Chord DAVE & M-Scaler review - $15,000 of brilliance

Oh look, a more sophisticated Zeos with a British accent who reviews more expensive gear. You deserve my subscription well done on the review!

Your reviews are phenomenal, your choice of music for the reviews has opened new dimensions in my audio journey. And I'm just a noob. Thank you kind sir.

I appreciate channels like yours and Currawong's for no nonsense reviews and the chance to hear a reviews about marginally expensive to absolutely cost prohibitive products. I've always had reservations about purchasing an expensive DAC, being at least $2,500 USD and above, so I cannot thank you enough for being able to review something in the prohibitively expensive category. I love Steve Guttenberg's audiophiliac channel but he's more of a reviewer who has the chops of a salesman first and a reviewer second despite his nearly lifelong career with high end products and working in music studios. If possible, I would love to see a review or two on the range of DAC's offered by Denafrips. Anyway, thanks so much for the video, can't wait for the next one. Cheers!

Edit: Just found the Ares 2 review, great stuff.

Thank you for these beautiful snips.
My jaw drops, salivating, drooling…
I can only dream of getting this

Cosmetics? You have to see it in their rack. Gorgeous.

Any chance that you will benchmark a Chord Hugo TT2 / M Scaler Combo against the Holo Audio May KTE? I guess, this would be an interesting and fairer for the price point comparison.

A great review. The M-Scaler is transformational - and frankly, I can't take anyone seriously if they say they prefer a "Bare Dave". M-Scaler is that good. With this in mind, it would be very instructive to compare M-Scaler + Dave vs M-Scaler + TT2. In my listening, Dave is clearly better than TT2, but throw M-Scaler into the mix and things become far more interesting. I felt that - when using high-quality stereo recordings - M-Scaler + TT2 was clearly better than a bare Dave. The question is how does M-Scaler + TT2 compare against M-Scaler + Dave? The differences now are very subtle indeed, and it would be great to hear your opinion…

Buy Holo May 3 KTE or Holo Spring 3 KTE instead of Chord Dave. Then use hqplayer instead of M scalar, save thousands of dollars and go and buy a car too from the money saved.

I happen to audition the 3 above mentioned DACs side by side and settled for Holo Spring 3 kte + hqplayer!! 👍

dave + hqplayer is much better.

The aesthetics are not questionable. They're brilliant.

For the price I would rather have holo may

anybody looking at the Dave I would also suggest yo shop: Aries Cerat Kassandra, Nagra HD dac (used), Berkeley Reference, Mola Mola Tambaqui, aqua la scalla or formula xhd. There are many high quality dacs that don't get nearly the attention that Holo, Chard, DCS get but perform at a higher level.

@goldensound this is making me curious to hear opinions on native lower resolution, upscaled recordings vs natively higher-res recordings, to your ears and with your kit. I only have pro kit at my disposal, and default to the highest res by default, but I’ve never done a blind test against an upsampled, lower res on top end kit.

how does dave compare with topping d90se + a90

The justification for the price is not really convincing.

Sony users their own self design/developed/made technology in an FPGA too in their TA-ZH1ES but sell it for ~2000$

You do pay for the name, that is for sure and does change bias. If the TA-ZH1ES would sell for 15'000$ people would compare it to the Dave.

But because it sells for 2000$, they don't. It's as simple as that.

The DAVE screen bothers me, it looks ridiculously cheap. Could live with rest IF they had a halfway decent screen. Even no screen would be better.

why am i watching zeos number 2

Oh boy ! ASR......

I order you to do a blind test with this thing and the $200 motu interface sitting 6 inches from it. DO IT NOW

So you can "hear" bad things in tidal mqa, but you cant "hear" anything bad in chord dave?? Hmmmm......interesting.

This piece of junk was poured out on ASR

Aluminum can be very expensive.

D.A.V.E.? Next Upgrade Should Be W.A.N.K.( We Are Not Kidding) What is the Breakdown of Components versus Costs? " Subjective" Equals SNAKE OIL, This Junk Measures Worse than A Chifi 150 Dollar DAC, Better Spending The Cash on An Emperor's Suit I Have For Sale( Subjectively Speaking, You Will Be Irriasistable To Babes, I Will " Subjectively 🥳🥳 Guarantee It😉) P..R.A.T.( Pace, Rythym and Timing) Next Chord DAC 200000000 , Should Be Named W.A.N.K. , Because of it's Nirvana like Brilliance, Not Polite, Unless Asked🤔🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣, (We Are Not Kidding)

looks like an atomic bomb. i say chord Dave looks amazing

better than the may?

I like the review, but completely disagree that the Holo May is better, in fact, I don't think it's even remotely close to the DAVE, that DAC sounds slow and lacks detail. Not for me, Rob Watts all the way!

Sorry to say that, but as great sounding as it may be this DAC really looks retarded

Audio Science Review trashed this; doesn't perform as well as most $150 DAC's! what a rip off 🤷‍♂🤷‍♂

'It just does whatever you ask it to" Sorry but I just Had to quote you directly as my DAVE doesn't adhere to that simple principal because it will NOT turn ON. ! Now I can't find anything anywhere on the net that explains this phenomenal before sending it back to CHORD for their assessment I wondered is there anything I could do other than flick the rocker on/OFF switch , I am at a total loss so would welcome any pearls of wisdom you could throw at this problem . My other HI FI is a CHORD 2 BLU , and a CHORD ETUDE , many thanks .

$11,000 on a DAC? I don't want to hear absolutely nothing bad about it.

Funny thing about Chord Dave is you have to keep buying add on products. First it’s a stupid shape with a stupid name. Then you need a stand to hold it in. Then you need an m scaler. Then you need an upgrades PSU. Starts off about £10k. You end up spending about £25k. Why didn’t they just make it right first time?!

Hi guys what happens if you just buy the M scaler and put it on a cheaper delta sigma DAC. Would that super open up the staging?

What I'm missing on this channel (and similar) is some kind of info how this so called today's "hi-tech" sounds vs. some classy old stuff but still state of the art. For example Mark Levinson Reference DAC no. 30.5. It would be interesting match/comparision if REAL progress was made in digital audio ! ;-)

They should take them all "Dave" in and update the screen and software to "Modern Day Era".

I did have the same combo Chord Dave+M-Scaler and interesting in improve the sound upgrading the BNC's cables. Which one are the RED ones you have in the video.? are a audible difference that worth to change them from the original ones that comes included in the Chord package.? Thanks a lot.

Thank you very much! I finally found the answer to my question in your video 🙌🏼

Well this answers my question on whether I'd like the Dave...I had the Holo May KTE and hated it, sound like lower end Chord. Wasn't musical at all, typical chinese dac, accurate, detailed, sort of smooth, but NOT musical.

Beaten by DACS 1/15 of the cost MSCALER is a toy does zilch for SQ.

so whats the best dac youve tested?

The Dave Can,t power the suvare, THE DAVE CAN,T???. What a weird pair of headfphones are the Susvara,s. So the DAVE CAN,T?????