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Chord Dave - Missing soundstage width

Hi I am in the process of evaluating the Chord Dave.I have a Orchid dac and to my ears it has a wider soundstage than the Dave, but in every other aspect the Dave is the clear winner.
The Dave has height, depth and a way to make you feel that you are there. but not much sound outside the speaker boundaries.
Is my observation correct or does my system suck (;
Equipment: Primaluna HP integrated EL34 tubes. Tekton Design DI, A well treated room.Streaming with Tidal HIFI/Master
martin-andersen
rushfan71
295 posts
 
Martin, I have Primaluna Dialogue separates including HP amp and I have Tekton D.I.'s also.
I don't have a Dave but I have experienced a similar situation between my Metrum Acoustics Pavane and my Sonnet Morpheus DACs. ( Morphues is a continuation of Cee's Ruetenburgs R2R DACs when he owned Metrum )
Pavane has a wider sound stage when compared to Morpheus. However after a couple weeks of A/B ing the DACs after a 500hr burn in of the new Morpheus, I've come to realize the Morpheus has a more focused center image an taller deeper soundstage.
At this point it's a matter of personal prefference. My friends are split down the middle on who prefers Pavane vs Morpheus.
I will say this, switching to NOS Mullard LONG PLATES have had a nice affect on sound stage in the Primaluna.

John
rushfan71
295 posts
 
12au7 long plates*
herman
2,259 posts
 
It is all about phase (when the signals from the left and right reach your ears) which is easily manipulated when making the recording. If one system has a different width then one is preserving the original phase better than the other i.e the other is shifting it more than the other., and the shift will probably be different at different frequencies since speaker crossovers are the largest contributor to this shifting.

Steve Swallow - Deconstructed "Running in the Family" (available on Tidal and Qobuz) opening bass line sounds like he is sitting next to me. It is so far outside the speakers and so diffuse it is difficult to listen to for some reason. My speakers have a single cap in line with the tweeter, a single inductor in line with the woofer, and the mid-horns run full range so about as minimal a phase shift as possible for a speaker.


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