Chord Dave and lInear power supply

I've had similar results buying a low noise LPS for my tiny tripath high-pass amplifier (in a tri-amped system). Much more natural, less grainy, less hash.

More surprising, swapping the iFi audio low noise wall-wart PSU that came with my iFi PDIF iPurifier 2 with a 30$ low noise 5V LPS from aliExpress also gave great improvement, which I didn't expect: more natural, again, less "stringent" upper treble, more depth. 

Many have reported that the power supply in Dave though small in size, indeed performs well and changing it yields no improvement. That is what Chord’s John Franks says.

Very cheap parts.  Very expensive PR.

I've owned a PS Audio Directstream, Bricasti M1, Jeff Rowland Aeris, and currently own a Chord Dave DAC. The Dave may have a cheap power supply, but I have yet to hear a DAC in it's price range that I prefer in my system. That being said, I would love to do a direct comparison between the Dave, MSB Premier and Playback Design Edelweiss. At one point I considered the Aries Cerat Helene DAC, but after listening to the Aeris Cerat Incito preamp in my system I'm no longer interested.

Shkong78,

Did you buy the upgraded furutech and SR fuse with the power supply?  Based on the 3k price you paid I would assume so.

I’ve been very happy with my chord DAVE over the years but your post has me considering an upgrade.

Thanks

I bought a regular package since I can upgrade fuse later.

I found shortcoming of Dave and Mscaler when I compared it with ideon Absolute side by side at home.

Dave gave some sibilance and less decay than Ideon.

I do not have Absolute Ideon right now.

But with linear power supply, it seema to approach 90% of Ideon Absolute.

Thomas