Chord Huei Phono Preamp Review

[Deleted member 31750]

Thank you for taking the time first of all which is honestly appreciated. The question la I’ve raised are not directly related to chord huei but on the nature of the measurements and how these can be interpreted. As an engineer my self I always approach a subject I don’t know well with questions that will provide answers. Never said your measurements are incorrect, never challenged your results and never expressed an opinion. My position is that I know that I know nothing and as such I asked the questions. I understand completely your view on a product that clearly underperforms compare to other units of products from the same brand I just wanted to understand at what extent -44db is a real problem compared to other sources of noice such as surface noise from grooves. It’s not a question if it is audible or not because I’ve never said that or asked that. Measurements are indeed useful tools on the right hands and and integral part of science. Same as the debate and argument (positive) on a subject. We see arguments in science all the time when journals are publishing papers contradicting each other. The reason I joined the forum is because I thought that divisions and constructive arguments can help me understand things. I never joined to troll or express an opinion. I like and respect too much Socrates and Plato for their teachings to do that. I hope this can be a place to debate, challenge and analyse what is behind the numbers and gain knowledge out of the process. As such your last sentence left me with a bitter sweet taste and in the context of the above I believe it was a bit harsh maybe patronising and borderline rude considering that I haven’t been dismissive. just Asking questions looking for answers

 

[Deleted member 31750]

pick up your favorite pair of headphones, raise the volume to the levels you normally listen at and listen to the noise.

'high gain' setting on the chord should be fairly audible when nothing is played.

I did that test with my amplifier. Both the Cambridge audio duo and chord huei connected to a Yamaha as3000, both at Gain 60 and the volume at 12 o’clock without playing any music. The audible noise from the Cambridge was 5db higher.

 

[Gabrielma]

Finally got the testing of Huei. I was thinking it's due to my power supply.... I bought an iPowerx. Nothing changed.

I have returned Huei. Thanks.

 

[Angsty]

Still perplexed at how Chord released such a flawed phono. Wanted to think it may have been a bad model. Saw there was a review on the Chord site from HiFi World with measurements. Although the review section is mostly anodyne, the measurements seem to correlate to what Amir found, with adjustments for difference in testing methods. *sigh*

https://chordelectronics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Huei-HiFi-World-Review.pdf

 

[yimingd]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Chord Huei phono stage/pre-amplifier. It was kindly sent to me by a member. The Huei costs US $1,495.

The Huei is one of the most exquisite and nicest implementation of the Chord design language:

View attachment 92130

The unit weighs a ton and feels like excellently machined and finished piece of desktop audio. The back is even prettier than the front:

View attachment 92131

The shiny RCA jacks look and feel like jewelry. And I love the inclusion of the balanced XLR output to help reduce impact of noise and hum that RCA connections bring.

Despite all of the above, the functional design of the Huei is a total fail! If you are familiar with Chord products you know that they use colored LEDs to communicate the status of some setting. That makes the device difficult to operate due to the need to then remember the color of the button meaning different things. Here, that design has been taken to level of insanity with many settings encoded into colors. Take the impedance settings for moving magnet mode. These are the color indicators:

View attachment 92132

Are they crazy? Who the heck remembers these colors? No, you don't just set it and forget it. You can touch a button by accident and have it be a different impedance and you would not know it. They give you a cheat sheet that is tiny and definite proof of user interface fail.

Gain settings are not as numerous but you still have 7 or 8 to remember.

If you are going to have a microprocessor, why not have a proper display indicating what is going on? The whole design theses was a mistake to being with and now it is absurdly bad.

Chord Huei Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard using my preferred XLR Output with gain set similarly to other phono stages:

View attachment 92133

Whoa. What happened here? That low frequency noise is hugely high and is setting SINAD to its dismal value. You would think with high noise distortion can be hidden but even that is bad enough to show up as second and third harmonics. Teasing the two aspects apart we get:

View attachment 92134

Good grief. Using the sum SINAD in our ranking, the Huei finishes dead last:

View attachment 92135

Thought maybe balanced output has a problem so I measured RCA out and got the same response:

View attachment 92136

Here is the spectrum of noise with no input signal (but terminated):

View attachment 92137

The Huei is an incredible 45 dB worse in noise department than bargain Emotiva XPS-1. The Emotiva costs less than 10% of Huei!

Sadly there is more bad news. Here is the frequency response:

View attachment 92138

What is with peaking high frequencies? The error goes up to 1.2 dB at 20 kHz but company says they comply to ±0.1 dB?

No, we are not done. There is a rumble filter but it does absolutely nothing!

