Chord Qutest DA-ConverterBest DAC under 1500 euro?

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AN ART’S EXCELLENCE REVIEW

Chord Qutest DA-Converter

Chord Qutest is the youngest offspring from the tribe of Hugo, a series of very well constructed and equally impressive sounding da-converters by the British manufacturer Chord Electronics. It’s announcement caused qui-te a stir among Chord cognoscenti, ourselves included, because there were rumours about DAC architecture that was taken directly from the extreme-ly musical flagship DAC Dave, of the even nobler Choral series. And mind you, Dave is one of the best da-converters we have ever heard.

CHORD QUTEST

A loner but not lonely

The Hugo series can be divided into da-converters that are also portable headphone amplifiers on one side (Mojo, Hugo 2 and Hugo TT) and the Qu-test, a stand-alone converter that is really meant to be used at home, on the other side. So the Qutest is the ‘odd one out’ in this family. The Loner. But the family resemblance in sound is so obvious that there can be no doubt about it’s lineage. Another way in which the Qutest does not really differ from it’s portable brethren is the off-kilter design, featuring small viewing windows and buttons made from multicoloured, illuminated spheres of fros-ted glass. However, it still managed to surprise us when we finally got to un-pack it. The Qutest comes in a very handy size, milled from a single rectan-gular block of aircraft grade aluminum, with a nice black finish. It has a gal-

vanically separated USB input, an optical TosLink input and two coaxial (BNC instead of RCA) inputs. There is one stereo pair of analog RCA outputs, and a 5 Volts micro-USB power supply input. That’s it, nice and tidy!

What is missing, unfortunately, is a remote control. Because the Qutest will not automatically switch to the input that is receiving a signal, you’ll have to get up out of your listening chair every time you want to change the input. The glass sphere on the right is for switching between inputs, and it’s co-lour indicates which one is chosen. The colour of the left glass sphere tells you which filter is active, but more about that later. For those who want to get into the nitty gritty of specs, file formats and resolutions, or the inner workings of the Qutest, you can read all about that on the manufacturers website. As always, our concern is more about ‘what’s in it for us’, so without further ado we will commence with the listening test. In which we did not just want to find out how the Qutest performs on it’s own, but also if we could seduce it to perform even better, using certain accessories.

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CHORD QUTEST

Chord Qutest in practiceThe Chord Qutest was hooked up to our usual reference set, consisting of Linn amplification and Wilson Benesch loudspeakers, via the latest addition to the set; an AudioQuest Water interconnect that replaced the AudioQuest Yukon. Everything else was the same. The Qutest has a new feature that al-lows you to select one of three output levels: 1, 2 or 3 Volts. That may come in handy when you need to match it to the volume of another source com-ponent, or when your amplifier has inputs that are either too insensitive or too sensitive. Since 2 Volts is the standardised value to which Linn complies, we went for that. Intuitively, we chose filter setting 4: Warm HF Roll-off. When we listened to all filter settings at the end of the test, it became clear that setting 4 really was our favourite. Because we knew that everybody would be very curious about it, we decided to start with a 1 on 1 compa-rison to it’s predecessor, the Chord 2Qute. The tracks we used were A Hundred Moons from the new GoGo Penguin album, and The Man In The Long Black Coat, a Daniel Lanois-produced audiophile classic by Bob Dylan. Roon, used as a server from a dedicated Mac mini, was taking care of effort-less playback, with an Auralic Aries Mini used as output device, wired to the local network with AudioQuest Carbon CAT700.

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CHORD QUTEST

Qutest versus 2Qute

The 2Qute performed like we expected: nicely detailed and spacious, with a slightly warm but very agreeable midrange, and good bass. What we would have liked was a little more ‘body’ on the vocals. The Qutest, with its own power supply, really stepped up quite a bit from the 2Qute. It sounded mo-re laid back, had fuller bass with more contour, and more clarity in voices. A little bit less pronounced as a whole, but therefore better balanced. It’s cha-racter was natural and fluent, almost ‘tube-like’, something we really liked in the Hugo and the Hugo TT and what we always found was slightly missing from the 2Qute.

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CHORD QUTEST

Qutest with iFi AC iPurifier and iPower

Food is life, that goes for hifi as well, and better food gives a better life. Switch-mode wall warts can generate quite a bit of noise, but they can also be susceptible to external noise, so we put the new iFi AC iPurifier into the power-outlet next to the Chord’s power supply. The difference in sound we got from this tweak was not spectacular, but easy to hear nonetheless. The-re was more detail in the structure and the colour of sounds, and a tad mo-re dynamic contrast. Music sounded louder, as if we had slightly raised the volume. Pace and rhythm improved, and there was more space between different elements in the mix. Because of that, there was a greater sense of reverb on individual instruments and voices. The sound stage was projec-ted slightly more forward, with voices sounding more close-up. Not bad at all, the iFi AC iPurifier was allowed to stay.

