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Chord GroundARAY Review (Noise Filter?)

Rate this audio product:

  • 1. Waste of money (piggy bank panther)

    Votes: 274 96.8%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 1 0.4%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther

    Votes: 2 0.7%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 6 2.1%

  • Total voters
    283

Ken Tajalli

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Both companies have registered the word CHORD as a trademark. The registration for The Chord Company covers "Cables, lines, wires and interconnectors; parts and fittings for all the aforesaid goods." The one for Chord Electronics applies to "Audio equipment and devices; multimedia equipment and devices; accessories for the aforesaid goods; application software for mobile devices; electronic signal receiving equipment; electronic signal transmission equipment; electronic signal processing equipment; electronic storage devices; power supplies; power storage and distribution equipment and devices; none of the aforesaid goods being audio and video leads, cables, wires and connectors." Note the bolded (by me) part.
And I suspect no-one can trade mark a general word, such as Audio, Sound, HIFI and the sort, unless it has a prefix or a suffix, such as Chord-company, Chord-electronics, Audiolab or monitoraudio.
 

MaxBuck

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Both companies have registered the word CHORD as a trademark. The registration for The Chord Company covers "Cables, lines, wires and interconnectors; parts and fittings for all the aforesaid goods." The one for Chord Electronics applies to "Audio equipment and devices; multimedia equipment and devices; accessories for the aforesaid goods; application software for mobile devices; electronic signal receiving equipment; electronic signal transmission equipment; electronic signal processing equipment; electronic storage devices; power supplies; power storage and distribution equipment and devices; none of the aforesaid goods being audio and video leads, cables, wires and connectors." Note the bolded (by me) part.
Still seems confusing enough that it wouldn't be countenanced in most US states.
 

antcollinet

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Still seems confusing enough that it wouldn't be countenanced in most US states.
I was surprised also - but then on the other hand - neither company is large and stacked with the funds need to go after the other in the courts.

Plus we are generally a much less litigious society than USAnia - which seems, to our eyes.....insane. :p
 

Lupin

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Another Chord product that is ridiculously overpriced and as cherry on top doesn't do anything... why am I not surprised anymore.. :rolleyes:

It has become crystal clear by now that Chord is to be avoided if you care at all about performance vs. money spend.
 

AudioSceptic

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Another Chord product that is ridiculously overpriced and as cherry on top doesn't do anything... why am I not surprised anymore.. :rolleyes:

It has become crystal clear by now that Chord is to be avoided if you care at all about performance vs. money spend.
Another? I think this is the first product from Chord Company (who make cables, not DACs or amps) that Amir has tested.
 

Purité Audio

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Shouldn’t really single out Chord they are just one of many snake-oil cable companies, they have just successfully diversified into other forms of snake-oil.
Keith
 

welsh

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Shame is appropriate for what they [the "Establishment"] did to Alan Turing. [ref. tv series "Icons".] ..."Cancel culture" not something new.
Has Apple ever confirmed or denied that their bitten-apple logo is a reference to Turing (who is said to have killed himself with a poisoned example of that fruit?).
 

welsh

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Well, I was going to make a point about that - in one of the Chord review threads, I think, or maybe a Danny review thread - where there was the usual thread of people defending or rationalising, like on the basis of "respect the hustle."

Well, it's a cliche example, but I have no problem with drug dealers or sex workers and so on, I respect the hustle - just as long as they provide what they are supposed to, no bullshit.
If I scored some heroin and found that it had no effect, I would change dealers. Especially if lab testing proved that it could not be effective (ie: contained no actual heroin). But placebo seems to work better when it comes to audio ‘fixes’…
 

welsh

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A bit O/T, but are trademark laws more lax in the UK? I think if two companies in the USA made similar products under fundamentally identical names, legal action would compel one of them to change its name.
We’re it not for the Gretsch Broadkaster drums, we wouldn’t have the Telecaster (Fender originally called it the Broadcaster, and legal letters ensued).
 

AudioSceptic

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Has Apple ever confirmed or denied that their bitten-apple logo is a reference to Turing (who is said to have killed himself with a poisoned example of that fruit?).
I've never heard that one before. This, from Wikipedia, seems quite likely
According to Wozniak, Jobs proposed the name “Apple Computer” when he had just come back from Robert Friedland's All-One Farm in Oregon.[27] Jobs told Walter Isaacson that he was "on one of my fruitarian diets," when he conceived of the name and thought "it sounded fun, spirited and not intimidating ... plus, it would get us ahead of Atari in the phone book."[28]
 
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Huh? What's this about?

If you go to Amir’s Kali Audio IN-8 review (which I will link below) you will see a headless panther and a bad review for a speaker with a busted woofer sent in by a member. The source of the damage is unknown. There is a link in the review that takes you down to the comments where Amir then buys his own IN-8 new… and it tested pretty well. I think he should have deleted the bad review with the damaged unit and reposted a fresh corrected review (rather than leaving up the busted review with just a little link to the correction down in the comments). I have no association with Kali other than owning a pair and really loving them and thinking they are one of the best bang for your bucks out there. Amir is the definitive speaker tester, and an outdated erroneous bad review could have a serious negative effect on a company that I think should be supported for their engineering. Can you get a better measuring speaker for the money? Maybe not.

 

sq225917

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Yeh broken kit should be removed apart from a one line note addressing a previously damaged device.
 

Phorize

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There is no "Rob Watts' Chord". Chord Electronics is owned by John Franks. Rob Watts is Consultant Digital Designer.

Edit: this has to be repeated so many times that perhaps some photos might help!
<https://chordelectronics.co.uk/our-team>
It’s interesting though isn’t it, that people so persistently believe that he’s an employee? How on earth can this be? It’s not like he relentlessly promotes their products on industry sponsored forums (including official Chord threads) and YouTube.
 

Kevbaz

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It’s interesting though isn’t it, that people so persistently believe that he’s an employee? How on earth can this be? It’s not like he relentlessly promotes their products on industry sponsored forums (including official Chord threads) and YouTube.
He may be a consultant so Chord Electronics are not liable for things he says
 

skyfly

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I might have misunderstood, but I remember I heard from computer guys that Ethernet sockets spec'ed 1 Gbps or higher have ground isolation.
 

theREALdotnet

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I might have misunderstood, but I remember I heard from computer guys that Ethernet sockets spec'ed 1 Gbps or higher have ground isolation.

Unshielded twisted pair Ethernet links – 10BaseT, 100BaseT, 1000BaseT – provide galvanic isolation between the two endpoints, unless you use power over Ethernet (where for obvious reasons galvanic isolation is not possible).
 

sq225917

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That's the specs for the hardware protocol, doesn't mean in anyway that it implemented like that in audio devices.
 

theREALdotnet

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That's the specs for the hardware protocol, doesn't mean in anyway that it implemented like that in audio devices.

Are you saying some manufacturers implement their own version of Ethernet that is different but somehow interoperable with actual Ethernet?
 
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