Chord just released a new upscaler: Quartet

[JeffS7444]

Can you measure PRAT?

Yes, a prat is exactly what I'd feel like if I spent forty thousand quid on that thing.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

If reading British audiophile mags for the last 30 years has taught me anything, the Brits have this acronym - PRAT - pace, rhythm and timing - that they prattle (sorry) on about.

My take on PRAT is these listeners emphasize or value time domain accuracy over say, frequency response. Kind of like what MQA was designed for if memory serves. It all seems reasonable on the surface.

Problem is, I've never seen PRAT objectified in any way. Can you measure PRAT? Is there a PRAT scale? Do the Brits have the lock on PRAT, or are others bellying up to the PRAT bar?

if it exists, it's in the measurements, full stop. but as others have said, the point is exactly the opposite: to obfuscate and mystify.

 

[Human Bass]

Someone should start a thread on how Chord is a prominent disgrace in the hifi snake oil industry.
I was a customer. Their Mojo seemed like a great product.
Since, that they've seen fit to charge the earth for products with extravagant performance claims and very poor measurements.
Chord. For me it's a no.

Chord is a peculiar case. They stuff sounds pretty good and are very well built, but they cost a lot, take years to get products updated and their "extras" are snake oil.

 

[Chrispy]

Another great english based audio mechanics less than the ability of bike mechanics @TLSGuy

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

Chord is a peculiar case. They stuff sounds pretty good and are very well built, but they cost a lot, take years to get products updated and their "extras" are snake oil.

Where "sounds pretty good" = sounds exactly the same as every other transparent digital device. Right?

 

[xray]

If you can understand and hear PRAT you're part of an exclusive PRATernity.

 

[solderdude]

Oh dear.. even the standby power is 20W! Normal power draw is 120W!

And these filters are about 2.6 seconds long! So if you start your song, you’ll have to wait 2.6 seconds before you get anything out.

Programmable Latency: Offers selectable delay from 10 milliseconds to three seconds to ensure perfect lip-sync during audio-visual playback.

There are cheaper ways to get 10ms delay though.

After 2.6 seconds you do get 'perfect sound forever' though... this was promised to us around 1980 and now, finally 45 years later we have actually achieved perfect sound forever... IF you are willing to pay for it.
Now .... if only the recordings were of equal quality... oh wait ... This chord device also has an ADC on board with the same filter.

Does it do MQA ?

 

[tw99]

Come on guys, give them some due respect. This thing is "powered by five FPGAs". And Xilinx devices at that. Worth 40K of anyone's money.

 

[Herbert Shooler]

Its SOTA SNAKEOIL I cant wait for Amir to weave his magic and demonstrate that it does ZILCH for sound quality,well introduce a little less noise than its predecessor,lol.Somebody will buy one of these and spend hours of self deceit, placebo and buyers remorse. CHORD should be made to show measurements that prove it improves SQ,they wont because they cant.

 

[Human Bass]

Come on guys, give them some due respect. This thing is "powered by five FPGAs". And Xilinx devices at that. Worth 40K of anyone's money.

By the way, Xilinx was bought by AMD in 22 and brand was phased out in 23. So they are really buying from AMD

 

[sleazyjoe]

For only 40kusd you can have even more taps to pair with your dac.

Quartet

The Chord Electronics Quartet is a reference-class digital upscaler. It represents the most significant advancement in digital audio technology in Chord Electronics’ history. The Quarter addresses a fundamental flaw inherent in standard digital playback: the subtle but critical mistiming of...

chordelectronics.co.uk

And this really got me thinking: Chord is greedy AF.

The Dave(flagship dac) is 11 years old, so it is quite outdated for what is possible to do nowdays, not only in the dac/fpga side, but also especially in the headphone amp that is very outdated for current standards.

Chord could easily make a Dave 2 with current advanced FPGA and a better headphone amp , charge 5k more compared to the original and call it a day. But no, that would make things too simple. Instead of upgrade an old dac, let's just charge a fortune for an upscaler.