When we replaced the switch-mode wall wart of the Chord Qutest with the ‘quiet-as-a-battery’ 5V version of the iFi iPower, the audible difference was far from subtle. Detail and instrumental texture increased significantly, and the midrange sounded more colourful and vivid. The music became more coherent and had better flow, and pace & rhythm were up a few notches. Especially in the back of the sound stage it sounded like someone had done some serious spring-cleaning. We could listen much deeper into the sound-stage, and the details we heard there were less tinny and more substantial. Once again, the iFi iPower proved to be a no-brainer to the price-conscious music lover who is looking for better sound.

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CHORD QUTEST

Chord Qutest with iFi nano + micro iUSB3.0

Because the Chord Qutest uses a 5V power input, we now had de possibility to deploy the iFi nano (and micro) iUSB3.0. As a data-cleaner on one hand, and a super clean 5V powers supply on the other hand. In this setup, we used an iFi Mercury USB3.0 cable from the Auralic Aries Mini streamer to the iFi nano/micro iUSB3.0, and from there an AudioQuest Carbon USB was used to send reclocked data to the USB input on the Chord Qutest, and an AudioQuest Cinnamon micro USB was used to transport the cleaned-up po-wer to the Qutest. Compared to what the iFi iPower did, the effect of the iFi nano iUSB3.0 was quite remarkable. There was more pressure in the bass, and high frequencies got cleaner and more detailed. Music sounded more lifelike and more transparent, and overall more involving. Individual voices and instruments were easier to follow and the rhythm became more self-e-vident.

Near the end of the listening test, it didn’t come as a huge surprise that the iFi micro iUSB3.0 proved to be the superlative option. The last shade of un-wanted colouration vanished, allowing the natural colours of the music to really ‘pop’. Increased detail brought the sound stage to a level that was close to 3D, the rhythm had a very natural flow and it all sounded really re-laxed. This final qualification should not be given lightly when you talk about a digital device, but the music actually sounded more analog.

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CHORD QUTEST

Qutest filters, all a matter of taste…

Before we wrap this up, we still need to tell you about the filters that the Chord Qutest has on offer. There’s four of them. The first one is called Incisi-ve Neutral. Most other manufacturers call this UltraLinear, and it resembles the digital filters we have used in cd-players for many years. We found this filter to be really neutral sounding, with a bit of overshoot in the detail de-partment. The second filter, Incisive Neutral HF roll-off, was not as ‘white’ sounding in the higher frequencies, very spacious and dynamic, but still al bit too revealing with lesser recordings. This filter would probably work best in a slightly warmer sounding set. The third filter did exactly what it’s name promised. It’s called Warm, and that is how it sounded, with slightly reces-sed detail and (unfortunately) a little less dynamics. Filter number four is cal-led Warm HF Roll-off, and contrary to what you would expect, it had more resolution and dynamics than the Warm filter. It also had the nicest timbral colours and turned out to be - for lack of a better word - the most musical filter of the four. But since there is no account for taste, you should absolute-ly listen and decide for yourself which one you like best.

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CHORD QUTEST

Final Judgement

With the Qutest, Chord’s is definitely upping the ante in the ‘best DAC un-der 1500 euros’ game. Everything that made the 2Qute and the Hugo great on their own has now been incorporated into one device. Music played through the Chord Qutest simply makes sense. You feel your shoulders drop and you automatically sink a bit further into the couch. The lack of a remote control is easily forgiven. Who needs one anyway? All you need is to have your iPad within reach, to cue up album after album, while time pass-es unnoticed and you reconnect with your entire music collection. Dare we say it? Yes, we dare: as far as we are concerned, they might just as well have called it Mini-Dave.

So there you go…

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CHORD QUTEST

Music and Information

For more information about the Chord Qutest DAC, iFi AC iPurifier and iFi nano + micro iUSB3.0, please visit our webstore:

Chord QutestiFi AC iPurifieriFi nano iUSB3.0iFi micro iUSB3.0

Spotify

Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy GoGo Pengiun - A Humdrum Star

Tidal

Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy GoGo Pengiun - A Humdrum Star (MQA)

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