I'm fairly sure than anything from dCS will measure superbly, like the top Chord stuff, but the issue ia absurd price for something not audibly better than good products in the low $hundreds range (for humans anyway).
I guess the real problem with Chord is the pricing bracket they target and their choice of cozying up with subjectivist mysticism.
But as previous Chord devices measured here have shown, they all seem to measure and perform quite well at least for their generation of technical implementation. The current generation product, the Qutest actually still ranks quite high up in the range of DAC's measured here.
How good are they "audibly" is subjective too since we all hear them differently. Not forgetting that dynamic loads and static measurement loads can yield different results, be it slight or dramatic. It definitely bears out for my area of work with regards to mechanical implementations, so I'm confident they are analogous with electronics too.
There was a graph from
@amirm for the THX789 that somehow showed the THD+N to swing once connected to a headphone or something.
Its something that's quite hard to consistently duplicate or measure, so perhaps its one aspect of the testing that ASR could put everyone's expertise together to devise a suitable test rig for such dynamic loads.
I have heard mumblings from subjectivists with regards to the THX 789's sound signature being pretty 'dull / dry / thin' but yet gush profusely over the JDS Atom's. Both being excellent, if not exceptional measuring headphone amps here on ASR. Which is quite puzzling if you ask me and the only postulation I can attribute it to is their varied response to dynamic versus static loads.
I do like the Atom which I have but have yet to do a A/B with the THX 789.
I have tried both the Qutest, Dave+Blu MkII and the Hugo2. They sound really nice to my ears. Only issue I have with them is the price they are asking wrt to the various other well measuring devices that have been uncovered here on ASR.