[thePhones]

I have made a few ferrite cables for not that much money in comparison to the higher price mentioned earlier. There are photos of them on the M Scaler Forum. I was curious to see how well they performed against those expensive ones mentioned on here and my local hifi shop happened to have these available for home demo. I took up the offer of a home demo and did my testing and comparing over a few days but I could not detect a difference. Both performed equally as intended.

That is my expectation, that you only need the right material, size and spacing to achieve good rf suppression. The good looks are harder to achieve, but that is not important to me as it’s all behind the tv.

 

[markkr]

I've been using a pair of Oyaide DB-510 BNC cables without ferrites as I'm still hoping for a cheaper alternative to the Wave offering.

 

[Currawong]

Interesting that Chord is using the Mavros dd S/PDIF Digital Cables-- it's surprising to see such expensive cables fitted given Rob Watts' efforts to make improvements after years of debates over shade tree cables and ferrites.

Given what he has said in the past, Rob could well be testing to see if the cables have any effect. If they don't, then he knows that he has succeeded in his design goals. It's the same for the power cable in the picture, which has a splitter allowing him to hook up a battery to compare with, which he has discussed doing quite recently.

 

[iDesign]

Given what he has said in the past, Rob could well be testing to see if the cables have any effect. If they don't, then he knows that he has succeeded in his design goals. It's the same for the power cable in the picture, which has a splitter allowing him to hook up a battery to compare with, which he has discussed doing quite recently.

Hardly. Atlas supplies cables to Chord Electronics and it’s explained on their website.

 

[Currawong]

Hardly. Atlas supplies cables to Chord Electronics and it’s explained on their website.

My bad -- I don't check their web site!

Rob just posted a reply to some questions in the DAVE thread, so I thought I'd share it here.

Thanks for heads up Rob.
I have a few years for you:

1. Why working for 5 years for Dave's add-on rather than a new Dave? You had Dave, then the M Scaler add-on and noq Quarter M Scaler add-on.

2. I understand that Quartet M scaler has got a separate 75W power supply and 5 FPGAs. Essentially, you are adding more processing power to Dave? I am oversimplifying things, I understand, but in the nutshell this is what it does?

3. I completely agree with you that from a technical perspective, I have not seen any other DAC in the market, which is so advanced, but at the end of the day, this is not about complexity but about musicality (sorry for a cliche). T+ A 200 DAC with its DSD section sounds at par with the Dave if not better and probably is not that advanced.
This is all about the source. Feeding my DAC with bit perfect data and no processing is needed.

4. Are you planning to modify Dave's power supply so that one power supply can feed both the Dave and Quartet M Scaler?

Thank you and looking forward to a new product.

1. I am free to do what I choose, as I am not under contract with Chord, and only receive payments once products enter production. So my choices on long term R&D are based on two things only - intellectual curiosity and the path that will give me the most musical rewards in the long term. In fact, intellectual curiosity is driven by the desire to give me musical rewards - it's only by understanding that one can truly make progress. Only time will tell if I would have gotten more musical benefits by spending time on DACs than M scalers - but I know for certain that the effort gone into Quartet has been worthwhile and essential.

2. In simple terms yes indeed adding an M scaler adds more processing power to the DAC.

3. Agreed - it's all about getting emotional with music, but where I disagree with you is DSD - this sounds nothing like real acoustic instruments playing in space. My work is all about achieving that illusion, and for me reproducing the illusion of real instruments in space is essential for getting emotional with music.

4. No - you need physical separation so that the processing noise within an M scaler does not corrupt the delicate and sensitive analogue conversion within a DAC. Common power supplies won't give you that separation.



Absolutely - but we can certainly be objective in characterising subjective impressions into whether a change is closer to the illusion of real instruments in space or not - so long as it is rigorously done by a sensitive listener who actually knows what real acoustic instruments sound like. Of course, there is also the issue that some don't want that goal, but creating a sound that is different, then it doesn't matter how good a listener or how objective you are.