jamjar784
Heavy Up
There is some good news in all of this - the top of the line design just became a lot cheaper.
Currently have a discrete DSD DAC myself (T+A DAC 8 DSD). I home demo'd the Chord DAVE against my current DAC with all audio up sampled to DSD 512 via HQPlayer. The DAVE was edged out unbelievably by the discrete DSD DAC, in depth plane, dynamic response and presence. Neck and neck in all other respects.
The catch? Need a beefy PC to upsample to DSD512 (at one of the faster i7 quads), HQPlayer on certain filters can add delays to startup times (i.e. cold start is 20s, switching rate families another 5-6s), and upgrade the USB output to something much better suited to audio tasks.
For the record I was willing to switch to the DAVE to get rid of the "hassle" of running HQPlayer and a PC... so wanted it to win.
It should be stated that the DAVE would win no problem against the T+A if HQPlayer upsampling to DSD 512 wasn't active.
Conclusion? Discrete DSD implementations can be a significant step up, especially with the right modulator.
JohnW tested HQPlayer and said he didn't like what it did to the SQ. He didn't go into much detail about which setups he tried or the DAC, but I think he tried DSD512. I agree the T+A DAC 8 DSD is excellent and there are other upsampling software options than HQPlayer which IMHO is a PIA to use although some say technically the best.