Chord Dave and lInear power supply

After 4 weeks of burn in, Dave with Farad three power supplies, sounds more detailed and powerful but without slight sibilance which bothered me before.

I am happy with this mod and trying some power cables on three power supplies.

Although Dave with Farad will not reach level of Ideon Absolute yet, but it is close.

After attending Pacific Audio fest, I can not make decision what my next Dac upgrade will be.

Wadax sounds perfect but too expensive with 200k $ or more price tag.

Lampi Horizon and Ideon Absolute are pretty good for the money.

But after having been happy with modified Dave., I may not go for Horizon or Absolute since the improvement will be marginal.

Thomas

I am using Aurender N30 as source.

After happy home audition of N20, I pulled for N30 instead.

N20 is the best bang for the money.

But N30 give slightly better details and overall balance than N20.

Thomas

Purple fuse update for the Farad Supplies on the Dave,

To my ear , more body, better separation and sense of space. If you don't use or believe in fuses- I respect that. Just offering my impressions on my experience.

Now, looking for impressions for those that use a Dave and M scaler- what to expect and if you use any isolation products as well. 

Everything said here about upgrading an SMPS to LPS has been my exact experience. It gives a huge performance boost for comparatively little outlay.

If you have a component that accepts external SMPS input, then try out the Farad or something like the Uptone JS-2 (dual outputs which are voltage switchable).

If you have a favorite component with internal SMPS, get a LPS custom built to slot into the mounting holes of the SMPS.

@nkj 

I had tried isolation transformer on Dave.

It improved the sound significantly.

But with it, I hear some ground hum since they are not grounded in the same earth.

Thus  I stopped using isolation transformer on Dave.

best

Thomas