The Dave being old tech means they have recouped all the R&D costs long ago, while still marketing as the end game. But if you want your end game to be the endest gamest just give Chord 40k for ultimate tap-ocalypse

Absolutely!! I’ve been a big fan of Chord for years; their approach generally appealed to my engineering instincts rather than to audiophile mysticism.


One of the things I liked about Chord was their claims made sense scientifically, mathematically, and were economically viable. This is beginning to look like they are just jumping on the high-end bandwagon and saying “people are paying 100k for DACS, let’s get in on the act.” I’m disappointed.

Rather than update the Dave as someone has mentioned on here, they’ve decided to release a 25K upscaller that only works with Chord DACs (at least to get the full benefit, assuming it works with other DACs at all).

To add insult to injury, they add an ADC (for turntable users). What is the engineering problem being solved here, and does it justify the cost?
Anyone who can afford to drop 25K on a digital source component probably has a pretty decent turntable (and even if they didn’t, the old adage “garbage in, garbage out still holds”), why in heaven’s name would they want to digitize it then use Chord’s interpolation filters to accurately recreate the waveform before sending it to a DAC to be converted back to analog? This is like saying we’ve built the world’s best water filtering system to purify perfectly pure spring water.


What really bothers me here is that Chord historically felt like a company punching above its weight. Years ago, a TT, Qutest, or Hugo 2 or Dave could be seen as:

• unusual engineering
• distinctive design
• relatively attainable compared with dCS, MSB, Wadax, etc.

The message was almost: “Here’s a clever engineering solution that achieves extraordinary performance without requiring a six-figure system.”

The Quartet feels more like: “We also make a statement product now.”


When I first came across Chord DACs, Chord’s appeal was almost anti-audiophile. The message was: “Ignore the marketing. Here’s the maths.”

The Quartet risks provoking a different reaction: “Ignore the maths. Look at the price.”

I don’t have a problem with ridiculously expensive audio gear, my reaction is often “I wish I could afford that”.
But in this case, not a chance. If I had 25 K to drop on a digital source, I’d spend it on a Nagra, Aavik, or DCS; a complete all in one solution not a bloody upscaler!!

“I may not hear the difference, but at least I understand the engineering argument” used to be my justification when the upgrade bug bit, but this makes no sense to me,
I’m supremely disappointed & I've bought my last Chord product.

The sad truth about high end DAC's is that if you take a DAC from any of the high end manufactures, isolate the digital end and feed them all through the exact same analog output stage, you'd be hard pressed to hear any difference!!

the largest difference in sound from one DAC to another is in the implementation of the analog output stage.

 

[Matt_Holland]

I believe that PRAT was introduced to remove the possibility of objective comparison with the equipment with decent measurement.
You could never beat that mysterious part that you couldn't measure and that was missing from Far Eastern and other equipment.

I completely agree, and I would add your point to the one I made to make it more complete.

 

[Herbert Shooler]

I have challenged Chord on FB groups to provide proof, it improves SQ at the DACS output, the silence is deafening but some sucker will buy it for 40k worth of placebo.The quartet placebo generator.

 

[voodooless]

the silence is deafening

Of course! It’s famously 300 dB down, and clearly audible!

 

[sleazyjoe]

I posted similar comments as above on Head Fi re chord's new Quartet upscaller & lets just say it wasn't particularly well received & I decided to take a bow when I started getting insulted.

Many of you may have read this as Chord Bashing, but the truth is I have the utmost respect for Rob Watts & Chord, but here’s my problem.

I’ve had most of Chords DAC’s over the years including the Dave, (I opted to keep the Hugo TT2 because the Dave lacked the power to drive my headphones cleanly, and if im honest, I just preferred the thicker somewhat warmer tone, a direct result of having a more powerful analog output stage) I tested the Mscaller with the Dave, The Quest & the Hugo TT2 & my findings were very much in line with what people were saying in reviews; how subtle the improvements were how it was more obvious when it wasn’t there or comments like:

The sound is more relaxed

There’s more ease

It’s smoother

I miss it when it’s removed

The music flows better

The soundstage collapses without it

greater naturalness

more flow

less digital glare

The Mscaller was supposed to excel at time domain reconstruction. The benefits Chord typically described were:

• Improved timing
• Better transient reconstruction
• Greater realism
• Better depth perception
• More natural instrument separation
• Improved soundstage accuracy
• Reduced “digital” character

In systems where transient performance genuinely improves, listeners consistently describe sharper attacks and better leading edges, more realistic percussion, plucks are more precise, snare hits are tighter & faster, tighter bass or greater immediacy. This is the effect you would expect the Mscaller to produce.

