Chord DACs are all FPGA based DACS designed by Rob Watts who started out as a design engineer for Zetex semi conductors. Really nice guy did some work with him about 20 years ago. He also did the development of the Zetex Class D chip amp which sounded incredible back in the early 2000's when the only other alternatives were things like the ICE chip and the TRIPath
As some one that works in the Highend and Ulrtra high end industry hearing loss isn't the issue, the fact the customers are dying is the bigger issue 🤣@@aaronmoore3050
@@seanp2k617 hypex are the current go to but zetex were in the game 20 years ago. At that time you had Tripath,B&O Icepower and then Zetex and D2 Audio. This was the infancy of the Class D amps.
Yup same with pro audio stuff. The use of a wall wart smps is a big mistake for most audio applications in my opinion. They produce all kinds of electronic noise. 😂
So true, when you get to a certain price per device (speakers, amp etc) it’s all just scams and snake oil. Can have amazing setups these days for not much money. The audiophiles can keep their overpriced parts.
Chord DACs don't claim to have exceedingly low THD, they claim to sound good. Also, this one is powered by batteries so your point is like a cow's opinion (it's moo)
But see, a connector could be a source for noise to enter the system. On the DC power bus. Before your filtering and bypass caps. Gosh I hade audiophile logic.
That would be an extra failure point and for portable audio stuff that must have extreme relability you either want the batteries wired in with solder or extremely reliable methods of connection. This is more of an issue with pro audio gear rather than something like this with its generic Blutooth lol though 😂
Audiophile forums are fun. I have found people hearing all kind of improvements after wrapping the power cord of their devices in aluminium foil, sound from speakers going out of phase when using different length of speaker cables in a setup ... etc
I can only really enjoy the budget / DIY audio forums. Much more time devoted to real, measurable differences between hardware (though not necessarily audible), and much less wasting of money on snake-oil pseudoscience. It's unbelievable how easily some people convince themselves of their ability to hear things which simply don't exist.
There's a guy on the Naim forum who has a pre-listening ritual where he uses ear drops, then holds his nose and pops his ears and has a whole heap of other guff for his "critical listening sessions" and swears by it. He sounds like the sportspeople who have lucky underpants and believe they can't perform without them. Snake oil in the main although there is some quality stuff out there but I believe they think of a price then multiply it by 10.
I'm a bit surprised by how you soldered those connections. You decided to keep the leads long, but then did not take advantage of that. It would be so much easier to solder the leads with the batteries out of the case, taking advantage of the long leads by holding them with your fingers. It would avoid the insulation damage and also make it easier to do a good soldering job (because there is no tension on the leads that you have to counteract all the time). After finishing the soldering and testing, you can flip the batteries into place, possible because the leads are longer.
puzzled by the same aspect :) also on thin wires w/ sub-optimal insulation i have better results by not tinning: i dip the wire in flux, melt the solder on the pad/connector and than introduce the wire (held by hand of soft tweezers). the solder appears to wick onto the wire quicker than it takes to melt the solder on a tinned wire (probably a better thermal contact). no-clean fluxes don't seem to encourage wire corrosion on old audio cables i've made many yrs ago...
The weird battery behavior IS him touching the positive lead with the non floating soldering iron tip. It's funny how he is not gonna know this, but how he knows that he should cut one by one the battery cables to avoid shorting the terminals, or how he blames the circuitry. Instead of using the Pace, he should have picked up the T100. But that what happens when you praise the USA company and mock on the chinese one, that the karma comes to bite you.
@Ismsanmar Is the soldering iron tip connected to mains ground? Are the batteries connected to the mains? If your answer isnt both yes, where is this completed circuit? Imagine taking someone emotionally and or personally on the internet. Pathetic. When I talk to people, I stick to asking questions and stating facts.
Found one used £399 boxed with charger……that’s more like it! But can you imagine what the audiophiles are paying for headphones to plug into these puppies!
I always look on eBay sold side of things to see what people are willing to pay for stuff. Lots of people selling stuff on eBay think the stuff is worth alot more.
As someone who's heard some expensive headphones all I can say is I want a pair. Money aside, good sound is rare and they were lovely. Whenever someone says there is no difference - there is. There is also a difference between microphones. The good ones cost $3k... Neumann U87. It's a classic mic that's used everywhere and on all the music. Nobody questions it's quality yet headphones are about as difficult to make.
Headphones actually do make a difference, although I think once you get over $500, you're paying for brand. I have a pair of HD-600s and they sound amazing with FLAC/CD audio.
I have this unit and warranty ran out, the retailer wanted 500$ to change the battery. Without any electrical knowledge just open it up, took some photos and send to battery sellers. Pop it in with my old soldering iron. No drama and running great last 3 years. FYI, it sounds great! With good headphones. Auditioned many other dac/amp, both cheaper and more expensive, this one was best to my ears.
I find it more challenging to understand what and how to measure and understand the outcome as often my ears are telling me something different. Then I try to measure again and fail again. I seem to be to stupid or my mind fools me. Perhaps one day I'll own all the best equipment and knowledge to get it right. Like one stupid thing, why do germanium diodes in an audio PSU sound better? :p
I still remember in the mid 90s some professor did a blind test in an auditorium with a load of audio experts and enthusiasts. the equipment that won overall was a cheap off the shelf amp with doorbell wire to connect the speakers :D
Best audio thing I ever got was A/B tester box for blind testing, saved me so much money when I realised theres no real difference between a lot of equipment.
@@finbenton ah ha... Makes sense. What type of A:B? Whole systems speakers and all? Or just RCA signal switching? I remember it was said especially with speakers the sales person supposedly would try to make the volume higher on the pair they hoped the buyer would purchase. So many subjective aspects to "better." And our brains are in control. I liked how Davey said, "If you paid x (exorbitant) Dollars for these wires or that item you'll hear the difference!" And with a big cat who ate the canary grin. Absolutely true.
Reminds me of the late Bob Pease open challenge. Two boxes with speaker cable in them--one has plain old lamp "zip" cord, the other has the gold-plated solid silver audiophile cord. Random A-B switching. Tell from the sound which is which. I don't think anyone ever took him up on it.
Yeah, but he also cranks that thing to 11 to destroy earbuds constantly. Not exactly normal use, so I wouldnt judge durability based on his unit eventually breaking.
@@alleycatjack4562 Oh, I'm not saying it's unreliable, at least not based on DankPod's experience. Like you said, he abuses those things (though not anymore since he got the Maraca Cracker). But would be fun to see Dave fix it. Bonus points if Wade and James are in the room during the repair.
Audiophiles! Do they really think the recording studios use $10 000 A/D/A converters and $1 000 microphone cables? Newsflash! If you think they make a difference, the music you are listening to is already ruined in the location is was recorded.
Cables? I would hope not. I do think $1000 Neumann condensor mics have advantages over $150 Shure condensor mics. But for a hobbyist/semi-professional (like a cover band on RUclips) who is just trying to make their stuff sound good, the Shure is more than adequate -- it still sounds good. What bugs me more is the horrible compression wars production (or effects on the vocals etc) that makes the official studio album tracks often sound terrible compared to say an "as live" version recorded for some radio station on cheap(er) Shure mics. The album version is supposed to be the main archival version of the song, and is supposed to sound good, gosh darn it! (Less is more with the production, don't suck all the life out of the song/vocals and make it too "perfect" -- smh some of these big-name producers can really ruin releases you were looking forward to, having heard the artists perform the songs live when the songs sounded great.) 🥲
@@steveroberts1861 Why do many audiophiles like vinyl records, even though it's objectively a terrible performing format with horrible signal-to-noise ratio compared to reel-to-reel tape (or nearly any digital format)? It doesn't make sense! They seem to forget that the whole point of vinyl records was to be a cheap consumer format, when compared to high-speed reel-to-reel.
@usopenplayer Nice comparison. Many of those mics I have were included. As expected, the reference curves of the best small condensers were almost perfect inverses of the real frequency response of the SM57.
"Don't just cut the cables like that..." "..that would be rather unpleasant." I learned that the hard way when I THOUGHT I had disconnected power to the electrical cable I was cutting. ("Romex" or NM-B in the US) Ruined my cutters and burned my hand, but that wasn't as bad as the embarrassment.
“Test for dead” obviously not part of your normal routine. Imagine if someone had a big box of spinning gears and they said stick your pecker in through this glory hole cause I’ve turned it off and you were pretty sure they had stopped spinning would you still do it without checking? Ha ha. 😮🙂
Ha! Done that as well. Some eejit pulled a wire from another room (on another fuse) through the wall. Mighty flash and bang and a hole in my cable cutters. We had to strip out all cabling (done in the 60s on the cheap...) when we got the house. The previous owner also did some... very questionable wiring himself.
