I am afraid you will have to wait till it's formally launched, then I can talk in more detail! That's a good question, as I have only ever stacked the units. I should imagine it will not make any difference - as I designed the screening and filtering with that in mind - but I will need to...

Flashing red lights indicate thermal trip, which would be caused by a short on the OPs. I think that's what is happening with your powered down amp - some designers short unused inputs or inputs when powered down. This is frankly is a really stupid thing to do. So remove the amp cable, or don't...

It's a fair assumption that gerbils have a similar cellular structure as humans - after all we share a common ancestor some 50M years ago. Note this is about timing differences, nothing to do with the structure of the ears. It's the pro version, coax 75 ohm. Not transformer coupled (too slow)...

It all depends upon the source. Use optical, and plug in and out the USB, and see if you can hear a difference. If you can't, keep it plugged in.

Yes the DSD>PCM filter is a separate module, with it's own set of unique coefficients and DSP core. Correct - DSD64 has a dramatic rise in noise above 20kHz, shelving at 100kHz. Doubling the DSD rate doubles the rise in noise, so for DSD256 it dramatically rises at 80kHz. But this noise is not...

It's six of one, and half a dozen for the other... If it's on, the battery voltage is lower which is good for the batteries. But temperature is higher, which is bad... If you are not using it for two days or more, I would turn it off, but keep it on otherwise. Edit - I should add that the...

Actually, the only DAC that does non-decimating filtering is Dave in DSD+ mode. So with a Hugo M scaler Dave you have three options for DSD - direct with Dave on PCM+, or non decimating with DSD+, or via the much better DSD filter in the Hugo M scaler which of course also decimates to 16FS. The...

Sounds to me that you are shorting TT2 - this can happen with XLR as some XLR amp inputs short pin 1 and 3 together. A short can damage TT2, and very large currents will flow - it's the large currents that will create the noise - probably a PSU inductor. Make sure its not being shorted with the XLR.

Am sure they listen, but don't always follow - and quite rightly, have their own views on what works for them. It is after all subjective! Talking of subjective, on the gold Earth chat - which I have enjoyed as a distraction - I am gonna throw in another wobbly - there is no point in coating...

Yes it does support dual AES format like the Hugo M scaler, so a third party could create a dual BNC to USB converter. Not a trivial task though.

When the thermal trip operates, all the LEDs go red and it mutes. But the unit would need to be hot to touch for this to happen. If it is hot, then make sure it's well ventilated. Don't site it under or over something hot. Having said that, I have run it for hours inside a leather bag and it's...

The tools that the vast majority of studios actually use are limited to 192kHz. Yes take a look at the bottom of this slide:

The plots you show are via an analogue output, which has analogue HF filters built in- you are not seeing the modulator frequency domain. The DSD digital modulator - which is what the 1 bit DSD DAC is working with - has huge levels of HF noise from the DSD modulation, with typically -20db at...

The comment about -20dB at 100kHz is for DSD64. DSD256 is simply -20dB at 400kHz, which is still completely unacceptable. Also, all DSD frequencies suffer from large levels of modulator noise floor modulation, which is a symptom of forcing a noise shaper to run on two levels only. It's 22uS not...

The iFi 1uV is noise floor which is a meaningless number without quoting the FFT bandwidth. With a typical FFT 1Hz bandwidth, you are looking at an awful 141 uV of broadband noise. TT2 noise floor is at 9nV or -180dB. That is around 100 times smaller than the ifi PSU. The Li ion batteries Chord...

I can't answer technical details about Quartet M scaler at the moment - you will need to wait till it's properly launched about why it's 4M taps. The 22uS relates to CD sampling rate (44.1kHz) and of course 192kHz would be 5.2 uS - which is still way too big a number, as my listening tests has...

That's an issue for Chord - but the that version perfectly meets my thermal requirements, which was a big part of the development. Hmm - "before it was only a mess" is not something I would write nor say in a considered fashion. But recall that I had done many press interviews (well over a...

Absolutely

Sure it will affect the timing of transients - if it's an IIR filter that has a phase (or time delay) that changes with frequency, like the filter I use in Mojo 2. But it's a linear change, and linear changes don't matter, as the delay is unvarying with amplitude or time. This is completely...

There are two issues here - low frequency master clock jitter where the frequency shifts over the millisecond to second range, and cycle to cycle master clock jitter, which is predominately HF jitter. The master clock is the clock that sets the switching for the analogue conversion. With low...

On the earlier DACs I had HF filters switchable because they had a drop at 20kHz, which would make the measurement people complain if it was permanently engaged. But with the new DSP core, I could easily implement filters that had a fast HF roll-off but had no change within the audio bandwidth...

Yes it has a HF filter permanently engaged - and it sounds much better that way. Audio bandwidth (20 to 20k) is flat with EQ off.

So a transient is different to steady state - a steady state signal repeats but does not change in time, so an unvarying sine wave (or any other regular repeating signal) is steady state. Transient is when something changes that is not a regular repeating waveform; indeed one can think of music...

One key reason I engage with Head-Fi and attend CanJams is people are invariably polite. Politeness is about respect for fellow human beings - in short being considerate to other people. Consideration requires a level of humility, both personally and intellectually. And this means admitting that...

1. I am free to do what I choose, as I am not under contract with Chord, and only receive payments once products enter production. So my choices on long term R&D are based on two things only - intellectual curiosity and the path that will give me the most musical rewards in the long term. In...