Oh man, the DAVE is the DAC of DACs.Yes it’s a very stylish cube with a heavy glass top surrounding the tubes. It has a very poor DAC in it but fortunately you can bypass that. I have it connected to the DAVE and have the choice of the clinical beauty of the DAVE output or adding the warmth of the valve amp to the DAVE depending on my mood. The LCD5 are so faithful to the chain they are a great headphone to use when you are making changes in your system. While not difficult to drive they do benefit from a strong amp. I very rarely use them with the Mojo2 for example as I find the sound a bit thin with the LCD5 from the Mojo2. Fantastic from the Hugo up though. I found a magical pairing of a 0G Grado RS1 with the Mojo2 so usually have that combo in my suitcase as my Hotel system.
Technically speaking it can drive the LCD-5 without any amp (it has the headphone amp built in), but who can refuse a very special sound coming from a tube amp? )
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