Yup, I've done that too, took a good old chunk out of my dikes before the breaker popped (didn't cop anything fortunately, though it was an RCD/GFCI protected circuit so might have been quick enough to not notice. Switched to using exclusively certified VDE tools at that point...). FWIW We call that cable "TPS" here, never really got the hatred for it in the US, we use it for pretty much all fixed single-phase cabling here.
That bluetooth module is the weakest link in that audio foolery chain. Its a $10 US part on mouser. Neighbour likely just paid more than that for the two replacement batteries. Not impresed.
That’s OK. Two or three FPGAs and several handfuls of polypropylene capacitors should fix up the unspeakable artifacts introduced by the Bluetooth module.
Is it actually used for audio? Their poly unit uses WiFi for shuffling music about, and Bluetooth as a control channel for the companies own app, which you don't actually use for playing music
Chord uses a FPGA DAC. I had to look up what that meant and found this: "FPGA-based DACs use a combination of digital signal processing and analog circuitry to convert digital signals into analog signals. FPGAs are essentially reprogrammable logic chips that can be configured to perform a wide range of digital signal processing tasks."
I just did almost the same thing for a neighbor. I did not realize how expensive they were. He also wanted me to add a super capacitor in parallel with each battery to do something to make the audio better. Evidently it was done by somebody on a forum. It was a bear getting those super capacitors in there. I also found that there is a difference between a ‘protected’ lithium battery and ‘non-protected’ batteries. These units need ‘protected’ lithium batteries. Also, as you saw, on that one battery, the pos and neg are stupid close to each other. (I did short it out accidentally but just a small spark). I used Orbtronics protected batteries.
@@lasskinn474 Evidently. He brought me just plain 18650 batteries, but when I dissected the old battery I saw that tiny pcb and dug further to find they needed the protection circuit. I was amazed that the tiny pcb did all it does. 2 Orbronic protected batteries were $33 usd.
It has an in-house FPGA as a DAC which is pretty esoteric as far as most Hi-Fi DACs go. And probably why it has a following, high price etc, as it likely has a unique sound signature.
I love Audiophool videos. The audio cable fanboys are the best. I once watched a video of someone gushing about how audiophile cables improved the sound quality in their system, so being an electronics geek, I thought I'd test one of my RCA / Phono cables that I have on my bench, and respectfully post a comment on the video: '' I've just tested a standard, cheap, homemade RCA cable on my lab bench using a Hewlett Packard 3314A Function Generator, a Keysight U3402A Digital Multimeter and a Siglent SDS 1104X Digital Storage Oscilloscope. The negative 3dB points ranged from below 20Hz to several Megahertz, and the resistance of both conductors in the cable was around 0.1 Ohms. The sinewave didn't change at all until the negative 3dB points were getting close'' I think he said that he can hear a difference between cables. 🤔
Have you tried listening on a nice sounding system? On a quantum computer setup they take advantage of the capacitance of the insulation of the leads of a sensor wire, for instance. On the cable side, I don't understand why very thick and insulated cables sound better, nor do I understand why a bit of cobalt in magnets makes speakers sound better (alnico). I have no more than guesses.
@@CammyFi can't or can? Cables and wires do sound differently. But I haven't found an expensive cable that sounded really good. A thin cable often sounds better and almost nobody uses them. Kinda strange.
I am a recovered audiophile who then converted to "pro" (studio) gear as it is better value, fits my job and I prefer "flat" sound it turns out. Not sure what headphones you neighbour has but that is often where the real money is, the headphone amp is kind of just an accessory to that price wise. The price of amps is often just a 1:1 map to older headphone amps that were genuinely expensive to engineer before the "battery hack" lithium cells allow, FPGA and class D etc has largely made a headphone amp a "software" exercise, though the proprietary FPGA bitstream is still valuable I guess. What you are really paying for is the expensive staff of the manufacturer - the scale is tiny for audiophile, unlike "pro".
Me too, I get tired of Stax, Audeze Focal etc etc and i find my own paradise with a cheap philips bitstream dac chip based, and a wolfson dac one, a Lehmann linear amplifier, philips rca cables and my akg k712 and k240 upscalled to outperform with ease fancy "high end" hps, i havent find that mids on other brands.
Nothing can beat a pure class A amplifier. Class D amplifiers, even with the fastest comparators in the feedback loop, do have to contend with the hysteresis of the inductors, even when they are air cored. You can see the phase group delay on the oscilloscope, and you hear it with the violin, the cymbals and the piano.
Love how RUclips subtitle makes it audio file. „Files off all the sharp digital edges of“. I remember reading something along the lines of „the noble 32 bit high end chip“ in a audio magazine and it was just a normal ARM7 micro.
I was just looking at a "valve" preamp box, with, of course, separate power supply box, with full bridge tube rectifier, Hand wound transformers... starting price: €22,000
Wow! What are your thoughts on most electric guitarists/electric bass guitarists still using vintage or reproduction vintage tube amplifiers even though a digital modelling amp would demonstrably produce a 100% accurate simulation of the tube amplifier, without the hassle of carting heavy tube amplifiers around? Is it just a part of the Fender Stratocaster and Fender Precision Bass and the rest of the range becoming effectively classical instruments (the design hasn't changed for 70+ years and probably never will), therefore the original amplifiers that went along with these are (in a sense) classical instruments too?
@@TassieLorenzo I've heard some really high end tubes, really high end PA systems in my industry as well as stuff like the Axe effect box that can do what you said, it simulates everything and it is basically bang on the money and very impressive.
You can build a hell of a lot of electronic stuff for cheap using quality components, but getting the programming of FGPAs right takes a lot of time and experience and that is where the costs mount up.
Hey Drew, why don't you walk over with Dave to return it, give the owner your thoughts. Better yet, maybe venture out and audition some high end 2CH gear. So many Pied Pipers leading sheep down a road while wearing a sign on their back that reads... "Follow me to hypocrisy" For the record, people can do and believe what they want....but why be judgemental?
@@stever7638 A great reason for OP to be so judgmental is those are also the sort of people who think they should have free use of my time and skills to fix their shit. Pay for a new one or pay to have your overpriced garbage fixed. It may not be the case with Dave's neighbor but I've been around too many audiofools to disagree with OP. OP is doing the Tech Gods' own work. You, however, are quite hypocritical.
the big problem with audio is it cannot sound better than the source , GIGO . no matter how much you spend the result cannot make a bad source song better. a mate I used to work with was black disk fanatic and swore by a new vinyl noise filter , until it was pointed out to him that if there was vinyl noise in the audio spectrum then that filter was removing information from the sound track as well
I was always impressed by the audiophile speaker cables made with unicorn bone and human skin that cost $100 a foot. Macintosh owners usually fall for that stuff.
I've seen and listened to some BS setups - guy at work had spent literally TENS of thousands of pounds (UK) on Cyrus CD player, pre and mono block amps, Chord DAC costing over 10k and something like a grand on two RCA cables. The speaker cables were as thick as my thumb and were raised above the floor on special 'ceramic things' whatever that cost I have no idea. All of this hooked up to some boomy/flappy sounding 1970's floorstanders - it sounded absolutely bloody awful!
🤣🤣🤣 a friend's neighbor had some big old 1970s speakers that she was quite fond of. Fair enough...but all she really needed was a $200 CD player and a $300 amp. She went shopping, by herself, and got talked into buying an entire Mark Levinson system, costing many, many thousands of dollars. Tragic, sad, exploitative...and definitely not cool 🙄
That wouldn't even justify a £400 price tag. We are in the same business model as luxury goods like Louis Vuitton hand bags, where the price tag is entirely artificial.
@@lolilollolilol7773 You are speaking about topic that you don't know anything. Item price is not reflected by how much components cost. Most of the price comes from RnD. You can't get that sound for 400. Good converters are used by studios and audiophiles. Yes you can get decent DAC for few hundreds, but if you want high end specs it will cost you.
@@BlankBrain Yes, they run some digital filters in the FPGA that can have a sharp cutoff. But the FPGA is not a DAC, so they must still use some external conversion to analog. Probably with an off the shelf DAC, since I don't think they use a custom resistor ladder or PWM implementation.
