CES 2016

I've recently had a great run with Chord products in my system including the Hugo TT DAC and now the small-sized Mojo (mobile joy) headphone DAC. On the opposite end of the spectrum from the Mojo is DAVE which the company says is the most advanced DAC they've made so far.

Like the Hugo, DAVE is built around Chord's latest FPGA technology that designer Rob Watts specializes in along with a brand new WTA (Watts Transient Aligned) filter with 164,000 taps. Inputs on the back include USB, optical, SPDIF (four of 'em!) and AES/EBU. Analog outputs include both balanced and unbalanced and a headphone jack and there are two ultra-high-speed coax 768kHz dual-data mode jacks "for use with future-unannounced Chord Electronics products."

DAVE handles pretty much any digital format including quad DSD and has a volume control on top. The new display also includes input, sampling frequency and volume setting in both alphanumeric and color-coded formats. $16,000 with the stand you see here or $13,300 without stand. DAVE starts shipping this month.