DAVE
I had the opportunity to spend a day with DAVE , Chord electronics latest DAC yesterday and spent 7 hours listening to a wide range of material streamed from a NAS via a Moon device into DAVE. This is also a very high quality digital preamp so this was fired directly into the SPM 1400 Mk11 Chord power amp. Speakers used were KEF blades.
With an acoustically optimised room and a superb dedicated power supply and top of the range balanced Chord cables used throughout this was a seriously good set up in which to evaluate DAVE. The DAC had been run in for a week.
Material used was either 16bit ripped CD or 24 bit recording with a few DSD recordings thrown in.I wont say much about this other than the SQ was always dependant on the the mastering quality so in some respects the fact it was 16bit or 24 bit was a little irrelevant however I would say 24bit recordings edged it slightly.
So to DAVE. Well this is a fantastically engineered device beautifully manufactured with an amazing amount of inputs and outputs but I would suggest looking at the Chord site for technical specifications.
From the off this DAC was quite different and something very special indeed. I have heard HUGO and the HUGO TT but this was a significant leap forward. I am not a digital fan but can hear some of the obvious advantages digital has over analogue playback. In the past I have always been aware that digital systems imposed a thumbprint on the music which gave the music a particular sound which to my ears sounded slightly synthetic. This has been dramatically reduced since the early days when CD was first released and now with 20 years or so of DAC development and technical improvements Digital systems have got very close to the best analogue and in some areas surpass it. I mention this as it is very relevant to my listening to DAVE .
Simply put DAVE does not sound either Digital or Analogue! Rob Watts the designer has produced something that puts DAVE into a class of its own. From my listening session DAVE improved in every area anything I had ever heard before from a digital system. The overall sound had the usual great clarity and detail which comes with digital but it sounded so smooth and effortless, nothing was hard or etched or hyper detailed and therefore it sounded very natural and unforced. The perception of depth and 3D sound stage was more apparent than I had heard before in digital and the way it handled bass was stunning. Bass textures and information previously unheard became apparent in the mix. This underpinned a massive controlled sound stage which gave the music superb scale. The overall impression was a lush rich sound that i found totally at ease with without tiring at all through the 7 hours of listening.
There were a few recordings which simply sounded stunning, almost unbelievable and just made me shake my head in how they came across with such impact and tactile quality, again probably due to the quality of the bass performance. OK I was listening to KEF blades with massive amplification which do produce stunning scale and power but none the less there was never a time I felt any digital harshness or fatigue. I would also say this was also helped by the extremely low noise floor which made some recordings sound uncanny arising from deathly silence.
If this is the future of DAC design then it would certainly convert me from analogue - just one problem £8000!
I would strongly recommend if you can afford this sort of wonga try and get a listen to DAVE, it really is a DAC that needs to be listened to. Words are difficult to really convey what this DAC does for digital music.
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Originally Posted by Gazjam