I've watched the full video and I'm sure Dave can assemble something better in the same time for approx $45 spare parts and a 3d printer for the case. As noted elsewhere, those battery terminals want to be bridged and apparently a 50 ct battery box was too vulgar as lithium lasts forever. Also, Bluetooth aptX cannot transfer 24bit so a 1$ TI DAC will get the most out of anything there. If your neighbour wants to improve sound, support this channel or send me a oscilloscope and good soldering iron. I want to get into this audio business.
$4500 and the plastic case looks like a $5 thing. But since I have seen "actively shielded" audio cables with batteries and blue LEDs ($200 each) I believe everything... Or a $1000 power cable.
You forgot to mention the exotic wood speaker cable lifters which are designed to prevent high frequency loss by carpet fibers absorbing the HF electromagnetic energy. BTW I have an extra bottle of cryogenic snake oil if you need some. BTW I used Stabilant 22 to fix the crummy immobilizer antenna connections on the Lucas ignition interrupt module in my Mazda Miata. It has reliably read the chip in the key for several years now.
I'm wondering if on the other side there might just be some somewhat larger electrolytic capacitors as filter capacitors in the power chain, which, would potentially register as a short when they're not charged? I think that might explain the sort of behavior you are seeing. If the thing was getting external power when you put the batteries in, or, just had been charged recently enough, then the protection circuits on the batteries might not trigger, but, with the caps empty, maybe they would, and sort of get stuck that way until it's put back in without that problem? I could definitely imagine a scenario like that. It's kind of too bad that we couldn't see the other side of the board. I was really surprised with all the weird stuff that came up in the process that you didn't at least look at the circuit there, though, I do sort of understand why it would be potentially risky to unscrew things.
Equipment like this surely does sound good, as you say, but as an audio person myself, I can say with relative confidence that whatever ultra fine-grain benefit this product supposedly bestows (as compared to its lower-price competitors), is completely dwarfed by much simpler (cheaper) to fix issues, that themselves are ultimately dwarfed by the actual recording itself. If you're really interested in the highest level quality of output (within reason), get some decent speakers, shielded cables (no need to spring for gold-plated), and a good amplifier with an EQ that you like. And remember: whatever equipment you have, you're always limited by the quality of the recording itself, what microphones were used, how it was mixed and mastered, etc. There is never a one-size-fits-all solution to audio. (And if you are using a record player, make sure it's reasonable quality build so that the rotational speed is consistent, make sure that the needle is in good shape, belts aren't loose, and clean your records before you play them; just know that the sound quality of a record degrades with every playthrough.)
The reason for gold plated connectors is that they corrode less. You can spray DeoxIT every six months to a year or buy gold. If you frequently plug and unplug your equipment, it's not an issue. Once I get things the way I like them, everything sits for years.
@@BlankBrain If you're worried about potential corrosion then gold will definitely prevent that, though I have to say I've never run into corrosion on standard plated cables. However, gold-plated cables seem to also be marketed with the idea that they will somehow provide superior quality transmission of the signal versus standard plated cables, and if you're having that much trouble with keeping a good connection, it's probably down to the connector port, not the cable. So if you're putting stuff outdoors, then maybe gold-plated is warranted, otherwise I wouldn't personally worry about, though I suppose the gold plating is not the real expense in cables.
@@natedawww I never had problems with speaker cables, but RCA connectors were the worst offenders. I mostly use balanced ¼" TRS cables, and even those would sometimes act up. Channels would go low volume or crackle. Just unplugging them and plugging them back in worked. Sometimes I'd wipe them off with alcohol. The best connectors would be pure silver for a few days. Then they'd start tarnishing. Silver oxide doesn't conduct as well as silver.
@@BlankBrain Ah yes, RCA connectors. I was indeed thinking of 1/4-inch speaker cables. Thankfully, RCA cables aren't used as much anymore, but they do seem to tarnish in a way that the 1/4-inches don't, so I could see getting gold-plated for those specifically if you needed. And if they were silver-plated, they would indeed tarnish almost immediately... Sadly alcohol isn't going to be much use, but having polished silver dishware before, I can't imagine using it on cables without making a horrid mess!
the record does not degrade. it has a very slow dynamically changing self powered low pass built in that dynamically adapts to the frequency response of the main listeners ear... jk😂
The multi-cell battery may be balanced using a management system. A quadcopter drone battery pack has a read-out that shows the individual cell voltage as a health check.
I'm shocked at the use of standard consumer grade cells to replace the correct audio grade factory fitted ones. It's no wonder the unit didn't work properly with them installed. I can only shudder at how bad it would have sounded if it did manage to function. *edit* 23:18 There you go, when it eventually did turn on the noise is so bad that it can even be heard coming out of the box. Use audio grade cells people!
yes if the cells are in series you need to disconnect the high side cell 1st and reconnect high side last otherwise the bms may crowbar due to the loss of ground reference (depends on topology but just to be safe) and never disconnect/reconnect fully charged cells 4v is nearly fully charged (4.1-4.2v)
Being the dual rails, if the insulation on the batteries was compromised, it would short the one battery. Negatives shorted together, the one positive would be shorted to the negative. Hope I didn't make it confusing. Doubt that both batteries insulation was damaged.
I've got their Mojo and Poly unit, it's for running some big old headphones that my amplifier will barely touch, some classic jobs from the 70's that look far nicer than they sound! :) But oh boy when I run my in ear monitor speaker things with it, it's sounds *beautiful*, but it's a tad impractical for that kinda use
Dave! howcome using the wirecutters to cut both strands of battery wire can short the battery, but when installed in the misbehaving circuit board suddenly the built in cell protection circuit can prevent shorting the battery.?
In both case the battery will get shorted out, in both cases the protection circuit would protect it. Its still bad practice to short out lithium batteries regardless of what type they are.
It's a general tip. Not all cells have a short protection circuit like this one. This one happens to, so should be protected, but not good practice to cut both wires at once in any case.
I tried to register at the eevblog forum but every time I try it says "bots are not allowed to register". Any ideas anyone? I'm not a bot, honest. I've tried a couple of different browsers. There's a dropdown field "are you a bot" which I've answered both yes and no to no avail. :)
At least the thing makes sense from a electronics point of view. Using batteries and linear regulators as a low noise power supply is actually kinda smart for audiophiles. I would have expected them to go all out on the soundwood and directional cables in this :D
@@peterlarkin762 This might be a very USA reference point but look up Nickelodeon Kids Tech from the 2000s, same aesthetic vibe. I forgot Late 90s and Early 2000s were all about bubbles and circles. Even had a wallpaper that was poorly rendered bubbles.
To be honest chord dacs are quite nice, they are more special to me than most audiophile stuff based on ESS, Burr Brown and other "off the shelf" stuff. The higher end is crazy expensive and gets into bs teritory with all the upscaling stuff. They're cool if you can afford them but it's like buying a nice car or watch, it's not exactly rational.
@dave you can’t solder batteries with an earthed iron 🤦, that’s why the battery protection kicked in on the battery. 🙂 I use a battery powered iron (ie not mains earthed) or a butane powered iron. 😅
Check the internet, its 1800£ retail price. For 4000 you can get table top version and its completely different device. If you never checked it in a good system, then there is no reason to say that it is pointless device. Expensive yes, but professional studio interfaces can be 5x more expensive.
I reckon it has some sort of balancing circuitry (the old batteries were pretty much identical voltage) and that was going a bit bananas when just one battery was connected
@@user-yk1cw8im4h amazing how the battery is soldered in :)... you have to cut off connecters to solder the thing in on wacky pads that are microns apart. Made in UK? You are right it needs small hands of a child to do that.
@user-yk1cw8im4h Last time I checked (2019 or so), Chord were using a very good electronic assembly contractor based on the edge of Basildon in Essex.
Probably linked with the fact that those cells ain't in paralelle but provide 2 different rails, if minus voltage is there first maybe it cause a problem, something like that.
When it comes to audio gear I find that audio quality vs price is very much like an exponential curve. A device such as a DAC the sweet spot for "value" would probably be around the $200-$400 mark. This will get you 80% or so of the audio quality. Spend any more than that and you are only gaining single-digit increases in quality but spending exponentially more. That "Hugo" DAC is probably around the 90% mark for the price-point. You could spend tens of thousands of dollars on a DAC and only gain another 5% of quality over that. I have a good friend who had spent over $150,000 on a home HI-FI.. mine on the other hand? $300 speakers (which I had to repair, that's why I got them cheap.. they are probably worth $1000) and an amplifier made in 1983 by NAD which I got for the cost of a carton of beer (a common currency here in Australia). My stereo really does sound fantastic for the money.. my friends' stereo absolutely sounds better.. but $149,650 better? NO WAY!! Mine sounds 80% as good as his.
