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CHORD QUTEST has landed!!!

hifi-dog

hifi-dog

pfm Member
just picked up the new Qutest dac....cant listen yet as back at work but from looks alone its a different fish to the 2Qute. Almost twice as heavy yet similar in size and the mat black finsh is proper stealth.

Ill let it run for a few days and i can compare it back to back with my Qute over the weekend so will let you all know what differences, if any (!) i hear.

cant wait to get home..!
 
hifi-dog said:
just picked up the new Qutest dac....cant listen yet as back at work but from looks alone its a different fish to the 2Qute. Almost twice as heavy yet similar in size and the mat black finsh is proper stealth.

Ill let it run for a few days and i can compare it back to back with my Qute over the weekend so will let you all know what differences, if any (!) i hear.

cant wait to get home..!
Click to expand...
Stop teasing..!
 
hifi-dog said:
just picked up the new Qutest dac....cant listen yet as back at work but from looks alone its a different fish to the 2Qute. Almost twice as heavy yet similar in size and the mat black finsh is proper stealth.

Ill let it run for a few days and i can compare it back to back with my Qute over the weekend so will let you all know what differences, if any (!) i hear.

cant wait to get home..!
Click to expand...

Can't wait till you get home :)
 
sorry for the delay fellas.....only set it up last night, which took a while as I could not get Roon to see it as an audio device, so uninstalled roon and re installed and bingo....
anyway ive had about an hour between the 2Qute and the Qutest, and the difference is marked but not huge. Same chord family sound but more sophisticated and grown up, with "qute being a boisterous teenager and Qutest being his dad....
I listened to flac from my zenmini mk2 and started with Nitin Sawney - Homelands, tracks were The pilgrim,Tides and Letting go and I jotted down a few words as we went - More detail, very open, more texture, smoother, slightly darker, more relaxed & sophisticated, better light & shade and more texture. In comparison the Qute sounds more forward and pushy in the top end with perhaps a bit more bass. Soundstage was flatter and not quite as organised.
Moving to Paul simon stranger to stranger album - this was only tidal at the standard res not hifi and the Qutest removed any glare and sibilance from this lower bitrate recording and it filled the room with enormous bass. My earlier observation about seeming less bass could be that the output stage needed a bit of a run.
I haven't played with the filters yet so its still on the default (white light) hugo setting, but overall its a step up form 2qute and even though qute is a phenomenal dac the qutest bests it easily, Be interesting to hear Hugo 2 against it in hifi set up.
The overall improvement in sound , filters and ability to knock the output voltage down make this a worthwhile upgrade from Qute, yes it is deffo an upgrade rather than just different.

back to more music and I'll add some more when its had another week or two..
 
My impression too with Hugo to Hugo 2. Both are still great products and the fall in s/h prices on the Hugo represent a real bargain.
 
I picked up the Audio T demo Qutest late yesterday afternoon, have it until Tuesday.

Not much listening as yet, but will get some time today. The shop have been running this unit all week, so it's probably well settled in terms of sound.

It seems to have the same easy, rich and unforced signature I remember from the Hugo2. I will mainly be comparing with my work in progress Sabre9038pro diy project. Too early to form an opinion yet.
 
TheDecameron said:
My impression too with Hugo to Hugo 2. Both are still great products and the fall in s/h prices on the Hugo represent a real bargain.
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I wouldn't mind trying one, any ideas where I could pick one up from? I'll need to be careful about the battery I presume?
 
I got a few hours yesterday with the Qutest via my AMB Mcubed headphone amp and Focal Utopia headphones, listened to a few albums from string quartets to Kraftwerk, Al di Meola to John Renbourn and the latest Django Bates/Beloved "The Theory of Touch". The Qutest is a terrific dac, with an easy-to-enjoy warmth but without the thick, lugubrious sound that might imply. It's clean, clear, energetic when required and smooth. It digs deep enough to render something of the acoustic space in a good recording and organises complex pieces nicely so your brain is not overtaxed. If I compare it to the last non-diy DAC I owned (Auralic Vega) the Qutest out-plays the older dac by a large margin and at less than half the price.

So why aren't I rushing back to the store to buy one?

I have a couple of DIY dacs including Soekris 1121 and a new dac built around the Twisted Pear Buffalo 9038Pro module. The Qutest outperforms the Soekris (as did the Hugo2, not surprisingly) a little - more insightful, details more accurately revealed - but not by a big margin and the dutch ladder dac sounds nice and musical. I could listen to either all day. The Sabre9038 dac on the other hand is a clear step above the Qutest - greater microdynamic differentation, better sense of space, broader palette of tonal colours, details even more openly revealed. And all this with redbook source files played from a simple linux installation over a 3 quid usb cable.

