Chord Dave or Ayre QX5 Twenty DAC???

I like comparisons, but with companies offering more than one DAC product, the comparison is a bit confusing. May I ask for some specifics? Like the model from said company in comparisons?

Ps audio top dac player is very good .
The Lampizator is very natural sounding,  and can get pricy depending on Vacuum tube choices. Your budget will determine .impossible to put any dac under 10k as  best way to many Sonic differences.

I had both the Chord Dave and Ayre Qx5-twenty for audition and I found the Dave to be the most pleasing through my Pass Labs Int60 /Magico S1MkII speakers.   I did test the Dave bypassing my Preamp and it had a big drop in SQ with thin bass so perhaps this is what the other poster heard.   The Ayre had a very edgy quality to it which I found detracting.
Now I just need to get the funds for the Dave.
 

Edgy quality for the Ayre?  How many hours did it have on it?  The only time I've heard that word IRT the Ayre is when it didn't have about 500 hours on it. It does take that long to break in, but when it does, it's as musical as most any DAC regardless of cost.  

Not saying you didn't hear what you did as we all hear differently and like different devices, but you really caught me off guard when you used the word edgy.  

As I've said above, most DAC's are highly dependent on the quality of what they are fed (just like everything else, right).  I once was in an audition of a few DAC's and the music they were using was pop/rock and highly compressed.  Almost like AM radio, lol.  The tube gear we listened to made the music sound it's best as it rolled off a bit on the upper octaves, however when you put on well recorded music, it was the other DAC's that sounded best.  We also played with the cables and found that the overall best cables were the TotalDac cable and the AQ Diamond (we only used USB this day).  I have loved both of those cables in my system.  AQ being the most neutral of the two and the Totaldac is just a tad more open, but not quite as neutral in the mids where is gives a bit of a creamier texture.  It was cool going back and forth between the two.  

I realize that we don't all have perfect recordings, lol.  Things always depend on what you listen to and how you listen.  

The other major thing IRT digital and new DAC's is how will you set them up?  How will you feed them?  I have found that personally, I like the ethernet connection best.  I am slowly putting together an optical wire converter to network and feed my Ayre via it's ethernet connection.  I've heard it this way a few times and to my ears it had beaten every DAC I've had in the system that was USB only.  Many of us have or are doing this and feel the same way.  There are a few threads detailing these connections on Audiogon and other sites as well.  

I've never heard any DAC sound great when run without a true preamp.  Even at the lower price points, you really need a good preamp to get the most out of your components.  That's one of the few things IRT audio that most agree on.

The other thing is that most of the DAC's being discussed in this thread are outstanding and leaps and bounds better than anything we could get just a few years ago.  I assume that the DAC's will keep getting better and better as the newer chips become available.  

Concur.  The one word I would never use to describe the Ayre is edgy - it's super smooth.

It continues to amaze me how many people still think that the preamp is not the lynchpin of any good system - running direct will never be better than running a top flight preamp.  However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that that is the case even in lower end systems - there are many cases in which running direct is better than using a poor preamp assuming the DAC is properly designed for running direct.  I found my older Wadia to sound better direct except with top preamps - of course you had to keep it above 75 for the volume if running direct so as not to lose resolution.

Definitely on the high end, it's been a pleasant surprise how much improvement has occurred in the last couple of years.  It wasn't until my latest source setup that I finally became convinced that digital has *fully* arrived  - I'm good, period.