Regarding the battery situation, maybe there is a balancing circuitry (to ensure equal + and - voltages), which initially connected two batteries in parallel - causing current spike, that tripped the second battery protection, which confused that balancer, causing it to basically short the second battery. Just a theory.
All these opinions about audio quality makes me want to listen to my music collection on C-90 cassettes from the 80's. Unfortunately my mint Sony TC-KB920S has a mechanical problem...
I can blame, taking things apart, for the knowledge I've acquired. Just finished my BIG LED project. 2'*2' addressable 5050 RGB. Just have to fabricate 4 aluminum solder paws for the footprints. 😂😆
Yes... $4500? I would imagine a top-quality very ruggedly built one to cost maybe $500. (Think of professional gear for recording studios or traveling musicians.) There's high-end and then there's H$GH-end!
I bet its an anti-repair feature they added to make you send it to them to have the batteries replaced. Then they charge you extra for attempting to change the batteries yourself.
I hope you get better soon. Very weird "fault" indeed. I wonder if there's a battery balancing circuit at play, but it certainly shouldn't create a dead short across the cell. You might look into some non-serrated wide-jaw pliers for handling wire with low temp insulation (knipex 35-12-115 for example).
Could it be that you need to put it in some power off state before servicing it? Like holding the power button in for 10 seconds to completely powering it down and not just soft-switching it of?
"I don't see the value..." - well its not a TV, but audio device, so you could probably hear the value if you have a decent rest of the system, and not 100$ headphones or speakers/amp! $4.5k is a bit too expansive for Hugo 2 (like 2-3x), thats true. Its always interesting to hear people without any experience in hifi comment the hifi, because they kinda know about electronics (even though they never built or listened a hifi component).
My guess is that the switch was ON when you soldered the first battery. At that point any OP AMP would work with improper bias and the output stage could drain quite some current triggering some protection at that point. From an engineering perspective IMHO only a fool would make the dual rail voltages that way though...
I would not have touched this. $4500 sucker price. One wrong slip of the soldering iron and your neighbour would be expecting you to replace it. No matter what. He was probably quoted $4000 to replace the batteries by OEM.
When you start to have money to buy those you have already started to lose your hearing. so you may miss added increased quality from those products. Maybe same that I would liked to have my Genelec speakers like 10y earlier when I got those. I have already started to lose hearing range from hi freq.
Hey Dave. Is it possible that the protection circuit in cells doesn"t play nice with protection circuit of the device self? for sure there is a charging ic on there. sometimes that gives some weird fault if there is a second protection between it and the cells. Maybe?
@@farzadmotazedian6864 I've had that issue before with flashlights where the cell has protection, but the flashlight had a BMS and the two would start fighting each other once the voltage got low enough, so it could well be that the new cells have protection that's causing the problem
Only problem is let's protect the device by shorting the battery. Honestly I was almost thinking he bridged the pads somehow. I think the batteries are supposed to have thermal fuses that go open. Also maybe the 4 volts is the charging vs the discharge voltage.
@@MatthewSuffidy yes batteries have thermal fuses but you do not want to trip those... built in protection is much better for a low volume design like this.
I would not be surprised if there is a BMS in the device itself fighting the BMS in the batteries you put in. Did you peel the old ones open to see what (if any) BMS stuff is inside? If this is the case, you connect just one cell, the BMS in the device will detect a much higher voltage on one of the batteries and will try to discharge that to equalize the voltage with the other (disconnected) battery.
Your soldering was kinda shoddy on the second battery, with the cables extending way past the pad... I'm sure you shorted the positive pad to the ground pour around it.
Personally I got a Vantec NBA-200U for $20 brand new. The only issue I have with it is a DC offset issue. Honestly it sounds really good for the price. There's no way I'd pay what that that Hugo thing costs.
Case is CNCed aluminium, whether that makes a difference is another matter. When it came out it was unusual in that it claimed to be a high quality portable DAC hence the li Ion batteries, by today’s standards it’s performance is very average, but audiophiles will always pay for a CNC case and the novel FPGA concept DAC and suffer the price tag and average performance. Each to their own I guess.
Chord DACs are all FPGA based DACS designed by Rob Watts who started out as a design engineer for Zetex semi conductors. Really nice guy did some work with him about 20 years ago. He also did the development of the Zetex Class D chip amp which sounded incredible back in the early 2000's when the only other alternatives were things like the ICE chip and the TRIPath
As some one that works in the Highend and Ulrtra high end industry hearing loss isn't the issue, the fact the customers are dying is the bigger issue 🤣@@aaronmoore3050
@@aaronmoore3050 man they just say they feel the notes you can't hear.
Hypex are another in that space making high-quality chip amps, or maybe that’s who you’re referring to?
@@seanp2k617 hypex are the current go to but zetex were in the game 20 years ago. At that time you had Tripath,B&O Icepower and then Zetex and D2 Audio. This was the infancy of the Class D amps.
@@gr4eme1975 why do class D sound so cold and sterile then?
Alan Parsons quote - "Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music... Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment. "
That's a damn good quote!
perfect !
Yup same with pro audio stuff. The use of a wall wart smps is a big mistake for most audio applications in my opinion. They produce all kinds of electronic noise. 😂
So true, when you get to a certain price per device (speakers, amp etc) it’s all just scams and snake oil.
Can have amazing setups these days for not much money. The audiophiles can keep their overpriced parts.
Ummm… Actually it is not his actual quote (ref. Reddit)
DAC by Hugo, the new perfume for Audiophiles
(sniff sniff) smells like... yeah, you got it right... bovine excrement! :D
Based on the circuit design and cheap AC to DC converter it smells like fine rotting fish.😂😂😂
Never ever paying that kind of money to this design. Unbelievable that people pay anything.
@@christopherleubner6633 Surströmming?
Finally, after all these years, Dave apologises for his voice!
He should have used a better DAC. :)
Have to say, I prefer it! (Sorry Dave).
@@BM-jy6cb I was thinking the same LOL
Sometimes I forget the ultrasonic cleaner is on when Im watching his videos.
😂😂
those battery terminals are awfully close to each other.
Looked one wire wanted to touch the other
Duh, they needed a few pF extra capacitance 😂
@@thomasandrews9355 yes, the plus of the 2nd battery has a copper pube that wants to touch the other side
@@RandyLott If you don't preserve the differential signalling quality of your batteries, you may as well listen to a CD like a cretin.
@@buckstarchaser2376But it's a wasted effort unless you twist and screen the cables....
0.0000000000000000001% THD, -10000000dB noise floor, $5 switchmode AC adaptor with 100mV of ripple
Who would win?
100mV? That is very optimistic (China always surprise!)
@@kyoudaikenPick your fighter. 😂
Chord DACs don't claim to have exceedingly low THD, they claim to sound good.
Also, this one is powered by batteries so your point is like a cow's opinion (it's moo)
@@MikeDawson1 A $45 DAC can sound good too.
$4500 and they couldn't spare a few extra cents for a connector to make the battery removable.
But see, a connector could be a source for noise to enter the system. On the DC power bus. Before your filtering and bypass caps.
Gosh I hade audiophile logic.
That would be an extra failure point and for portable audio stuff that must have extreme relability you either want the batteries wired in with solder or extremely reliable methods of connection. This is more of an issue with pro audio gear rather than something like this with its generic Blutooth lol though 😂
You’re not supposed to fix it.
that wouldn't make cents
connector has insertion loss soooooo (-8
Audiophile forums are fun.
I have found people hearing all kind of improvements after wrapping the power cord of their devices in aluminium foil, sound from speakers going out of phase when using different length of speaker cables in a setup ... etc
I can only really enjoy the budget / DIY audio forums. Much more time devoted to real, measurable differences between hardware (though not necessarily audible), and much less wasting of money on snake-oil pseudoscience.
It's unbelievable how easily some people convince themselves of their ability to hear things which simply don't exist.
As long as they don't talk about "audiophile router"...
There's a guy on the Naim forum who has a pre-listening ritual where he uses ear drops, then holds his nose and pops his ears and has a whole heap of other guff for his "critical listening sessions" and swears by it. He sounds like the sportspeople who have lucky underpants and believe they can't perform without them.
Snake oil in the main although there is some quality stuff out there but I believe they think of a price then multiply it by 10.
That must be one really long speaker cable to cause a noticeable phase shift at audio frequencies.
Most of what people think they hear in the audiophile world only exists in their heads.
“You will hear the difference! Just don’t expect your friends to.” Omg lol you funny
Made in England... $4500
$300 for the compnents and case.
