dCS Network Bridge with Chord Dave DAC

[PAR (Pete)]

@thijazi

I assume the dCS NB will down-sample my DSD128 files if I use only a single AES output to connect it to the DAC? that sounds like loss of sound quality there. Is it possible to use AES XLR to BNC coax cables? this way I would be able to have dual outputs from the dCS NB to the Chord DAC… I am not even sure that is technically possible although I found some AES XLR to BNC coax cables online… I imagine I would lose sound quality like this.

No. you can’t successfully wire a (balanced) XLR connector to a ( single ended) BNC connector for this purpose. Further it would not work for DSD128 even if you could. You have to have dual AES at both ends as each cable carries half of the data. The Chord Dave not only does not have the right number of physical connectors it does not have the ability to recombine the data to a single entity for processing.

If you really want to take advantage of the superior dCS network streaming sound quality and have native DSD128 I would suggest that as the cost of the Chord Dave + a dCS Network Bridge is not far from the price of a Bartok without the headphone option then the latter would be the way to go.