[gad1]

what is your final setting on the filters, voltages, uptone usb regen in the chain or not? TIA!

White sphere, incisive neutral. I mostly listen to well mastered/recorded jazz. Infrequently when
there is a hint of digital edginess I go to warm HF roll-off, redest sphere. Variable line level output
I have set at 2V rms. My system displays an unpleasant edge with 3V. The uptone usb regen
introduced a tone that pre dac burnin I liked. Three wks. in the regen is permanently removed.
It dampens the dynamics. Less liveliness. The naked Qutest, no pumped lpsu, no ultra this or
that, delivers to the point where, "if it ain't broke don't fix it", comes to mind. This of course is
entirely system dependent.

gad-

 

[Nik74]

Optical input, Incisive neutral filter, 2V. On the source side I m now settled until I save ££ for M-Scaler. Will play with tube rolling again soon as I have a few combos to try out In the meantine in terms of musical enjoyment I m set.

 

[ctrlm]

I have about 60 hours actual playing time on mine so far. I've settled on the slightly more relaxed 2V output after running on 3V for a long period out of the box. Incisive neutral but still coming to grips with the other filters. I'm powering it with the Uptone Ultracap LPS 1.2 that I had spare after a quick comparison with the the stock SMPS early on but I intend to swap them around again soon to see if there really is any difference. The only issue I have with the stock power supply is that I got rid of all the SMPSs in my system long ago and as a whole it made a big difference to SQ, so I'm loathe to start putting one back.

 

[dac64]

Thanks all for configuration of your Qutest!

And OMG! the colour of my line level output is "White"! I check the Qutest online manual, there wasn't any "White", only red, green and blue available.

Need to check my manual home tonight.

 

[veeceeem]

Thanks all for configuration of your Qutest!

And OMG! the colour of my line level output is "White"! I check the Qutest online manual, there wasn't any "White", only red, green and blue available.

Need to check my manual home tonight.

Line level output light color is only displayed on startup of Qutest iirc

 

[dac64]

Line level output light color is only displayed on startup of Qutest iirc

Yeah boy! That was some time back!

I will try powerbank over this weekend.

I used stock power supply, and white-white from day one.

 

[Nicholasheadfi2]

I had the chance yesterday to test the qutest with my woo audio wa6se and my audeze lcd3s the qutest was paired with the mcru power supply russ andrews power block and russ andrews power cord 300s all round (sorry about cable talk for all the skeptics)
after reading the posts from rob watts about the qutest compatibility with headphones i was a bit worried about the outcome
i previously was using the schiit bifrost with my set up which i thought sounded amazing until i plugged in the qutest .
after a couple of hours warm up time on the qutest i had a long two hour listening session and all i can say is that the difference is night and day
this little beauty is above all in terms of rythem,timing soundstage , bass response and transparency
i was hooked from the moment i put my lcd3s on my head , i had no idea that my headphones was capable of such a great
response.
so my conclusion is that this little gem is hard to beat at this price point and i have heard many dacs in my time. just one more thing i noticed it does not have a power off button is there any other way to power down other than switching off from the mains? should it not power down once the source is turned off?
good work rob very highly appreciated for all your hard work and quality products .

 

[Sound Eq]

can i ask please, I am looking to improve streaming into my system

would be adding a streamer to my system ---- chord qutest--- ifi ican pro be better solution than using tidal just by connecting my dac to my laptop

do u have any advise which streamer to use that has mqa support ( I know qutest does not support MQA ) but since I am considering buying a streamer why not choose one that has mqa support. Which is the best price performance streamer that u can would recommend

thanks

 

[GreenBow]

I bought a digital copy of November HiFi News, for the Qutest review.

I read the post a few pages back about HiFi News saying they swapped out the power supply. The review was actually quite difficult to follow. (I know some may disagree but here is what I thought.)

Quote:
"Before I go on to describe my experiences of the Qutest's sound quality, we have first to address the issue of its power supply. PM's lab testing showed the standard 'wall wart' PSU to suffuse the audio output with interference that disappeared when he substituted a smartphone charger. I followed suit with an ifi Micro iPower .. etc."

It appears they are saying that the Chord supplied adaptor, created measurable noise in the Qutest audio output. That was solved by using a smartphone charger. ... Seriously! A smartphone charger has less noise that the charger Chord supplies and recommends. ... I actually find that hard to believe. However please don't mistake me for a Chord employee or over-zealous supporter. If I thought something was wrong with a Chord product I would say. In fact I sometimes think I found something wrong, write about it, then have to correct myself. (I did it within the last few days in the Mojo thread, about the Mojo case.)

HiFi News do go on to suggest, was the supplied charger one that didn't make it through Chord QA procedures. (That's not too good a thing to say, is it.)


In fact have an iFi Nano iUSB 3.0 power supply on my Chord Hugo 2. (I bought it thinking to use it with Mojo, as a RFI free power supply, as Mojo has no Chord charger.) I can't hear any difference between it and the supplied Chord charger, with Hugo 2. I know Chord would say, use theirs, because theirs removes RFI. However iFi power supplies use military grade RFI removal - apparently. ... That doesn't mean there is no difference in chargers used, as to sound quality. Just means I can't hear any.

I actually thought Rob had designed RF filtering removal into the Hugo 2, on both data and power in. We started using the Audioquest Jitterbug on out Mojo, on the Mojo USB data line in. To remove noise from noisy computers. It seemed to work. I figured Rob decided it would be cool to implement the same thing in his DACs. Though it may well have already been implemented in other DACs. However Rob does say, he can't detect any difference between optical and USB on the Hugo 2.