View attachment 92139

I tested this multiple times and even powered the unit on and off and it still does nothing. The switch goes from off to white as documented but nothing happens as far as filtering. Company says it starts to roll off from 50 Hz.

Edit: Looks like the rumble filter is not just a high-pass so disregard the above.

The only blessing here is good bit of headroom:

View attachment 92140

Interesting that the MC mode with its higher gain has much lower noise (although still bad). The lower input impedance may be helping there.

Conclusions
It is hard to imagine a phono stage being broken in so many aspects then the Chord Huei. Almost unusable interface. Huge amount of noise and fair bit of distortion. RIAA equalization that is not accurate, nor spec compliant. And Rumble filter that does nothing. The only thing it has going for it is that it is pretty!

Can't imagine a company like Chord producing something like this (other than the UI). They are known for needlessly overengineered DACs but otherwise performance is excellent. Not so here.

Needless to say, I can't recommend the Chord Huei in any form or fashion. In my opinion it should be pulled from the market and redesigned.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

You are definitely 100% right, sir. The only problem is why I didn't see your review before I bought it！ LOL
I got one recently, how bad it sounds and with big background noise. It is really confused me. Then I searched online, saw your review.

 

[DubbyMcDubs]

You are definitely 100% right, sir. The only problem is why I didn't see your review before I bought it！ LOL
I got one recently, how bad it sounds and with big background noise. It is really confused me. Then I searched online, saw your review.

Did yours come with the grounding plate? Mine didnt and I had to request one from Chord. It eliminated the hum.

 

[yimingd]

Did yours come with the grounding plate? Mine didnt and I had to request one from Chord. It eliminated the hum.

Do you mean the triangle metal connect the Line in sockets and GND? I don't have.

 

[DubbyMcDubs]

Do you mean the triangle metal connect the Line in sockets and GND? I don't have.

Thats the one. If you didn't get it in the box, reach out to Chord and they will send you one free of charge. After I got mine it was quiet as a mouse.

 

[yimingd]

Thats the one. If you didn't get it in the box, reach out to Chord and they will send you one free of charge. After I got mine it was quiet as a mouse.

Really. So why they didn't put in the box? Besides the noise, the sound performance isn't outstanding like some magazine advertised. Even little poor, I can say.

 

[DubbyMcDubs]

Really. So why they didn't put in the box? Besides the noise, the sound performance isn't outstanding like some magazine advertised. Even little poor, I can say.

I was told that they mistakenly omitted it from the earlier batches.

With regards to the sound. I personally enjoyed it when paired with the Rega I had at the time. Together with a ground scheme modification I did to the Rega, the noise floor was sufficiently low enough for me to enjoy it, even with a MC cart.

 

[yimingd]

Compare to my $1500 Canadian Dollar Tube phono stage which was hand made by a local studio, Huei is defeated easily. I thought it should be outstanding, but not. It's not as good as what the HIFI magazine boasted.

 

[yimingd]

I was told that they mistakenly omitted it from the earlier batches.

With regards to the sound. I personally enjoyed it when paired with the Rega I had at the time. Together with a ground scheme modification I did to the Rega, the noise floor was sufficiently low enough for me to enjoy it, even with a MC cart.

I took out it and check again. Sorry, I have that piece of metal connector on the back. Plugged Huei again, same as used to be. You can hear the noise from the tweeter obviously. The higher of the output gain, the louder of noise. Of course, you won't hear the noise when you playing the music.

 

[DubbyMcDubs]

Is the grounding scheme compatible with that? Maybe you have a ground loop? Is its a moving coil system?

 

[yimingd]

Is the grounding scheme compatible with that? Maybe you have a ground loop? Is its a moving coil system?

I don't think it's the ground problem. It's not the noise of current, it's the background noise like you playing cassette without Dolby NR.

 

[Headchef]

@amirm just reading the above comments referring to this grounding plate, which appears to connect the RCA earth to the phono earth, could that be the cause of the poor results? It seems like a retrofit solution to unearthed RCA’s but it would be interesting to see the tests repeated with the RCA inputs earthed?

 

[Angsty]

@amirm just reading the above comments referring to this grounding plate, which appears to connect the RCA earth to the phono earth, could that be the cause of the poor results? It seems like a retrofit solution to unearthed RCA’s but it would be interesting to see the tests repeated with the RCA inputs earthed?

Since the tested unit was lent by a member, it has long since been returned by now.

 

[Headchef]

Since the tested unit was lent by a member, it has long since been returned by now.

I figured that would be the case, but my initial question does raise an important point no?