Chord Dave vs. DAC-V1

analogmusic posted:

I wouldn't bother with the alternatives you mentioned, others who did the comparison on head-fi reported that Dave beats both of them.

It's really important to do comparisons yourself in your own system and not rely solely on others' opinions.

This is been an extremely interesting thread and I thank all of the participants. The main reason I have been following it is I have just recently rediscovered headphone listening as an accompaniment to my 552/ 500 system. Chord products have been the dominant ones on the Headfi forum ever since the introduction of the Hugo and I myself just purchased a Mojo to bide my time while I await the Hugo 2's release next month.

Since recent postings have been technical in nature I would like to ask a question. Someone above just mentioned DSD playback. Can someone please (Simon or others) expand upon this with some further explanation as my knowledge is quite rudimentary.  During my research for headphone Dac/amplifiers I recently came across a new Sony product which upsamples EVERYTHING (for example 16/44 rips etc) to DSD 768. 

Why?  I would have thought that upsampling is inherently bad as it is trying to recreate what is not originally there IE trying to polish a turd for example turning a 320 mp3 into a 16/44 cd or in this case a DSD 768 file.

Best

Gregg

PS from the land of headphones Naim's "1/2 brother" Focal truly established a new reference point.  Their Utopia has really turned the headphone world upside down and has been extremely successful

elkman70 posted:

Are you saying that Dave sounds better than CD555?

By some distance. The 555 spends most of its time now looking cool.

The new blu2 transport+Dave will be the duo to watch as a source, altough anot expensive duo but not much different than NDS/555

And they trow a good headphone amp for free....

wait and see

tonym posted:

analogmusic posted:

I wouldn't bother with the alternatives you mentioned, others who did the comparison on head-fi reported that Dave beats both of them.

It's really important to do comparisons yourself in your own system and not rely solely on others' opinions.

Maybe it is my duty to explain to my friends from UK that HOME DEMO, is very but very rare event in many parts of the world.

The retailers neither have the volume to dedicate a unit for demo nor the stock. Even basic things are on order only.

Also isn't it to all point of this forums is to share knowledge, your opinion as well the other people's Opinions?  Don't we have all magazines reviewing everything from cd to Gloves? 

So why the negative Tone? 

I really don't get it! 

It certainly isn't my intention to be negative Emre. I do understand the difficulty in arranging home demonstrations in most places, but I'm just sounding a note of caution; having been a hi-fi aficionado for some fifty-five years, I've read many glowing reviews in magazines, and enthusiastic recommendation on forums, for items of hi-fi kit that, when settled in my home system, have not worked for me. DAVE being a case in point, despite my keen anticipation of its announcement and being a fan of Chord DACs generally. I have no doubt that many folks love what it does in their systems, with their ears, but it does not work in my system. Who knows why? It's easy to get carried away by specifications and opinion, I confess to this myself, but I've learned the hard way that you really need form your own opinion.

This situation reminds me of when a friend asked me to look over a Mini Cooper "S" for him many years ago (I was pretty knowledgeable about them). It became clear to me the car was not what it should have been and I told him so, but he was so set on buying it he got quite angry with me over my opinion. Thing is, we really want to acquire the things we perceive as being good and we don't want to be deflected away from our decisions by alternative opinion.

Individual tastes and system interaction often come into play making it hard to assess the component under review.  What are the chances that our hearing is all the same? Our other senses show differences between individuals ?! It helps when one has more insight about the reviewer and the system used. There are recordings I consider to have bad sound on my setup but yet I have friends that  like them. Components can have  different strengths or weaknesses making it impossible to 'weigh' them on the same scale.

Before I scaled down I had different setups based on Audio Research/Bryston, Copland/ Simaudio Moon and Naim. They all sounded different yet each pleasing in its own way and equally loved, none better than the other.

tonym posted:

It certainly isn't my intention to be negative Emre. I do understand the difficulty in arranging home demonstrations in most places, but I'm just sounding a note of caution; having been a hi-fi aficionado for some fifty-five years, I've read many glowing reviews in magazines, and enthusiastic recommendation on forums, for items of hi-fi kit that, when settled in my home system, have not worked for me. DAVE being a case in point, despite my keen anticipation of its announcement and being a fan of Chord DACs generally. I have no doubt that many folks love what it does in their systems, with their ears, but it does not work in my system. Who knows why? It's easy to get carried away by specifications and opinion, I confess to this myself, but I've learned the hard way that you really need form your own opinion.

This situation reminds me of when a friend asked me to look over a Mini Cooper "S" for him many years ago (I was pretty knowledgeable about them). It became clear to me the car was not what it should have been and I told him so, but he was so set on buying it he got quite angry with me over my opinion. Thing is, we really want to acquire the things we perceive as being good and we don't want to be deflected away from our decisions by alternative opinion.

 

Yes but it is not a choice, it is take it or leave it.

