Chord Dave or Ayre QX5 Twenty DAC???

Last year I did an expensive experiment, and owned the Chord Dave, Bricasti M1, and Berkeley Ref Series 1 at the same time. With multiple outputs from my Aurender N10 and multiple inputs on my Luxman integrated amp, I was able to do various tests somewhat easily.

And very clearly to my ears, the Chord Dave offered more detail, more warmth, deeper soundstage and just plain more toe-tapping than either the Bricasti or the Berkeley.

I sold the latter two, still love the Chord Dave, and look forward to Chord's new gizmos that are supposed to improve the Dave's sound tremendously. But even with no extra gizmos...

Dave, who adds that while he didn't stick with the Chord Dave for its headphone amp capabilities that's also quite quite quite good

The Bricasti M1 SE is excellent but I like the features of the Ayre QX5. Although the Bricasti is excellent I would choose the Chord Dave. With the Chord, I will have to still use USB from my MacBook to the DAC because of its price. I read this may still sound great. With the Ayre, I could use the MacBook as the Core with Roon which is what I want to do. With the Chord I would have to wait a year or two to be able to do that until I have more funds. Not sure if there is a reasonably priced streamer with Roon & Tidal that would be high quality.

Both these DAC's put you in Totaldac territory. I would much prefer a Totaldac D1 Six to anything else mentioned here.

Hi Paul,
That’s the dilemma with High End audio, so many good choices are available and you can’t hear all of them . Invariably someone will post that the Chord Dave sounds better than the Totaldac in their opinion, just the way it goes 😊
Charles

Which is why it's always nice when people answer the actual question asked instead of turning it into a recommendation thread.

@sc53 
I didn't say that the Ayre was not a nice DAC; simply that it's not in the same league as top tier DACs - which if multiple commentators are to be believed, such top tier includes the Dave.  Since I haven't heard the Dave (as said above, way too many choices these days) I couldn't say one way or another definitively.  In any case, I'm set with what I have now.   Let's see if anyone else has heard both and can add to the discussion.