If I didn't have the 9038 dac (which I am still working to complete) I would probably buy the Qutest and be happy-ish for a long while. (See below)

Op-Ed: The case of the Qutest probably represents a sizeable chunk of the ex-factory price and that is problematic for me. I would be happy if this dac came in a plastic project box. I certainly don't think the window in the top of the Qutest (or Hugo2) is a good idea unless John Franks' intention was to demonstrate how little resides inside - nothing to see here (except the gimmicky leds that tell you nothing of interest). Rob Watts spends a lot of time singing to the choir over on HeadFi, and he constantly tries to position his approach as superior to "chip dacs". Obviously he is doing a lot of things right - the latest Chord dacs all sound good - but there is little to support his assertion that his is the one true way to audio nirvana. ESS chips at least seem capable of delivering the sonic goods (Benchmark 3 and others) and with a more lowkey approach to marketing - which is nice. Rob has a neat facility at presenting as fact things which he cannot or does not demonstrate but which to an uncritical listener seem perfectly credible.

Interestingly (I guess) the best I heard from the Qutest came when I wound up HQPlayer to DSD512 and fired bits at the Qutest at 22megabits per second - which goes completely against the official guidance from Chord/Watts. Maybe Rob would explain that I need the MScaler and a million taps instead.
 
I’ve only experienced ess dacs in audiolab 8200cd and found it a bit thin and lacking in emotion, but I think that’s a lower spec chip than your using..agree with the billet of aluminium, lovely but overkill!
 
hifi-dog said:
I’ve only experienced ess dacs in audiolab 8200cd and found it a bit thin and lacking in emotion, but I think that’s a lower spec chip than your using..agree with the billet of aluminium, lovely but overkill!
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The latest Sabre dac chips seem to be a big step forward from previous ESS Sabre iterations. I have built numerous dacs from all the previous generations. I was very surprised when I got the new one up and running. And I am sure Benchmark, Mytek and the like do a better job at implementation than I:).

Chord have always overblown the design of their kit - maybe the price tag of their reference line requires OTT but pointless boxes so the man jewelry shines nicely in the expensive lounges and mancaves of its target ownership. Other people seem to like it well enough.
 
I was wondering if your ES9038 diy dac came in kit form, or if you put this together from scratch. It does sound interesting, like something I would like to try some day.;)
 
Arnimal said:
I was wondering if your ES9038 diy dac came in kit form, or if you put this together from scratch. It does sound interesting, like something I would like to try some day.;)
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Based on Twisted Pear Audio Buffalo 3Se Pro. Add some low noise power supplies, reclocked input, live happy ever after.
 
My question, to those who have moved "up" the QUTE family to the QUTEST:

My QuteHD (IIRC) cam with an after market power supply, which I was rather dubious about. But when I tried it, I found the after market PSU gave noticeably deeper and more controlled bass (BTW, to attempt to avoid the almost inevitable comments, I do *not* think this was an improvement in DAC but in the post-DAC analogue circuitry). I've gone back and forward a few times, and always come out preferring the after market PSU.

Given that the QUTEST rather reduces the scope for such things, I'd be interested in people's thoughts on whether it's something I should be wary about? I'd be especially interested in anyone with similar experience to mine with the earlier incarnations, and who's got (or had a decent dem) of the QUTEST.
 
hifi-dog said:
I’ve only experienced ess dacs in audiolab 8200cd and found it a bit thin and lacking in emotion, but I think that’s a lower spec chip than your using..agree with the billet of aluminium, lovely but overkill!
Click to expand...
About 20 years ago one of Meridian’s senior digital engineers told me “ it’s not about the dac spec, it’s more about the implementation”, and while many products are sold by focusing on what particular dac etc is inside, I’ve heard some mediocre sound coming from boxes with the latest super chip inside. I get the feeling a lot of rivals are smarting at the march Chord have suddenly stolen in the market. What they are doing just sounds very impressive to my ears. As promised, I’ll get back with some comparative Hugo and Hugo2 listening impressions today now that I have both together.
 
cliddell said:
My question, to those who have moved "up" the QUTE family to the QUTEST:

My QuteHD (IIRC) cam with an after market power supply, which I was rather dubious about. But when I tried it, I found the after market PSU gave noticeably deeper and more controlled bass (BTW, to attempt to avoid the almost inevitable comments, I do *not* think this was an improvement in DAC but in the post-DAC analogue circuitry). I've gone back and forward a few times, and always come out preferring the after market PSU.

Given that the QUTEST rather reduces the scope for such things, I'd be interested in people's thoughts on whether it's something I should be wary about? I'd be especially interested in anyone with similar experience to mine with the earlier incarnations, and who's got (or had a decent dem) of the QUTEST.
Click to expand...
As a Qutest owner I was surprised at the wall wart 5v and as my 2qute responded well to a teddy pardo supply I thought try the Qutest with a ifi ipower ( 5v one designed for the raspberry pi ). It has yielded a very slight improvement on n bass impact but that’s it...so not convinced enough to spend a load on a linear usb psu
 
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