I bought some stuff with store demo but some stuff mainly thanks to this forum

I don't place a trust to professional reviews because everything gets a good review 

But I am trusting you when you say that Dave might not be the best thing after sliced bread, so I don't jump in and buy with buzz, it is a lot of money for a working, family man

This is why I am here, to benefit from an experienced gentlemen like you who have more experience and also more opportunities to hear the stuff I only read about, I really do appreciate all the comments, even "you need to hear it first"

So thank you all

If money is tight then gambling on Dave, as good as it is, would be madness. Especially as Hugo gets you such a lot for a lot less. And that's from someone who's gone from Hugo to Dave with no hesitation and no regrets.

One thing to keep in mind Tareq is that Dave has signal earth connected to the mains, just like a Naim CD player, so if you are connecting DAC V1 at the same time as Dave, the switch on DAC v1 should be set on floating rather than chassis

Having 2 sources with signal earth connected to mains earth makes it very difficult to hear differences between them and Naim have advised even when comparing Naim CD players, only one at at time should be connected to a Naim preamp (as their CD players have no switch)

You learn something new every day! never understood this grounding business (electric technicalities seem abstract to me)... Will test this today to see what difference it makes. Thanks for the tip!

If you want a Chord USB DAC to compare to the V-1 commensurate to its value, wouldn't a 2Qute be a fitting comparator? Good as it is, the Hugo is optimised as a portable device whereas the 2Qute is designed to do just one thing well. I don't own either but have read others' assertion that for USB optimised playback, the 2Qute is preferable to the Hugo. It might also be near enough to the Dave to leave you a few £000 to spend elsewhere.

I would have liked to test the 2Qute, I did test the Hugo versus the DAC-V1 and did not find the sound any more engaging than I have with the DAC-V1, the Dave is definitely an improvement sonically and musicality wise. In my system today the DAC-V1 is the weakest link and ever since I upgraded to the 552 preamp, the source seems to be my weak spot. Thus the Dave testing taking place now

Pity I cannot test the Dave with DIN-2-RCA cables, today I am stuck with RCA interconnects and would like to keep my pre on DIN connections as much as possible.

you can test it. just plug the RCA to DIN and put the DIN cable where the DAC V1 is connected.

there is no different pin connections on the 552, they are all the same.

I have a Chord VEE3 DIN-2-RCA cable that I used when I had the old NAC202 and I wanted to connect it to an external amp, I thought I could use the same cable to connect the Dave to the NAC552 however the pin configuration seems different and does not fit the NAC552..

well that may be a different cable then. I'm sure D Audio can lend you an audio quest RCA to DIN cable. Or you can ask them for my contact details, I can lend you one too.

RCA to DIN beats RCA to RCA hands down, I tried it many times. The level of engagement and drive goes up a notch.

Naim preamps sound much better with their DIN connector.

Thanks for the offer [@mention:69004037368204356], I dug out a spare RCA-2-DIN cable that I sourced ages ago from Chord, it is also a VEE3 cable, this one has 5 pins while the older one I used with the NAC202 was a 4 pin.

Just replaced the RCA with the RCA-2-DIN cable and it worked very well... Call me delusional but I really feel the musicality is vastly better.. I lined up a playlist of my favorite classical recordings knowing that the Amati Futura shine in rendering acoustics and I was not disappointed at all, I spent 2 full hours with a vast grin on my face and for once the music was at the center and not sound quality... This NAC552 when paired with a superior source such as the Dave is smooth as butter across all ranges, the trebles are no longer harsh, the mid tones super clear and the bass tight and punchy... The major improvement from my DAC-V1 is really in the trebles, where there was slight glassy harshness now I get smooth non-aching tones... Amazing stuff.

I have a spare PowerLine which I will attach to the Dave later on to see if that makes any further improvements.. Not sure if the PowerLines work well with non-Naim gear but I will soon find out :-).

Regards,

T

Dave has many qualities which you will discover soon. Smooth treble is just one of them.

Any good reason not to use the PowerLine with non-Naim equipment?

No issues with it. Try it and see if you like it. 

thijazi posted:

 

 

.. I lined up a playlist of my favorite classical recordings knowing that the Amati Futura shine in rendering acoustics and I was not disappointed at all, I spent 2 full hours with a vast grin on my face and for once the music was at the center and not sound quality...

 

Regards,

T

Good feedback. I will arrange a listen at the dealers sometime this spring to check it out.

If you are using the USB input, DAC-V1 is good but needs some help in preventing 'noise' getting into it. If you feed it with a clean signal you will get a clean output revealing a startling level of resolution. However if DAVE is more 'musical' then that is where the story ends- must be quite a listen.

Dave other qualities are more precision in the starting and end of notes, and the flow of music.... so liquid, fluid, and smooth like live music.

And emotion! 

I have posted my current DAC-V1  setup here (improves  USB resolution considerably):

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...-of-streaming?page=7

an old review of the QBD76 on tone publications says this "Though I found the Chord visceral and exciting with excellent pace, in my reference system, I could never relax and forget that I was listening to digital, as I have been able to with a few other top players.  I didn’t really see this as a negative for the QBD76, as I’ve never experienced this level of playback in any digital player below the $12k range, so it was not a disappointment."

The achievement of Dave is that is does make you relax and forget you are listening to a digital source. To be fair though, Hugo was the first of the Chord Dacs - according to Rob Watts, that cracked the secret to achieving this. 

It's a very subtle thing, but that is what separates good digital from the very best.