Chord Electronics
DAVE
Introduced 2015$14,600 MSRP
The Chord Electronics DAVE is a reference-grade DAC, digital preamplifier, and headphone amplifier designed by Rob Watts around a custom-coded Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA rather than an off-the-shelf DAC chip. Its signature feature is an extremely long, 164,000-tap WTA reconstruction filter feeding a 20-element Pulse Array DAC, a combination the company says minimizes timing errors and noise floor modulation far beyond typical delta-sigma implementations.
MSRP
$14,600
Used market · Excellent
$7,250
-50% vs MSRP
as of Sep 1, 2026MSRP to used market
From $8,000 at launch to $7,250 today.
Specifications
- Inputs
- USB, AES/EBU, 2x dual-BNC coaxial, 2x optical
- SNR
- 127 dB
- Weight
- 5kg
- Max DSD
- DSD64 to DSD512, native DSD and DoP (input dependent)
- Max PCM
- 32-bit/768kHz
- Outputs
- RCA, XLR, 6.35mm headphone
- Dimensions
- 33.5cm x 7.8cm x 15.2cm
- Launch price
- £7,950 (UK, 2016) / ~$10,588 (US, Stereophile 2015)
- Current price
- $14,400–$14,900 (US, Moon Audio / Listen Room); €13,990 (Germany, Auditorium)
- Analog outputs
- 1x unbalanced RCA pair, 1x balanced XLR pair, 1x 1/4" TRS headphone output
- Digital inputs
- 4x 75Ω S/PDIF BNC coax (up to 384kHz), 1x AES XLR (up to 96kHz), 2x optical TOSLINK (up to 96kHz), 1x USB Type B (up to 768kHz, PCM and DSD, galvanically isolated)
- DAC architecture
- Custom-coded FPGA (Xilinx Spartan 6, LX75) running a 164,000-tap WTA filter into a 20-element Pulse Array DAC
- Power consumption
- 40W full power, 10W standby
- Frequency response
- 20Hz to 20kHz, +/-0.1dB (HF filter off)
- Max PCM resolution
- 44.1kHz–768kHz, 16–32 bit (input dependent)
- Dynamic range THD n
- 127.5dB dynamic range (AWT); THD+N -127.5dB (AWT)
- Chip or architecture
- Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA, 164,000-tap WTA filter, 20-element pulse array
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