I have borrowed CH1.2 from my dealer for home audition for 10 days. I have an ARC6 Chord DAVE. I love my DAVE. I have compared it to MSB Select II over a period of 6 months in my system. I don’t judge performance based on price. Believe it or not, in my system, DAVE beats Select II comprehensively.
Back to C1.2, I only do local file streaming. My files are offline upsampled to 16FS using PGGB software. The first day impression of C1.2 is not very favourable. Not too sure whether it is cold and needs to warm up. But as days go by, I grow to love C1.2. I appreciate C1.2 qualities. The presentation is different. DAVE is more punchy and a bit raw. C1.2 is more smooth and graceful. I would say DAVE is like a heavyweight boxer and C1.2 is like a ballet dancer. But what ulimately wins me over is that C1.2 is rock solid in imaging and the imaging is very details. In comparison, DAVE imaging is wavy and blurry. I am shocked at this. Why am I shocked? Because C1.2 is a R2R DAC. R2R DACs have intrinsic linearity problems as the resistors can’t be 100% matched. DS DACs should better at resolution. But this is what I find.
At the end of my 10 days home audition, I find C1.2 is a superior DAC. One caveat is that my files are offline upsampled to 16FS before feeding to both DAC. So in essence, I do not use the upsampling function of C1.2. I have confirmed this with Florian.
Will I upgrade to C1.2? No. Because Chord is going to have Ultima DAC and CH is going to have C10 this year. I will wait for them.