Chord Dave or Ayre QX5 Twenty DAC???

I got no skin in the game but know of and have heard both of these companies fine products, both have some good strengths, we used to sell Chord and do not now sell them so we have no skin in the game nor do we sell Ayre. 

There is one advantage that the Chord Dave has the Aqua Hifi Dac have that the Ayre doesn't.

The Chord is FPGA based and is easy to update, the Forumla is designed on all separate boards and Aqua has shown they can and will offer reasonably priced updates, I haven't heard the Forumla but we have the Lascala and it is excellent I haven't heard the Forumla I will say that the Lascalla is excellent. So one thing I would ask with the Ayre, is how easy would it be to upgrade?

Aside from sound quality, ease of upgrading, in the turbulent world of digital is a very good thing. 

For those on the East Coast we, Audio Doctor have one of the largest collections of digital gear on display: we display: Lumin, Aurender, Mytek, Aqua, EMM Labs, Light Harmonic, Baetis, Cary Audio, T+A, Nad, Naim, Nuprime and a few others. For those who haven't heard the Light Harmonic Davinci is amazing and we have one of these rare dacs!

Troy
Audio Doctor
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Troy,  I do not understand your comments above regarding the FGPA.  I found two references below that describe Ayre's use of the FGPA.

Note #1: "The Ayre QX-5 Twenty DAC uses the ESS ES9038PRO DAC chip which is used for D/A conversion with Ayre's proprietary FPGA-based minimum phase filter.

Note #2:  "The ES9038PRO used in the Ayre QX-5 DAC, combined with Ayre’s custom minimum-phase digital filter, implemented in a low noise FPGA".

What is the difference between the the Chord's FGPA based implementation and Ayre's FPGA-based minimum phase filter implementation? 

Since both DAC's are using a FGPA, does this mean that both DAC's can be upgraded by re-programing the FGPA?   

They all use FPGAs...all of them. Some shout it out more as a marketing tool...same for optical isolation which most use.

Troy is just mistaken as he doesn't sell Ayre and probably isn't up to speed on it like he is the Aqua that he sells.  The Ayre is very easy to update. Ayre as a company has one of, if not the best track record of offering fairly cost updates for their products. They have at least a 7 year life cycle and for audio, that's rare as most anyone would agree.  They were working with ESS and got the first chips to play with and then to come to market with.  As with their twenty upgrades to their amps, they will offer whatever updates they do to the QX5/20.  They have one of the larger staff's of engineers and are always working on bettering their products.  They have already offered many software upgrades to the QX5/20 that have made the unit more fun to play with and there will be plenty more in the future.  

Wisnon is dead on in what he calls marketing.  I like a bunch of the DAC's that are spoken about in this thread and some that are not.  There is not best no matter the cost.  There are a couple of 20k plus (one MUCH more), that I wouldn't buy if they were 5k as they are way too dry for my tastes.  I've heard both in at least three systems that are worthy of their cost and I never 'got them'.  You don't have to spend more than 14k or so to get top digital sound these days.  

Yes, I got the Ayre and not because I had to or because a friend told it or any of that.  I personally got it for their rep as a company and I knew what the Codex was to the under 5k DAC's and I loved the idea of a full function, digital remote front end.  I had to have a Roon end point even if I wasn't running Roon yet as I believe that's going to be the future. I wanted a DAC that optimized every input and didn't just talk about all their money being put into only the USB input.  I needed something that could remotely control all my digital inputs as I have a few and that list may grown.  I wanted to be able to have a top USB, true balanced and ethernet connect as I may or may not network (wasn't sure at the time) and I wanted flexibility.  That's not important to many of my friends, but if it's offered in a box that sounds as good or better than other DAC's, then I wanted in.

Sound is what kept me in. I can honestly say that I'm in touch off the boards with at least 15 users of the QX5/20 and my system is probably the least expensive of the bunch.  Everyone is wildly excited about it.  That's rare in audio I believe.  This isn't a commercial for the Ayre either as I'm not a dealer and get nothing from sharing thoughts.  

I know a few Totaldac users and they will also rave about their DAC's.  I also have a feeling that the Brinkman will be the same as I heard it and loved it.  The only problem is that for me, it's at least 6k more than the QX5/20 and I can't see spending that much more on these DAC's.  Even Michael Lavorgna said that his Totaldac isn't that much better sounding than the QX5/20.  I know Michael and we talked about what and how we listen so I know where we differ and where we are the same.  I personally respect the heck out of him.  I've known many a reviewer over the years and some are fair and outstanding even if you don't like the same things they do.  There are few folks who listen to as much digital as he does.  

No the difference between the Ayre's FPGA and the Chords are too totally different design concepts, they share one common thing an FPGA can hold a set of programming instructions, like RAM.

Ayre is a Chip based Dac, and uses a specific Dac chip, and runs its own programing for filtering.

Chord uses an FPGA which runs everything, they do not use an AKM or ESS or Burr Brown dac chip, not a single oneso in terms of upgradability every parameter is instantly unpgradable.