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Chord DAVE alternatives?

Hello fellow 'goners.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to the Raidho C1.1 and D1 paired with bryston 28 (the latest ones) mono blocks, a zanden pre, and chord dave. While the synergy was amazing I was mostly there to listen for a possible speaker upgrade, however (as these things usually go) the chord dave caught my eye. Right now, most of my music is digital and I am using a fostex hpa8 as a dac. I usually do toslink out from my Astell player or macbook pro as I found it to be less finicky than usb (different laptops were sounding different).

1. the chord dave is very far outside my budget. if i were to "upgrade" dacs are there more reasonably priced alternatives? i want to capture that tone and timber and spacing but understand that i can't have all that the dave offers. will the qute/qute ex/qute hd be a nice step up from my current dac?

2. the dealer said toslink was no good - any suggestions on what i should use instead?
skanda

Showing 1 response by skanda

skanda OP
60 posts
 
milpai, i believe the fpga structure converts the dsd. i am fairly positive but ive been reading about so many dacs that i may be mixed up.

just coming back to this now because i bought the c1.1 and am letting my system settle down (along with my expenses!). i never thought my system could sound _this_ good. but let's push it further.

the lampizator atlantic, lite 7, and schiit yggdrasil all have my eyes. are the lampi's too warm? i like the idea of being able to roll 300b's in the lite 7 but i think as much as i romanticize the idea...i seem to really enjoy a hyper detailed high resolution sound (without any sibilance of course). would the yggdrasil suit me better?

also my local dealer is offering me a chord qbd76 as a 1-to-1 trade with my dynaudio contour 1.4le. is this dac behind the times or does it still have some magic?
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