$4200 to figure out how to make it not leak oil...
For that price you are pretty much guaranteed not to find the dreaded word Lucas anywhere!
@@peterhaan9068 You find the dreaded word Lucas on aircraft electronics these days. Just let that thought settle next time you're on an Airbus!
Please Tell me Lucas is not still around. Owned a Mini and an Austin Healy Sprite back in the Sixties and Seventies. English made Crap.
The components for that DAC are well under $300
Lucas the prince of darkness…
Lucas headlamp switch. Off, flicker and dim. 😂
I'm a bit surprised by how you soldered those connections. You decided to keep the leads long, but then did not take advantage of that.
It would be so much easier to solder the leads with the batteries out of the case, taking advantage of the long leads by holding them with your fingers.
It would avoid the insulation damage and also make it easier to do a good soldering job (because there is no tension on the leads that you have to counteract all the time).
After finishing the soldering and testing, you can flip the batteries into place, possible because the leads are longer.
He's got a cold. Probably a bit of brain fog going on.
puzzled by the same aspect :)
also on thin wires w/ sub-optimal insulation i have better results by not tinning: i dip the wire in flux, melt the solder on the pad/connector and than introduce the wire (held by hand of soft tweezers). the solder appears to wick onto the wire quicker than it takes to melt the solder on a tinned wire (probably a better thermal contact). no-clean fluxes don't seem to encourage wire corrosion on old audio cables i've made many yrs ago...
Honestly, the sound improvement of Chord DACs are really impressive and memorable
The weird battery behavior could be a rebalancing circuitry going crazy when only one battery is connected.
The weird battery behavior IS him touching the positive lead with the non floating soldering iron tip. It's funny how he is not gonna know this, but how he knows that he should cut one by one the battery cables to avoid shorting the terminals, or how he blames the circuitry. Instead of using the Pace, he should have picked up the T100. But that what happens when you praise the USA company and mock on the chinese one, that the karma comes to bite you.
@@Ismsanmar LOL, you need to engage your brain before trying such embarressing comments.
@@Ismsanmar And what do you think is a non-isolated iron doing with a completely isolated set of batteries...?
@@EEVblog Haha. Good comeback! @Ismsanmar, it looks like your comment came back to bite you! 😀
@Ismsanmar
Is the soldering iron tip connected to mains ground? Are the batteries connected to the mains? If your answer isnt both yes, where is this completed circuit? Imagine taking someone emotionally and or personally on the internet. Pathetic. When I talk to people, I stick to asking questions and stating facts.
At the mentioning of the 0-8-15 BT module I spilled my coffee 😀
Found one used £399 boxed with charger……that’s more like it! But can you imagine what the audiophiles are paying for headphones to plug into these puppies!
Shit Tons.
I always look on eBay sold side of things to see what people are willing to pay for stuff. Lots of people selling stuff on eBay think the stuff is worth alot more.
As someone who's heard some expensive headphones all I can say is I want a pair. Money aside, good sound is rare and they were lovely. Whenever someone says there is no difference - there is. There is also a difference between microphones. The good ones cost $3k... Neumann U87. It's a classic mic that's used everywhere and on all the music. Nobody questions it's quality yet headphones are about as difficult to make.
@@GregM Thats the way. Advanced, sold, then laugh.
Headphones actually do make a difference, although I think once you get over $500, you're paying for brand. I have a pair of HD-600s and they sound amazing with FLAC/CD audio.
I have this unit and warranty ran out, the retailer wanted 500$ to change the battery. Without any electrical knowledge just open it up, took some photos and send to battery sellers. Pop it in with my old soldering iron. No drama and running great last 3 years.
FYI, it sounds great! With good headphones. Auditioned many other dac/amp, both cheaper and more expensive, this one was best to my ears.
I kinda love the audiophools, they put my tool and measurement equipment spending into perspective. :P
I find it more challenging to understand what and how to measure and understand the outcome as often my ears are telling me something different. Then I try to measure again and fail again. I seem to be to stupid or my mind fools me. Perhaps one day I'll own all the best equipment and knowledge to get it right. Like one stupid thing, why do germanium diodes in an audio PSU sound better? :p
I still remember in the mid 90s some professor did a blind test in an auditorium with a load of audio experts and enthusiasts. the equipment that won overall was a cheap off the shelf amp with doorbell wire to connect the speakers :D
And they’ll come up with some fluff as to why they were fooled or just completely ignore it and keep on motoring on.
Any reference? I'm curious.
Best audio thing I ever got was A/B tester box for blind testing, saved me so much money when I realised theres no real difference between a lot of equipment.
@@finbenton ah ha... Makes sense. What type of A:B? Whole systems speakers and all? Or just RCA signal switching?
I remember it was said especially with speakers the sales person supposedly would try to make the volume higher on the pair they hoped the buyer would purchase.
So many subjective aspects to "better." And our brains are in control. I liked how Davey said, "If you paid x (exorbitant) Dollars for these wires or that item you'll hear the difference!" And with a big cat who ate the canary grin. Absolutely true.
Reminds me of the late Bob Pease open challenge. Two boxes with speaker cable in them--one has plain old lamp "zip" cord, the other has the gold-plated solid silver audiophile cord. Random A-B switching. Tell from the sound which is which. I don't think anyone ever took him up on it.
Selling $200 device with a $4300 markup. Should we clean all the THT flux off? Nah, that would cost too much.
DankPods had a Chord Mojo. I think his also broke. Was thinking a repair/teardown collab sort of thing with EEVblog would be really interesting.
I've been watching him since I was kid. That could happen: c
Yeah, but he also cranks that thing to 11 to destroy earbuds constantly. Not exactly normal use, so I wouldnt judge durability based on his unit eventually breaking.
@@alleycatjack4562 Oh, I'm not saying it's unreliable, at least not based on DankPod's experience. Like you said, he abuses those things (though not anymore since he got the Maraca Cracker). But would be fun to see Dave fix it. Bonus points if Wade and James are in the room during the repair.
Dankpods already broke the maraca cracker!
Feel better Dave!!
Audiophiles! Do they really think the recording studios use $10 000 A/D/A converters and $1 000 microphone cables? Newsflash! If you think they make a difference, the music you are listening to is already ruined in the location is was recorded.
You have to remember that audiophiles only listen to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. They live in the B/W era.
Cables? I would hope not. I do think $1000 Neumann condensor mics have advantages over $150 Shure condensor mics. But for a hobbyist/semi-professional (like a cover band on RUclips) who is just trying to make their stuff sound good, the Shure is more than adequate -- it still sounds good. What bugs me more is the horrible compression wars production (or effects on the vocals etc) that makes the official studio album tracks often sound terrible compared to say an "as live" version recorded for some radio station on cheap(er) Shure mics. The album version is supposed to be the main archival version of the song, and is supposed to sound good, gosh darn it! (Less is more with the production, don't suck all the life out of the song/vocals and make it too "perfect" -- smh some of these big-name producers can really ruin releases you were looking forward to, having heard the artists perform the songs live when the songs sounded great.) 🥲
@@steveroberts1861 Why do many audiophiles like vinyl records, even though it's objectively a terrible performing format with horrible signal-to-noise ratio compared to reel-to-reel tape (or nearly any digital format)? It doesn't make sense! They seem to forget that the whole point of vinyl records was to be a cheap consumer format, when compared to high-speed reel-to-reel.
Link to microphone comparison tests. Trying to find what makes a good mic. ruclips.net/video/4Bma2TE-x6M/видео.htmlsi=2ZzBX0B5xmU3xWRY
@usopenplayer Nice comparison. Many of those mics I have were included.
As expected, the reference curves of the best small condensers were almost perfect inverses of the real frequency response of the SM57.
"Don't just cut the cables like that..." "..that would be rather unpleasant." I learned that the hard way when I THOUGHT I had disconnected power to the electrical cable I was cutting. ("Romex" or NM-B in the US) Ruined my cutters and burned my hand, but that wasn't as bad as the embarrassment.
“Test for dead” obviously not part of your normal routine.
Imagine if someone had a big box of spinning gears and they said stick your pecker in through this glory hole cause I’ve turned it off and you were pretty sure they had stopped spinning would you still do it without checking? Ha ha. 😮🙂
Ha! Done that as well. Some eejit pulled a wire from another room (on another fuse) through the wall. Mighty flash and bang and a hole in my cable cutters.
We had to strip out all cabling (done in the 60s on the cheap...) when we got the house. The previous owner also did some... very questionable wiring himself.
