Gnuyork had asked me to comment on this when it arrived, so here goes.
Attachment 104782
You see it before you hear it, so I’ll start with the looks, construction and operation. It’s about two-thirds the size of a house brick, it’s milled from a solid block of aluminium, and it’s reassuringly heavy. The controls are the coloured globes. Press the right one and it changes colour as different inputs are selected (USB, coax x2, optical). Press the left one and it changes colour as you select a filter. There are four filters, identified in the manual as: 1) incisive neutral, 2) incisive neutral HF roll-off, 3) warm, 4) warm HF roll-off. There’s no power button, and it can stay powered, with its globes glowing (although it’s actually in standby when no music is playing). There’s a ‘dim’ setting if you want it. The window on the top changes colour to indicate the incoming sample rate. I think it looks great, sitting in the corner of the room, but you can switch it off at the wall if you want to. The power supply is a simple 5v wall-wart, and the Qutest designer says there’s nothing to be gained by using something fancier (and it could invalidate the warranty). You can set the output to 1, 2 or 3 volts, which may help with matching the input sensitivity of an amplifier. I’ve set it to 2v.
I’m not qualified to talk about the conversion technology, but designer Rob Watts has taken a novel approach, described in the attached reviews, and in several interviews.
Sound quality. There’s no revelatory thrill, moving on from my budget Cambridge, but that didn’t come as a surprise, and small differences can add up. Detail retrieval hasn’t gone to another level, but everything is a little cleaner and crisper, with better separation of instruments. For example, I have a baroque recording that is flute with basso continuo, and I find I’m more conscious of the supporting instruments weaving in and out. New equipment can make you listen more closely, but generally there’s more focus and music is more engaging.
The tonal range is probably what it was before, with no particular emphasis from top to bottom. It’s neither warm or cool, smooth or forward. Some reviewers do say that it’s smooth, but that might suggest that it’s smoothing things out, and it’s not doing that. What it may be doing is producing cleaner tones, which could have the effect of taking the sting out of some treble notes. The difference comes in an ease and naturalness that you didn’t know was lacking.
I can’t say too much about soundstaging because I have some hearing loss in my left ear, to the point that I need an amplifier with a balance control. However, I’d say that the soundstage is wider, higher and more stable. There’s more airiness. It’s a bigger and more fluid picture.
Is it worth the money, considering that it costs nearly ten times as much as my previous DAC? Yes, I think it is, if you don’t mind spending more than a grand on an audio brick, and you don’t have unrealistic expectations. While it’s expensive to me, you can pay a lot more (it’s almost entry-level for Chord). It’s not about ‘pointing’ to the music and saying “look at that bass”, or whatever, it’s about realising that there’s a greater sense of ease and involvement, and that’s worth paying for.
On a material level, the construction won’t be cheap, and Chord has gone to the trouble of programming its own software rather than buying it off the shelf (as most do). You’re getting something that is the equivalent of a high-end watch, produced in-house, and in relatively small numbers. Knowing all that will affect your perception to a degree, but I’m happy that I can now forget about DACs - barring an unforeseen technical revolution. And thinking further about the price of the Qutest, for a similar amount you’re only just getting into the ‘comprehensively good’ category of watches.
I was taking a gamble with the Chord, because I wasn’t entirely convinced that DACs needed to be anything special. It was an extravagant experiment, partly prompted by the look of the thing - and by the reputation of Chord, who are local to me. It’s like having a renowned watchmaker on your doorstep - given the opportunity, you’d rather like to have one of their lovely things. The reviews were great, but reviewers can get carried away, and they like to crown a new champion (and listeners sometimes hear what reviewers have told them to hear). Switching on the Chord for the first time, I thought: “Here we go, and I bet it’s the same.” Well, it wasn’t, but I’m not sure a visitor to the house would notice that anything had changed. If you wanted a whole different character of sound, you’d be better off looking elsewhere in the audio chain. My experiment tells me that a DAC upgrade is a finishing touch that can make the most of what you’ve got.
The Chord doesn’t transport you to another world, but it takes a lot to improve on mature technology that already does a good job at a good price. Naturally, I don’t know how it compares with other DACs at a similar or higher price, but it would make no sense for me to go further. Chord has the splendidly-named DAVE at £8.5k, for example, but that’s crazy money for someone who doesn’t demand the very best.
Oh, and the filters. I’m hard-pressed to tell the difference, but that’s as intended. Their effect may be more evident with high-res recordings (which I don’t have) that might be a little too revealing at the top end. I think I can tell a difference with the warm settings, but I wouldn’t back myself in a blind test when I couldn’t see the globe glowing orange or red. They’re not tone knobs, and they may well be operating at frequencies that I can hardly hear. I sometimes depart from ‘incisive neutral’ so that both of my globes aren’t white.
A couple of magazine reviews are attached. ‘Passion For Sound’ has a good review on YouTube, as well as an interview with Rob Watts, the designer - not that I’m equipped to follow the technical discussion in any detail.
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Originally Posted by tribe125
Gnuyork had asked me to comment on this when it arrived, so here goes.
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