz/channel (not DoP) or has at least 768KHz input can use HQPlayer, Sinc-L with EC Modulator and now get equal or better than that (16 Million taps if your PC is powerful enough)

 

[BostonJack]

OK, a lot has been said about this unit. One good attribute is that it has inspired in me a desire for (in no particular order):
A DAC with:
- Dr. Strangelove B-52 electronics inspired chassis and UI (with a special protective cover on at least one switch and those rotary BCD switches to do *something*.
- Cold War Soviet-era submarine control panel inspired chassis and UI with bronze screw down porthole cover with really thick distorting glass over the display
- Avionics inspired UI with artificial horizon display showing *something*, I don't care what
- Early LORAN-C inspired UI with a green-phosphor O-scope that requires you to manually align one waveform with another for *some* purpose, if you don't get it right the unit refuses to function.

 

[Joe Smith]

I find all their designs (case and the the UI, for this one) incredibly weird and off-putting, on top of the expense and the medium level performance...

 

[Ken Tajalli]

That’s nothing special. Any NOS DAC, that accepts NativeDSD at 11.2MHz/channel (not DoP) or has at least 768KHz input can use HQPlayer, Sinc-L with EC Modulator and now get equal or better than that (16 Million taps if your PC is powerful enough)

So you need the software, and a PC too, to re-create a million tap sync function that Chord has been pushing, and it has been argued as over engineering crap.

 

[JohnM-73]

I find all their designs (case and the the UI, for this one) incredibly weird and off-putting, on top of the expense and the medium level performance...

I loved the design of TT2, it reminded me of HAL with the glowing red led in the centre of the display area. Plus, like HAL, my TT2s went wrong… That plus calling their flagship DAVE does make one wonder…

 

[MattHooper]

Exactly, spending thousands of dollars on minor or mostly non-existing differences, while neglecting the points where differences really exist and matter, like EQ on headphones or the choice of a headphone in the first place.

Indeed, though it's not only the subjective golden ears audiophiles who still spend time on DACs. The measurement crowd still loves 'em too. "A new DAC in a box? Let me measure it!"

I mean, I'm very glad there ARE such people, as it does help to keep the industry honest or let consumers know what they are actually getting performance-wise. This Chord DAC review being an example of helping people spend their money advisedly.

But in the grand scheme of things, if you already view DACs as having essentially reached commodity status, measurements for all these teeny differences - many of which are unlikely to be of consequence in real world listening - isn't terribly interesting. Audiophiles are gear heads in one way or another, so releasing new DACs will still get attention on "both sides of the aisle."

 

[Ken Tajalli]

I loved the design of TT2, it reminded me of HAL with the glowing red led in the centre of the display area. Plus, like HAL, my TT2s went wrong… That plus calling their flagship DAVE does make one wonder…

And are you being Frank?
I wonder . . .

 

[solderdude]

A gentle roll off starting at 20kHz or so, would be way down at 384kHz (Nyquist of 785 kHz upsampled from mScaler), still it wouldn't matter?

It works like this. Note the plot below is for the Dave where the 'gentle roll-off' is fixed and the same for all sample rates (most likely and analog post filter)
So regardless if one uses 96kHz or higher the roll-off will be there and is the same.
Only the (very sharp) reconstruction filter moves.
44.1kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz. (plot from stereophile)

I suspect the analog post filter can be shifted to the left a bit moving the entire 'gentle' part to the left.
No 'spurious' above the reconstruction filter. That's the whole idea behind it.
When there is supersonic info (right up to the reconstruction filter) then it is supposed to be there and you don't want it filtered.

 

[PeteL]

It works like this. Note the plot below is for the Dave where the 'gentle roll-off' is fixed and the same for all sample rates (most likely and analog post filter)
So regardless if one uses 96kHz or higher the roll-off will be there and is the same.
Only the (very sharp) reconstruction filter moves.
44.1kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz. (plot from stereophile)

I suspect the analog post filter can be shifted to the left a bit moving the entire 'gentle' part to the left.
No 'spurious' above the reconstruction filter. That's the whole idea behind it.
When there is supersonic info (right up to the reconstruction filter) then it is supposed to be there and you don't want it filtered.

Why wouldn't you want the supersonics to be filtered? That content is useful how?

 

[Ducnguyen2k10]

Small or significant?

There is no up and down in either channel

 

[Ra1zel]

Why wouldn't you want the supersonics to be filtered? That content is useful how?

For people who think "hi-res" matters. So for no one who did blind tests.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

It works like this. Note the plot below is for the Dave where the 'gentle roll-off' is fixed and the same for all sample rates (most likely and analog post filter)
So regardless if one uses 96kHz or higher the roll-off will be there and is the same.
Only the (very sharp) reconstruction filter moves.
44.1kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz. (plot from stereophile)

I suspect the analog post filter can be shifted to the left a bit moving the entire 'gentle' part to the left.
No 'spurious' above the reconstruction filter. That's the whole idea behind it.
When there is supersonic info (right up to the reconstruction filter) then it is supposed to be there and you don't want it filtered.

Thanx, but are we talking about the HF filter that can be turned off or not?
Is this plot with the HF filter or without.
Regarding supersonics, if it actually has musical info then HF off would give most transparent response, but if it carries crap from the ADC, reflections, noise etc. then the HF noise comes handy.

Edit: I have been mostly wrong, I confused this with another DAC. I appologise.
Here is Chord explanation according to the manual:
HF Filter On or Off – This turns on a sharp high frequency cutoff filter set at 60kHz. This filter
bandwidth limits higher sample rate recordings to reduce noise shaper noise from the ADC.You may
find that the noise will degrade the sound quality by increasing noise floor modulation as the out of
bandwidth noise causes intermodulation distortion with the wanted audio signal in the analogue
electronics. By activating the HF Filter it is likely that you will hear a positive effect upon the resulting
sound quality.

 

[brandall10]

It's trivial to get the specs <https://chordelectronics.co.uk/product/dave>
7.8cm (H) 33.5cm (W) 15.2cm (D)
5 kg

I pulled them from Stereophile which came up toward the to of a google search at 7 kg, possibly that's with the stand.

Just wanted to refute the notion about packaging or being chintzy looking. People ooh and ahh over this thing in person.

EDIT: Amir noted: "On the positive front, the unit is quite heavy and substantial."

 

[bluefuzz]

It might also be unfamiliarity with western writing meaning they don't have the same view of what looks good.

Actually the reason is rather more prosaic. Chinese fonts use the 'extended' ranges of the Unicode character set, but most (western) software expects there to be characters in the lower ASCII/ANSI character positions used for Latin text. So historically many Chinese fonts have had a copy of Times New Roman inserted in the 'western' positions so that there is something there for apps that expect there to be characters in those positions. Consequently when Chinese people need to write western text they use what's at hand which invariably is going to be Times ...

 

[movehome]

lol