Yup, I've done that too, took a good old chunk out of my dikes before the breaker popped (didn't cop anything fortunately, though it was an RCD/GFCI protected circuit so might have been quick enough to not notice. Switched to using exclusively certified VDE tools at that point...).
FWIW We call that cable "TPS" here, never really got the hatred for it in the US, we use it for pretty much all fixed single-phase cabling here.
That bluetooth module is the weakest link in that audio foolery chain. Its a $10 US part on mouser. Neighbour likely just paid more than that for the two replacement batteries. Not impresed.
You don't have to use Bluetooth.
That’s OK. Two or three FPGAs and several handfuls of polypropylene capacitors should fix up the unspeakable artifacts introduced by the Bluetooth module.
Yup I 😂 when I saw that.
@@veryboringname. If you didn't want to use Bluetooth you'd buy the $600 mojo over the $4500 Hugo! 😉
Is it actually used for audio?
Their poly unit uses WiFi for shuffling music about, and Bluetooth as a control channel for the companies own app, which you don't actually use for playing music
You should have used audio grade batteries. They are made with a wooden case around them to reduce resonances as the lithium floats around the cell.
They also have the solid silver cables so the electrons can go through faster
I'm a viewer in the Old Dart!! This video really spoke to me when Dave said "Hi to all the viewers in the Old Dart"!! That's ME!!!
Chord uses a FPGA DAC. I had to look up what that meant and found this: "FPGA-based DACs use a combination of digital signal processing and analog circuitry to convert digital signals into analog signals. FPGAs are essentially reprogrammable logic chips that can be configured to perform a wide range of digital signal processing tasks."
I just did almost the same thing for a neighbor. I did not realize how expensive they were. He also wanted me to add a super capacitor in parallel with each battery to do something to make the audio better. Evidently it was done by somebody on a forum. It was a bear getting those super capacitors in there. I also found that there is a difference between a ‘protected’ lithium battery and ‘non-protected’ batteries. These units need ‘protected’ lithium batteries. Also, as you saw, on that one battery, the pos and neg are stupid close to each other. (I did short it out accidentally but just a small spark). I used Orbtronics protected batteries.
huh they didn't put a low voltage protection circuit on the board and rely just on the batterys own?
@@lasskinn474 Evidently. He brought me just plain 18650 batteries, but when I dissected the old battery I saw that tiny pcb and dug further to find they needed the protection circuit. I was amazed that the tiny pcb did all it does. 2 Orbronic protected batteries were $33 usd.
It has an in-house FPGA as a DAC which is pretty esoteric as far as most Hi-Fi DACs go. And probably why it has a following, high price etc, as it likely has a unique sound signature.
I love Audiophool videos.
The audio cable fanboys are the best. I once watched a video of someone gushing about how audiophile cables improved the sound quality in their system, so being an electronics geek, I thought I'd test one of my RCA / Phono cables that I have on my bench, and respectfully post a comment on the video:
'' I've just tested a standard, cheap, homemade RCA cable on my lab bench using a Hewlett Packard 3314A Function Generator, a Keysight U3402A Digital Multimeter and a Siglent SDS 1104X Digital Storage Oscilloscope. The negative 3dB points ranged from below 20Hz to several Megahertz, and the resistance of both conductors in the cable was around 0.1 Ohms. The sinewave didn't change at all until the negative 3dB points were getting close''
I think he said that he can hear a difference between cables. 🤔
Have you tried listening on a nice sounding system? On a quantum computer setup they take advantage of the capacitance of the insulation of the leads of a sensor wire, for instance. On the cable side, I don't understand why very thick and insulated cables sound better, nor do I understand why a bit of cobalt in magnets makes speakers sound better (alnico). I have no more than guesses.
Audiophools believe they can hear the difference between USB and Optical Cables as well as fuses
@@CammyFi can't or can? Cables and wires do sound differently. But I haven't found an expensive cable that sounded really good. A thin cable often sounds better and almost nobody uses them. Kinda strange.
@@edmaster3147 meant can
Sinewave testing is like testing a 4wd on a freeway.
I like his creative use of the word 'wank'. Excellent stuff lol
I am a recovered audiophile who then converted to "pro" (studio) gear as it is better value, fits my job and I prefer "flat" sound it turns out. Not sure what headphones you neighbour has but that is often where the real money is, the headphone amp is kind of just an accessory to that price wise. The price of amps is often just a 1:1 map to older headphone amps that were genuinely expensive to engineer before the "battery hack" lithium cells allow, FPGA and class D etc has largely made a headphone amp a "software" exercise, though the proprietary FPGA bitstream is still valuable I guess. What you are really paying for is the expensive staff of the manufacturer - the scale is tiny for audiophile, unlike "pro".
Me too, I get tired of Stax, Audeze Focal etc etc and i find my own paradise with a cheap philips bitstream dac chip based, and a wolfson dac one, a Lehmann linear amplifier, philips rca cables and my akg k712 and k240 upscalled to outperform with ease fancy "high end" hps, i havent find that mids on other brands.
Nothing can beat a pure class A amplifier. Class D amplifiers, even with the fastest comparators in the feedback loop, do have to contend with the hysteresis of the inductors, even when they are air cored. You can see the phase group delay on the oscilloscope, and you hear it with the violin, the cymbals and the piano.
I like this new Dave’s voice module better than the legacy one! 😅 Get well soon!
Love how RUclips subtitle makes it audio file. „Files off all the sharp digital edges of“. I remember reading something along the lines of „the noble 32 bit high end chip“ in a audio magazine and it was just a normal ARM7 micro.
Can you test the capacity of the old batteries in case the high drain on the upper cell is the actual problem rather than the cell itself?
Possible, not really worth the effort though. Otherwise reported to work fine, so I think it's just age not a fault.
I was just looking at a "valve" preamp box, with, of course, separate power supply box, with full bridge tube rectifier, Hand wound transformers... starting price:
€22,000
Wow! What are your thoughts on most electric guitarists/electric bass guitarists still using vintage or reproduction vintage tube amplifiers even though a digital modelling amp would demonstrably produce a 100% accurate simulation of the tube amplifier, without the hassle of carting heavy tube amplifiers around? Is it just a part of the Fender Stratocaster and Fender Precision Bass and the rest of the range becoming effectively classical instruments (the design hasn't changed for 70+ years and probably never will), therefore the original amplifiers that went along with these are (in a sense) classical instruments too?
@@TassieLorenzo I've heard some really high end tubes, really high end PA systems in my industry as well as stuff like the Axe effect box that can do what you said, it simulates everything and it is basically bang on the money and very impressive.
You can build a hell of a lot of electronic stuff for cheap using quality components, but getting the programming of FGPAs right takes a lot of time and experience and that is where the costs mount up.
Why do you need FPGAs for audio though?
Who needs enemies when you have audiophools for neighbours and they rope you in to repairing their insane expensive stuff?
Hey Drew, why don't you walk over with Dave to return it, give the owner your thoughts. Better yet, maybe venture out and audition some high end 2CH gear.
So many Pied Pipers leading sheep down a road while wearing a sign on their back that reads... "Follow me to hypocrisy"
For the record, people can do and believe what they want....but why be judgemental?
@@stever7638 ...found Dave's audiophool neighbour here
@@stever7638 A great reason for OP to be so judgmental is those are also the sort of people who think they should have free use of my time and skills to fix their shit. Pay for a new one or pay to have your overpriced garbage fixed. It may not be the case with Dave's neighbor but I've been around too many audiofools to disagree with OP. OP is doing the Tech Gods' own work. You, however, are quite hypocritical.
@@jameslawrence8734 I wasn't referring to the OP, I was replying and referring to Drew.
the big problem with audio is it cannot sound better than the source , GIGO . no matter how much you spend the result cannot make a bad source song better. a mate I used to work with was black disk fanatic and swore by a new vinyl noise filter , until it was pointed out to him that if there was vinyl noise in the audio spectrum then that filter was removing information from the sound track as well
I was always impressed by the audiophile speaker cables made with unicorn bone and human skin that cost $100 a foot. Macintosh owners usually fall for that stuff.
I had a customer that would cover the edges of his DVD audio discs with a green felt tip marker. Swore it made a difference!
I've seen and listened to some BS setups - guy at work had spent literally TENS of thousands of pounds (UK) on Cyrus CD player, pre and mono block amps, Chord DAC costing over 10k and something like a grand on two RCA cables. The speaker cables were as thick as my thumb and were raised above the floor on special 'ceramic things' whatever that cost I have no idea. All of this hooked up to some boomy/flappy sounding 1970's floorstanders - it sounded absolutely bloody awful!