Yet many M Scaler reviews focused on qualities such as ease, smoothness, coherence, or only noticing its absence when removed. What this suggests is the Mscaller effects are minute, below the level where listeners can clearly isolate transient behavior, so they describe overall feel instead. And I have to say this was my experience as well.

My point is, If the engineering theory predicts a particular audible consequence, why don’t listener descriptions consistently reflect that consequence?
If a new amplifier claims vastly improved bass control, I’d expect reviews to talk about bass control. If they all talk about soundstage width instead, you have to wonder whether the mechanism and the subjective reports are aligned. So as far as the mscaller is concerned there’s little consistency between the theory and the reported listening experience hence my skepticism re the Quartet.

If Blackbird WTA is truly the most radical advance in digital audio this century, why is the first implementation a £25k upscaler rather than a next-generation DAC?
Have you noticed how all the various itterations of chord DACs over the last 10 years, mojo, qutest, Hugo, Hugo tt, Hugo tt2 ,Dave all had slightly different power supply or analog output stages, that any meaningful comparison of the improved digital section are impossible to quantify


If you look at the progression:

• Mojo
• Hugo
• Qutest
• Hugo TT
• Hugo TT2
• Dave

every one of them differs in more than just:

• FPGA size
• WTA tap count
• DSP architecture

They also differ in:

• Power supply arrangements
• Output stage design
• Output voltage/current capability
• Grounding
• Noise performance
• Chassis layout
• Physical separation of components

So when someone says:

“TT2 sounds better than Hugo.”

or

“Dave sounds better than TT2.”

the obvious question is:

Which part got better?

Because multiple variables changed simultaneously.

In engineering terms, it’s a classic experimental problem:

You changed five things and observed a different result.

You can’t then confidently attribute the result to only one of those five things.

---

What’s interesting is that Chord often presents the progression as a story of improving digital reconstruction.

But from the perspective of someone trying to isolate variables, the products aren’t controlled experiments.

A controlled experiment would look something like:

• Same power supply
• Same output stage
• Same chassis
• Same analogue circuitry

with only:

• WTA filter
• FPGA architecture

changing.

Then you’d have a much clearer picture of the contribution from the digital side (Increased number of taps)

Chord’s argument would be of course the analogue stages differ. They are different products serving different purposes, so it would be unrealistic to expect identical analogue stages across all models
But because the analogue stages aren’t identical, how do we know how much of the improvement is due to the digital architecture?.

This hobby has given me countless hours of fun over the years & ultimately it’s all about the music, but I think it’s time to buy the best DAC I can afford & stick with it if I’m happy with the sound & focus on improving other items in my chain, rather than chase minute or impossible to quantify improvements in the digital domain, & I'd advice you all to do the same.

 

[Purité Audio]

Subjective listeners rarely ( never ) compare with any controls, if you really want to compare you need to be able to switch between system with Mscaler and without, level matched and unsighted.
Keith

 

[Herbert Shooler]

Its a great hobby,easily ruined by myths and falsehoods, something that ASR tries to remove. Ever since I started to follow ASR I have learned to enjoy the music more and stop chasing audio phantoms.

 

[SSS]

Probably I do not understand what the upscaler really does. For me I doubt that timing can be improved with upscaling compared to the original audio data. What is not in the input can not be at the output. Maybe someone can tell what is the technology?

 

[Purité Audio]

It’s a crock.
Keith

 

[RexrothPigeon]

Probably I do not understand what the upscaler really does. For me I doubt that timing can be improved with upscaling compared to the original audio data. What is not in the input can not be at the output. Maybe someone can tell what is the technology?

So, I'm not a real expert, but my understanding is that it involves a stage consisting of oil produced by limbless reptiles...