My audio pal just got a Dave and in a short period of time, thoroughly prefers it to his fully upgraded Denafrips Terminator. Now that I am a pensioner, I think I will content myself with the performance of my Ayre Codex. My upgrade from 4 different ~$1K DACs to the Ayre QB-9 and then the Codex offered a huge improvement in SQ in my system. In fact, when I got the QB-9, I sold my SOTA Sapphire TT and never looked back.
Chord Dave
It won't be for everyone. I'm not saying it's the best. I've owned several DACs and after owning the Dave for a couple of weeks all I can say is WOW! This is the closest to hearing a night and day difference between components that I've experienced. The Dave differentiates between recording venues better than anything I've owned. Detail, soundstage, air, vocals, attack and dynamics are truly outstanding. I'm saying all of this and I'm using the standard power cord. If you're looking for a new DAC, give the Dave a listen.
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After 2 years owning the Dave I finally tried to go singleended (rca) from Dave to Diablo. Quite a step up. Then I changed Dave to preamp mode and set input 3 in Diablo to AV - connection, thus skipping the Diablo preamplifier. This also a step up and now I really understand how good the Dave is. Should have done it long ago. The conversion in Dave from unbalanced to balanced is not good enough. Better to use singleended. I moved the xlr-cables from Dave to the Scorpio cd-player, so going directly to Diablo. But it doesn’t provide the rhythm, attack, speed and 3-d like the Dave does. Thomas |
Pitching in to add a bit-from @verdantaudio post: " In a non-covid world, the Dave is in line to be update to a Dave 2 but that is not that close and is probably still a couple years away. " https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/how-do-i-feed-the-chord-dave-tt2-plus-m-scaler-a-better-choic... The comparison / listing of previous generation gear is noteworthy as well ... for more insight though some may enjoy input from ' the man ' himself Robb Watts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXyjsSYjnL8&t=938s Also a Review and discussion of the differences in Chord components from Passion for Sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzUsEp_eRfQ |
- 45 posts total