🤣🤣🤣 a friend's neighbor had some big old 1970s speakers that she was quite fond of. Fair enough...but all she really needed was a $200 CD player and a $300 amp. She went shopping, by herself, and got talked into buying an entire Mark Levinson system, costing many, many thousands of dollars. Tragic, sad, exploitative...and definitely not cool 🙄
Chord use a proprietary FPGA based DAC based on 'taps'. It might also have an active cell balancing circuit.
That wouldn't even justify a £400 price tag. We are in the same business model as luxury goods like Louis Vuitton hand bags, where the price tag is entirely artificial.
@@lolilollolilol7773 You are speaking about topic that you don't know anything. Item price is not reflected by how much components cost. Most of the price comes from RnD. You can't get that sound for 400. Good converters are used by studios and audiophiles. Yes you can get decent DAC for few hundreds, but if you want high end specs it will cost you.
The most difficult problem to solve on an audio DAC is the filter at the top. The FPGA allows them to have very long FIR filters.
@@BlankBrain Yes, they run some digital filters in the FPGA that can have a sharp cutoff. But the FPGA is not a DAC, so they must still use some external conversion to analog. Probably with an off the shelf DAC, since I don't think they use a custom resistor ladder or PWM implementation.
I've watched the full video and I'm sure Dave can assemble something better in the same time for approx $45 spare parts and a 3d printer for the case.
As noted elsewhere, those battery terminals want to be bridged and apparently a 50 ct battery box was too vulgar as lithium lasts forever.
Also, Bluetooth aptX cannot transfer 24bit so a 1$ TI DAC will get the most out of anything there.
If your neighbour wants to improve sound, support this channel or send me a oscilloscope and good soldering iron. I want to get into this audio business.
$4500 and the plastic case looks like a $5 thing. But since I have seen "actively shielded" audio cables with batteries and blue LEDs ($200 each) I believe everything... Or a $1000 power cable.
The case is CNC'd Aluminium
THough to be fair it looks like a cheap platic case !
0:11 I LOVE YOU DAVE YOUR ONLY GUY MAKES VIDEOS WHEN HES SICK. THATS THE BEST EVER WE LOVE YOU ❤
You forgot to mention the exotic wood speaker cable lifters which are designed to prevent high frequency loss by carpet fibers absorbing the HF electromagnetic energy. BTW I have an extra bottle of cryogenic snake oil if you need some. BTW I used Stabilant 22 to fix the crummy immobilizer antenna connections on the Lucas ignition interrupt module in my Mazda Miata. It has reliably read the chip in the key for several years now.
At $4,500 it has a under dollar protection circuit that trips when you don't put in very expensive batterys.
I'm wondering if on the other side there might just be some somewhat larger electrolytic capacitors as filter capacitors in the power chain, which, would potentially register as a short when they're not charged? I think that might explain the sort of behavior you are seeing. If the thing was getting external power when you put the batteries in, or, just had been charged recently enough, then the protection circuits on the batteries might not trigger, but, with the caps empty, maybe they would, and sort of get stuck that way until it's put back in without that problem? I could definitely imagine a scenario like that. It's kind of too bad that we couldn't see the other side of the board. I was really surprised with all the weird stuff that came up in the process that you didn't at least look at the circuit there, though, I do sort of understand why it would be potentially risky to unscrew things.
Love the new voice Dave, if yer lookin for feedback :D
Equipment like this surely does sound good, as you say, but as an audio person myself, I can say with relative confidence that whatever ultra fine-grain benefit this product supposedly bestows (as compared to its lower-price competitors), is completely dwarfed by much simpler (cheaper) to fix issues, that themselves are ultimately dwarfed by the actual recording itself. If you're really interested in the highest level quality of output (within reason), get some decent speakers, shielded cables (no need to spring for gold-plated), and a good amplifier with an EQ that you like. And remember: whatever equipment you have, you're always limited by the quality of the recording itself, what microphones were used, how it was mixed and mastered, etc. There is never a one-size-fits-all solution to audio. (And if you are using a record player, make sure it's reasonable quality build so that the rotational speed is consistent, make sure that the needle is in good shape, belts aren't loose, and clean your records before you play them; just know that the sound quality of a record degrades with every playthrough.)
The reason for gold plated connectors is that they corrode less. You can spray DeoxIT every six months to a year or buy gold. If you frequently plug and unplug your equipment, it's not an issue. Once I get things the way I like them, everything sits for years.
@@BlankBrain If you're worried about potential corrosion then gold will definitely prevent that, though I have to say I've never run into corrosion on standard plated cables.
However, gold-plated cables seem to also be marketed with the idea that they will somehow provide superior quality transmission of the signal versus standard plated cables, and if you're having that much trouble with keeping a good connection, it's probably down to the connector port, not the cable.
So if you're putting stuff outdoors, then maybe gold-plated is warranted, otherwise I wouldn't personally worry about, though I suppose the gold plating is not the real expense in cables.
@@natedawww I never had problems with speaker cables, but RCA connectors were the worst offenders. I mostly use balanced ¼" TRS cables, and even those would sometimes act up. Channels would go low volume or crackle. Just unplugging them and plugging them back in worked. Sometimes I'd wipe them off with alcohol. The best connectors would be pure silver for a few days. Then they'd start tarnishing. Silver oxide doesn't conduct as well as silver.
@@BlankBrain Ah yes, RCA connectors. I was indeed thinking of 1/4-inch speaker cables. Thankfully, RCA cables aren't used as much anymore, but they do seem to tarnish in a way that the 1/4-inches don't, so I could see getting gold-plated for those specifically if you needed. And if they were silver-plated, they would indeed tarnish almost immediately... Sadly alcohol isn't going to be much use, but having polished silver dishware before, I can't imagine using it on cables without making a horrid mess!
the record does not degrade. it has a very slow dynamically changing self powered low pass built in that dynamically adapts to the frequency response of the main listeners ear...
jk😂
The multi-cell battery may be balanced using a management system. A quadcopter drone battery pack has a read-out that shows the individual cell voltage as a health check.
I'm shocked at the use of standard consumer grade cells to replace the correct audio grade factory fitted ones. It's no wonder the unit didn't work properly with them installed. I can only shudder at how bad it would have sounded if it did manage to function.
*edit*
23:18 There you go, when it eventually did turn on the noise is so bad that it can even be heard coming out of the box. Use audio grade cells people!
he didn't use audio grade quad eutectic silver solder or an audio grade soldering iron... it would've been bad either way
Jesus... 😂
You just gave unknowledgeable audiophiles a boner by saying "something weird is going on there" :D
It has to be MYSTICAL!!!
yes if the cells are in series you need to disconnect the high side cell 1st and reconnect high side last otherwise the bms may crowbar due to the loss of ground reference (depends on topology but just to be safe) and never disconnect/reconnect fully charged cells 4v is nearly fully charged (4.1-4.2v)
😂 I like your voice. And the electrons don’t fall out when you put it upside down if it’s make in the old da😂
Being the dual rails, if the insulation on the batteries was compromised, it would short the one battery. Negatives shorted together, the one positive would be shorted to the negative. Hope I didn't make it confusing. Doubt that both batteries insulation was damaged.
I've got their Mojo and Poly unit, it's for running some big old headphones that my amplifier will barely touch, some classic jobs from the 70's that look far nicer than they sound! :)
But oh boy when I run my in ear monitor speaker things with it, it's sounds *beautiful*, but it's a tad impractical for that kinda use
Man the genious placing of those pads on the board... Could have been ever closer too eachother -.-
Hi,
Exact type of new battery?
Thanks for your help.
Alex
Dave! howcome using the wirecutters to cut both strands of battery wire can short the battery, but when installed in the misbehaving circuit board suddenly the built in cell protection circuit can prevent shorting the battery.?
In both case the battery will get shorted out, in both cases the protection circuit would protect it. Its still bad practice to short out lithium batteries regardless of what type they are.
It's a general tip. Not all cells have a short protection circuit like this one. This one happens to, so should be protected, but not good practice to cut both wires at once in any case.
I tried to register at the eevblog forum but every time I try it says "bots are not allowed to register". Any ideas anyone? I'm not a bot, honest. I've tried a couple of different browsers. There's a dropdown field "are you a bot" which I've answered both yes and no to no avail. :)
At least the thing makes sense from a electronics point of view. Using batteries and linear regulators as a low noise power supply is actually kinda smart for audiophiles. I would have expected them to go all out on the soundwood and directional cables in this :D
It has a very 2000s tech look to it and not in the "OH COOL RETRO" way, like the, "OH that's why we don't make things look like that, anymore."
srsly, got that cheap plasticy design look LOL
Very tacky designs.