 

[audiobill]

can i ask please, I am looking to improve streaming into my system

would be adding a streamer to my system ---- chord qutest--- ifi ican pro be better solution than using tidal just by connecting my dac to my laptop

do u have any advise which streamer to use that has mqa support ( I know qutest does not support MQA ) but since I am considering buying a streamer why not choose one that has mqa support. Which is the best price performance streamer that u can would recommend

thanks

Just to be clear even if you get a streamer which supports MQA it can only provide the first unfold (also called MQA Core) when used with a non-MQA DAC like the Qutest. The subsequent step known as MQA rendering is DAC specific so it cannot be provided by a streamer.

 

[maxh22]

can i ask please, I am looking to improve streaming into my system

would be adding a streamer to my system ---- chord qutest--- ifi ican pro be better solution than using tidal just by connecting my dac to my laptop

do u have any advise which streamer to use that has mqa support ( I know qutest does not support MQA ) but since I am considering buying a streamer why not choose one that has mqa support. Which is the best price performance streamer that u can would recommend

thanks

Are you streaming over WiFi or Ethernet? How is Qutest connected , USB, Optical?

There are ways to optimize your laptop and get top notch sound without spending big bucks.

 

[GreenBow]

I bought a digital copy of November HiFi News, for the Qutest review.

I read the post a few pages back about HiFi News saying they swapped out the power supply. The review was actually quite difficult to follow. (I know some may disagree but here is what I thought.)

Quote:
"Before I go on to describe my experiences of the Qutest's sound quality, we have first to address the issue of its power supply. PM's lab testing showed the standard 'wall wart' PSU to suffuse the audio output with interference that disappeared when he substituted a smartphone charger. I followed suit with an ifi Micro iPower .. etc."

It appears they are saying that the Chord supplied adaptor, created measurable noise in the Qutest audio output. That was solved by using a smartphone charger. ... Seriously! A smartphone charger has less noise that the charger Chord supplies and recommends. ... I actually find that hard to believe. However please don't mistake me for a Chord employee or over-zealous supporter. If I thought something was wrong with a Chord product I would say. In fact I sometimes think I found something wrong, write about it, then have to correct myself. (I did it within the last few days in the Mojo thread, about the Mojo case.)

HiFi News do go on to suggest, was the supplied charger one that didn't make it through Chord QA procedures. (That's not too good a thing to say, is it.)


In fact have an iFi Nano iUSB 3.0 power supply on my Chord Hugo 2. (I bought it thinking to use it with Mojo, as a RFI free power supply, as Mojo has no Chord charger.) I can't hear any difference between it and the supplied Chord charger, with Hugo 2. I know Chord would say, use theirs, because theirs removes RFI. However iFi power supplies use military grade RFI removal - apparently. ... That doesn't mean there is no difference in chargers used, as to sound quality. Just means I can't hear any.

I actually thought Rob had designed RF filtering removal into the Hugo 2, on both data and power in. We started using the Audioquest Jitterbug on out Mojo, on the Mojo USB data line in. To remove noise from noisy computers. It seemed to work. I figured Rob decided it would be cool to implement the same thing in his DACs. Though it may well have already been implemented in other DACs. However Rob does say, he can't detect any difference between optical and USB on the Hugo 2.

I found a bit ore about the Qutest power supply from a Chord PR. In the May 2018 edition of HiFi Choice they reviewed the Qutest. ... This is what Dan George Chord Electronics PR said about the Qutest power supply. He was asked, "Would there be an optional uprated power supply?".

Reply, quote,
"No, it's simply not necessary. Like its predecessor the 2Qute, our digital consultant Rob Watts spent a long time designing the internal power filtering and regulation so that the external power supply could not influence the sound.".

 

[Sound Eq]

Are you streaming over WiFi or Ethernet? How is Qutest connected , USB, Optical?

There are ways to optimize your laptop and get top notch sound without spending big bucks.

My goal is to totally get rid of connecting the qutest to any laptop, and rely on one device that will be connected to chord qutest which is then connected to my ifi ican pro amp, and use tidal or deezer from their app, and as well have a usb hard drive connected to the streamer as well

so I am looking for a one device do all, the most important thing is get of rid of my laptop connection to dac, and at same time play music from hard drives and streaming services like tidal. But of course I like to have an app to control all this from a pc, android and ios

 

[maxh22]

My goal is to totally get rid of connecting the qutest to any laptop, and rely on one device that will be connected to chord qutest which is then connected to my ifi ican pro amp, and use tidal or deezer from their app, and as well have a usb hard drive connected to the streamer as well

so I am looking for a one device do all the most important thing is get of rid of my laptop connection to dac, and at same time play music from hard drives and streaming services like tidal

So you're essentially looking for a screenless audio server, there are plenty of options in different price ranges that can serve your needs, what's your budget?

But if you're looking to squeeze out more from your laptop you can run Audirvana on Windows 10 and buy their IOS app to wirelessly change tracks. I usually have the screen off as well and the sound is fantastic especially now that I have a clean Ethernet signal and Optical signal.

 

[Sound Eq]

So you're essentially looking for a screenless audio server, there are plenty of options in different price ranges that can serve your needs, what's your budget?

But if you're looking to squeeze out more from your laptop you can run Audirvana on Windows 10 and buy their IOS app to wirelessly change tracks. I usually have the screen off as well and the sound is fantastic especially now that I have a clean Ethernet signal and Optical signal.

Price is range is 1500 usd, i do not mind buying a used unit from forums, but of course i want the one that does support highest bit rate and can feed into my qutest
all i want is get rid of connecting my dac via usb to laptop via usb and find other solutions
but still i want to use my computer to control playback of music as a control room, and having android and ios apps is a plus as well