Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

Apologies guys. I’m sorta dead in the water with no DAC’s. My ODSX just arrived at Steve and he’s working on it. The Duelands are coming out and V-caps back in. Also swapping back to the Off Ramp 5 USB input that was in my ODSE. Steve is working hard on his Off Ramp 6 which is xmos based. He says it sounds awesome but can’t do hi-Rez over 96k currently. I like the xmos USB input design, So I’m waiting for him to fix the Hi-Rez issue and then I’ll upgrade to the Off Ramp 6. But the 5 is exceptional and, I think, was part of the magic of the ODSE. I’m looking forward to getting it back in.

Im waiting to hear when my LH2 will arrive....

Chord DAVE has arrived back at my dealer, and I’m waiting for them to send me my replacement. It’s interesting to note that the dealer who received it back tested it (and of course couldn’t get the DAC to make the static sound it made with me) and told me that my DAVE was the best sounding DAVE he had ever heard. Likely because it had 700 hours on it. It just proves what Guido taught me years ago; that DAC’s need a thousand hours to sound their best.

@wisnon where do you find music that has been mastered in DSD without conversion at some point to/from PCM? I find the biggest issue with DSD is that mastering and production does happen in PCM realm, and conversion/resampling introduces noise. At least if you record in PCM 24/32 bits, do all your mastering and then do a final mix-down just once to 16/44.1, there's less chance of repeatedly introducing noise.

Matt, my DAVE has made that static sound once or twice after burning in letting it play for a number of days straight.  I never turn mine off.  Was a little disturbed.  But each time I unplugged it and it was fine after that.  It hasn't happened any more since I stopped playing for days in a row.  And I still leave on all the time.

Welp. If it happens with the new one I'll decide. This one is back with Chord. 

Thanks for the info thiugh. That was VERY useful!!

wow, I wonder if they had a bad run or something.  I remember reading about something like this over on CA in a thread.  It wasn't a DAVE thread, but talking about something else.  

Guys, I have a question.  What is the advantage of keeping the gear on all the time instead of the normal standby modes (my Ayre is all standby)?  How much money does it cost to keep the gear running (I understand it's all different due to watts pulled etc) on average?

I know that start up is the toughest on components, but anything in these price ranges should have been engineered to not have problems over time with basic start up function hurting the unit in any way.  Just curious.  thanks.