@@peterlarkin762 This might be a very USA reference point but look up Nickelodeon Kids Tech from the 2000s, same aesthetic vibe. I forgot Late 90s and Early 2000s were all about bubbles and circles. Even had a wallpaper that was poorly rendered bubbles.
To be honest chord dacs are quite nice, they are more special to me than most audiophile stuff based on ESS, Burr Brown and other "off the shelf" stuff. The higher end is crazy expensive and gets into bs teritory with all the upscaling stuff. They're cool if you can afford them but it's like buying a nice car or watch, it's not exactly rational.
Those are very good DACs. Was surprised to see you with one. I have one along with my MOJO 2.
So you were scammed into buying an overpriced dac...
@dave you can’t solder batteries with an earthed iron 🤦, that’s why the battery protection kicked in on the battery. 🙂 I use a battery powered iron (ie not mains earthed) or a butane powered iron. 😅
Of course you can, and no it isn't!
IF the device itself was grounded, you'd have a point. But it isn't! So...no.
totally OTT and often dont even measure that well, but yes, they roll their own dac in FPGA
Check the internet, its 1800£ retail price. For 4000 you can get table top version and its completely different device. If you never checked it in a good system, then there is no reason to say that it is pointless device. Expensive yes, but professional studio interfaces can be 5x more expensive.
22:50 Most friend groups are echo chambers so your statement wouldn't apply often
I reckon it has some sort of balancing circuitry (the old batteries were pretty much identical voltage) and that was going a bit bananas when just one battery was connected
But, made in ENGLAND!! For that money i would have expected it to be made in Japan at least.
Made in England by Chinese.
@@user-yk1cw8im4h amazing how the battery is soldered in :)... you have to cut off connecters to solder the thing in on wacky pads that are microns apart. Made in UK? You are right it needs small hands of a child to do that.
Dyson & Hornby - Designed in the UK and made in China. 😅 Value add!
Maybe you need Nagra gear.
@user-yk1cw8im4h Last time I checked (2019 or so), Chord were using a very good electronic assembly contractor based on the edge of Basildon in Essex.
Probably linked with the fact that those cells ain't in paralelle but provide 2 different rails, if minus voltage is there first maybe it cause a problem, something like that.
Had a laugh too with the record player. All that expensive stuff with a medium that has a lower bandwidth than a CD.
Except it doesn’t. If you think a CD is superior to a record, you’re either deaf or stupid.
ugh! 😦 the soldering of the battery wires was terrible! I would of been rather upset to see that if it was my unit !
Nice video, thank you :)
When it comes to audio gear I find that audio quality vs price is very much like an exponential curve.
A device such as a DAC the sweet spot for "value" would probably be around the $200-$400 mark. This will get you 80% or so of the audio quality. Spend any more than that and you are only gaining single-digit increases in quality but spending exponentially more.
That "Hugo" DAC is probably around the 90% mark for the price-point. You could spend tens of thousands of dollars on a DAC and only gain another 5% of quality over that.
I have a good friend who had spent over $150,000 on a home HI-FI.. mine on the other hand? $300 speakers (which I had to repair, that's why I got them cheap.. they are probably worth $1000) and an amplifier made in 1983 by NAD which I got for the cost of a carton of beer (a common currency here in Australia).
My stereo really does sound fantastic for the money.. my friends' stereo absolutely sounds better.. but $149,650 better? NO WAY!! Mine sounds 80% as good as his.
Regarding the battery situation, maybe there is a balancing circuitry (to ensure equal + and - voltages), which initially connected two batteries in parallel - causing current spike, that tripped the second battery protection, which confused that balancer, causing it to basically short the second battery. Just a theory.
I suspect something like that.
All these opinions about audio quality makes me want to listen to my music collection on C-90 cassettes from the 80's.
Unfortunately my mint Sony TC-KB920S has a mechanical problem...
Pro tip - never unsolder leads of a fully charged LiIon battery, cut each wire then unsolder the wire stubs.
I can blame, taking things apart, for the knowledge I've acquired. Just finished my BIG LED project. 2'*2' addressable 5050 RGB. Just have to fabricate 4 aluminum solder paws for the footprints. 😂😆
Yes... $4500? I would imagine a top-quality very ruggedly built one to cost maybe $500. (Think of professional gear for recording studios or traveling musicians.) There's high-end and then there's H$GH-end!
oooo! they even sealed it with eight screws to keep special audiophiliac air inside. but it's gone forever now.
The latest version at Richer sounds in the UK is £2199 and the case £100
I bet its an anti-repair feature they added to make you send it to them to have the batteries replaced. Then they charge you extra for attempting to change the batteries yourself.
I hope you get better soon.
Very weird "fault" indeed. I wonder if there's a battery balancing circuit at play, but it certainly shouldn't create a dead short across the cell.
You might look into some non-serrated wide-jaw pliers for handling wire with low temp insulation (knipex 35-12-115 for example).
I suspect something like that.
Could it be that you need to put it in some power off state before servicing it?
Like holding the power button in for 10 seconds to completely powering it down
and not just soft-switching it of?
It does not matter how much or how good that DAC is. Its the headphones you listen on that reall matters. 😝
Daves DACs ... Something too that.
"I don't see the value..." - well its not a TV, but audio device, so you could probably hear the value if you have a decent rest of the system, and not 100$ headphones or speakers/amp!
$4.5k is a bit too expansive for Hugo 2 (like 2-3x), thats true.
Its always interesting to hear people without any experience in hifi comment the hifi, because they kinda know about electronics (even though they never built or listened a hifi component).
My guess is that the switch was ON when you soldered the first battery. At that point any OP AMP would work with improper bias and the output stage could drain quite some current triggering some protection at that point. From an engineering perspective IMHO only a fool would make the dual rail voltages that way though...
I would not have touched this. $4500 sucker price. One wrong slip of the soldering iron and your neighbour would be expecting you to replace it. No matter what. He was probably quoted $4000 to replace the batteries by OEM.
When you start to have money to buy those you have already started to lose your hearing. so you may miss added increased quality from those products.
Maybe same that I would liked to have my Genelec speakers like 10y earlier when I got those. I have already started to lose hearing range from hi freq.
Maybe if the battery protection circuit gets activated, it presents a short at the terminals. The short might not be in the DAC itself.
18:00 some type of automatic battery equalization?
That seems most probable.
How many EEs does it take to change two batteries? ....... 😅
Hey Dave. Is it possible that the protection circuit in cells doesn"t play nice with protection circuit of the device self? for sure there is a charging ic on there. sometimes that gives some weird fault if there is a second protection between it and the cells. Maybe?
If the cells had protection, the unit most likely will not.
@@farzadmotazedian6864 I've had that issue before with flashlights where the cell has protection, but the flashlight had a BMS and the two would start fighting each other once the voltage got low enough, so it could well be that the new cells have protection that's causing the problem
Only problem is let's protect the device by shorting the battery. Honestly I was almost thinking he bridged the pads somehow. I think the batteries are supposed to have thermal fuses that go open. Also maybe the 4 volts is the charging vs the discharge voltage.
@@MatthewSuffidy yes batteries have thermal fuses but you do not want to trip those... built in protection is much better for a low volume design like this.
Don't know. The original batteries had protection by the looks of it.
Seems like the unit is synchronising the battery voltages so the positive and negative voltages are as close to each other as possible.
I would not be surprised if there is a BMS in the device itself fighting the BMS in the batteries you put in. Did you peel the old ones open to see what (if any) BMS stuff is inside? If this is the case, you connect just one cell, the BMS in the device will detect a much higher voltage on one of the batteries and will try to discharge that to equalize the voltage with the other (disconnected) battery.
Your soldering was kinda shoddy on the second battery, with the cables extending way past the pad... I'm sure you shorted the positive pad to the ground pour around it.
Personally I got a Vantec NBA-200U for $20 brand new. The only issue I have with it is a DC offset issue. Honestly it sounds really good for the price. There's no way I'd pay what that that Hugo thing costs.
Case is CNCed aluminium, whether that makes a difference is another matter. When it came out it was unusual in that it claimed to be a high quality portable DAC hence the li Ion batteries, by today’s standards it’s performance is very average, but audiophiles will always pay for a CNC case and the novel FPGA concept DAC and suffer the price tag and average performance. Each to their own I guess.
no case often sounds better
@@edmaster3147 I agree, it’s all about the marketing