Review and Measurements of CHORD Qutest DAC

[Killingbeans]

Still 114dB. It's dominated by noise.

 

[Soria Moria]

I'd like the LCD-4 myself if they didn't replace the upper mids with the Grand Canyon. The newest version has almost zero ear gain and they sound muffled by neutral standards. That's not acceptable for $4K even if the rest of the response is decent.

Sean Olive measured them recently:
View attachment 116011

View attachment 116012

Finally a flat headphone!

 

[Soria Moria]

Remember the Chord Qutest has 15ms of latency people.
Delta Sigma DACs and R2R have less than 1ms.
This is not an issue for music listening alone but may be an issue of using with video.

Is that latency because of the taps? Any way to bypass or disable it if gaming etc?

 

[PacketofCrisps]

Had both on trial for quite a while preferred the Denafrips, specifically via balanced outputs the Chord does not have.

Just to clarify, balanced output will almost always be the better choice over RCA when using a DAC that is designed to be balanced, but other than solving possible grounding issues it is pretty much the same in terms of SQ when compared to a DAC that is single-ended design from the ground up like the Qutest.

The Qutest in this review got a bit of critique for the lack of balanced out which I never really understood, the fact the Qutest allows you to change the voltage between 1/2/3v I personally thought was better for amp matching.

 

[Egoist]

Still 114dB. It's dominated by noise.

Perhaps I'm misreading the graphs, but noise seems very low. I thought Sinad was being conditioned by that spike that looks like at -114 dB which is exactly the Sinad result (noise appears to be below -130db, but I am no expert in this matter).

 

[Killingbeans]

I thought Sinad was being conditioned by that spike that looks like at -114 dB which is exactly the Sinad result (noise appears to be below -130db, but I am no expert in this matter).

The 2kHz hamonic goes closer to -118dB. You can't see the actual noise floor on the FFT since it's an average of a large amount of measurements designed to suppress the noise and make the distortion products visible.

Haven't done the math, but I wouldn't be surprised if the noise floor you see on the FFT is close to physically impossible to achieve with a 2v signal.

 

[Oldson]

only just joined this forum and the Qutest is the only piece of kit i have that is recommended (to a point) following Amir's review.

having read a load more comments on this forum regarding dacs, its got me thinking........

if i were to fork out the staggering some of £140 for an E30ii would i likely notice any downgrade in SQ at all?

i mainly use usb input from my pc btw.

 

[Angsty]

only just joined this forum and the Qutest is the only piece of kit i have that is recommended (to a point) following Amir's review.

having read a load more comments on this forum regarding dacs, its got me thinking........

if i were to fork out the staggering some of £140 for an E30ii would i likely notice any downgrade in SQ at all?

i mainly use usb input from my pc btw.

Very unlikely. The E30ii performs at the limits of audibility.

 

[Oldson]

grabbed used E30 instead, will be interesting when it arrives.
if i hear no difference it will be down to usb reliability and if this is not good then i will sell both and start again.

 

[Oldson]

well i have started comparing the Qutest and E30, but i do have a problem trying to get the E30 to operate in excluseive mode via foobar.

soundwise, the jury is out!!

 

[Oldson]

after just a few hours of listening to the E30, i am not sure i will be keeping it.
BUT, i am sure that i will NOT be keeping the Qutest.
if nothing else, this little test has proved that, for my ears, the Qutest (good as it is) is not worth what i paid for it.

i have had my eye on another closed set of headphones and selling the Qutest will go a long way towards that.

 

[majingotan]

after just a few hours of listening to the E30, i am not sure i will be keeping it.
BUT, i am sure that i will NOT be keeping the Qutest.
if nothing else, this little test has proved that, for my ears, the Qutest (good as it is) is not worth what i paid for it.

i have had my eye on another closed set of headphones and selling the Qutest will go a long way towards that.

Competent DACs that are well below audibility (CD quality DR) will sound identical to each other. If you don't like both Qutest or E30, I'm pretty sure DAC isn't your problem. Maybe change speakers, room treatment, etc. or change headphones or EQ. Keep E30 and get another set of headphones. For me, I like my modded Sony MDR 7506

 

[Oldson]

i do like both the Qutest and E30 sonically.
the Qutest is going as it can fund another headphone.
the E30, i cant get to run in exclusive mode. maybe a driver issue.
not had this problem with a dac for a long time now and it niggles me.
will keep it until i either solve the issue or replace it.
i wont overspend on a dac again. budget max will be 200 quid from now on.

 

[Angsty]

I may simply be obtuse, but what is “exclusive mode” and why is it important?

 

[Jimbob54]

I may simply be obtuse, but what is “exclusive mode” and why is it important?

Ability to pass digital stream from player software to dac avoiding OS audio stack. Or bit perfect if you like. Android and Windows both resample everything (and possibly apply dsp) if not in exclusive mode.

(that's my layman take)

As to why,,,, suppose that depends on ones use case and needs.

 

[Oldson]

I may simply be obtuse, but what is “exclusive mode” and why is it important?

please dont ask me to get technical as i am not that knowledgable, but in "exclusive" mode all the windows 10 processing is bypassed and therefore should provide a bit-perfect output.
99% of the time i am using usb from my pc using foobar.
if its not exclusive i get other things playing at the same time as my music, usually caused by annoying pop-ups with videos and sound.
simple way i test if exclusive mode isto try and adjust master volume via windows while playing my music. when in exclusive mode it is not possible to adjust this way.

i just read this back and i struggle to understand what i am trying to say, so good luck

 

[Oldson]

Ability to pass digital stream from player software to dac avoiding OS audio stack. Or bit perfect if you like. Android and Windows both resample everything (and possibly apply dsp) if not in exclusive mode.

(that's my layman take)

As to why,,,, suppose that depends on ones use case and needs.

wot he said ^^

 

[Angsty]

Ability to pass digital stream from player software to dac avoiding OS audio stack. Or bit perfect if you like. Android and Windows both resample everything (and possibly apply dsp) if not in exclusive mode.

(that's my layman take)

As to why,,,, suppose that depends on ones use case and needs.

I’m not enough of a digital music maven to have used this before. I use a dedicated Mac mini to rip and replay CDs with Apple Music and occasionally stream. Is this capability useful for Macs, too?

 

[Jimbob54]

I’m not enough of a digital music maven to have used this before. I use a dedicated Mac mini to rip and replay CDs with Apple Music and occasionally stream. Is this capability useful for Macs, too?

No idea. From memory of posts I have read on here Mac handles the dac interface differently but never had a Mac.

 

[majingotan]

I’m not enough of a digital music maven to have used this before. I use a dedicated Mac mini to rip and replay CDs with Apple Music and occasionally stream. Is this capability useful for Macs, too?

Mac OS is the same exact thing as Windows. There's also exclusive mode which is utilized by Roon