Hey, this is Drew Baird from Moon Audio and I'm here today to talk to you about
Chord Electronics' new DAC, the Qutest. It is the successor from the original
2Qute, or we can say the successor from the original Hugo because essentially
the 2Qute and the Qutest are the DAC board taken out of the Hugo series to
be made more for a desktop or home application. The Hugo is excellent for
portable and home use but it can be a little cumbersome in that you have to
deal with having RCA outputs on one side USB inputs on the other side and so you
have to sit this in this fashion and have cables going out of each side. So
for a home application or a desktop application this can be a little bit
cumbersome and in the way. They also wanted to have a new option for home use
so the 2Qute was created and essentially what they did was they took
out all of the aspects of the portability so there's no longer a
battery supply, there's no longer bluetooth for connecting to your iPhone,
there's no reason to still have multiple USB inputs - one for your phone, one for
your computer. It was created to have a singular USB connection to go between
your desktop computer or your laptop or what-not and made to be, you know, a
little more cost-effective as well and for the person that just isn't into
headphones. So the Qutest is a successor to the 2Qute and Chord has essentially
improved the quality by twofold in almost all cases. First, the processing
power has been doubled. It went from a 26K tap count for its FPGA
circuitry to now close to 50k in the Qutest. What does this mean?
A lot more detail and resolution, a lot more clarity, a lot more definition,
but without an edginess to the sound. As the processing power of their FPGA
increases they actually have the ability to shape the curve more, and so you can
actually get a more musical and in some cases even a warmer tonality with the
higher tab count. They've increased the resolution two-fold in almost all of the
inputs. The optical is still 24/192 between the two units, and that's because
optical is limited to 24/192. They've taken the USB resolution from 32-bit 384
to now 32-bit 768. Not that we have 768 files available, however this piece,
the Qutest, is basically future-proof. Essentially no matter what software will
come out in the future in terms of music, they pretty much have it handled.
So Chord has also improved the USB capabilities from the 2Qute to the
Qutest. On the 2Qute it had a max resolution for PCM of 32-bit 384, all DOP
DSD USB was maxed out at 128 as well as you could do 128 over the single coax
input. On the Qutest we've doubled that. The PCM USB is 32 768 the DSD USB is 512
and with now utilizing dual BNC input on the coax you can actually do 384
resolution input on PCM. Now, one thing to note is that on the 2Qute, all of the
DSD at PCM was via DOP. They've transitioned now with the Qutest to go
to native resolution which requires an AISO driver for Windows computers.
They have decided not to look into doing a mac driver at this time. Every time you
do a driver for mac, as soon as mac does an update to their iOS it screws up the
driver and it just constantly causes issues so everything via mac on both the
2Qute and the Qutest are via DOP, no native resolution support. So for windows
users you really get an added benefit with the Qutest in the higher
resolutions. Let's talk about the dual coax input on the Qutest. This was
essentially derived with the Chord Dave. It came with this feature and was
developed for a future product that later came out called the Blu Transport.
This Blu Transport is a CD transport that has M scaling technology in it.
What this is is up-sampling. Essentially they're up-sampling via the FPGA where
essentially a forty four one resolution file is taken to a much higher
resolution - sixteen times the original resolution- and output via the dual coax
outputs on the Blu to the Chord Dave. I imagine since they put the BNC inputs on
the Qutest that they're going to come out with some M scalers in the future.
I hope to see one that would have a USB input from your computer essentially
going to the dual coax outputs to the Qutest where we can basically up-sample
all the resolutions coming from your computer to the Qutest. A nice new
feature from the Qutest is the fact that you can have a selectable output voltage
on the analog outputs. You can choose from one volt to two volt
to three volt, whereas on the 2Qute this was a fixed functionality. Why is
this important? Well, some preamps have lower gain input structures in their
circuitry and essentially what you end up having is not enough gain at the
volume control when you're trying to match different sorts of equipment
together. So this gives you the flexibility of a higher voltage in those
situations, much like a phono turntable needs a preamp stage to boost the gain
of the cartridge, this is essentially what the analog outputs on the Qutest
are doing for you to help control your gain structure in your -- in the rest of
your system. Another nice new feature is that we have some digital shaping
features. Essentially there are four filter curves that you can choose on the
Qutest. You can have a sharp roll-off, a not so sharp, a smooth, and a smoother.
What does this do? Well some recordings tend to be a bit edgy-sounding, if you
will. Some digital can always be harsh and aggressive-sounding, and so
depending on that bad recording you can use these curves to shape the filter to
improve - like I said earlier - the warmth of the sound. A smoother curve provides a
warmer, a more musical, more engaging sound. A sharper curve is going to
provide a more analytical, more detailed, more resolute. Now let's talk about the
way we power these two devices. With the 2Qute we use the DC barreled wall-wart power supply.
You could utilize, in this case, a linear power supply to see if you can
squeeze out a little more performance. We couldn't really find a big difference in
using external power supplies with the 2Qutes and in talking to Chord they
thought that the filtration of their power supply ruled out any improvements
or benefits from a linear power supply. Thus with the Qutest they've gone to a
more convenient output. It utilizes a five-volt input which is standard on
just about any USB charging device that you might have in your house. So you can
keep one at the office one at home and it's small enough that you can transport
it back and forth between work or to your summer house if you want to use it
there. I hope I've informed you a little more about the Qutest DAC. For more
information please check out our blog where we're going to talk more about how
to connect it to computers and what settings you want to set up on such
programs as J River. And if you don't need the portability of the Hugo 2, then
I would take a strong look at the Qutest. It's an amazing piece for the money.