[Joe-Siow]

I am not talking about convertion amps here. Do I? What I say is once you hear full balance gear as it has to be.. literally two full amps in one, one full amp per channel. And if it appropriate calibrated (bias adjusted), you will never accept single ended scheme compromise. Just this. What ever who say what. You hear it.. done. Technically it superior, channel isolation is superior, scene is as it has to be. Deep, wide, tall. It will be all around you. It's like you discover whole new dimension.
My advice to everybody, don't lose time and money for SE solution. You will regret after you hear balanced. If not, means you never ever will heard what i am talking about, Which would be sad, but fine.

I would comment that you are in the wrong thread but then again, it would be on deaf ears.

Moving on then..

 

[odessamarin]

.. agree. sorry for offtop.
moving on..

 

[Hermitsden]

Herb Reichert reviewed the Qutest in March 2019 (Vol.42 No.3):
https://www.stereophile.com/content/chord-electronics-qutest-da-processor-herb-reichert-march-2019

 

[T Bone]

I picked up a Chord Qutest 2 days ago - replacing my Holo Spring non-oversampling "R2R" DAC. While I enjoyed the Holo, the Qutest has far more detail.

I use JRiver Media Center as my player and thought I'd share my configuration. It might help the next buyer.

I'm using the "kernel streaming" driver.

I have quite a number of DSD files, so enabling bitstreaming was important.

I also created a playlist with a variety of sample rates - from 44.1khz to quad rate DSD - to make test my configuration.

It's working great. Now I've got to get ROON configured!

 

[T Bone]

I use ROON to stream music from headphone system to my 2-channel vinyl rig in the living room. I'm not a big fan of MQA, but if you use ROON, you use TIDAL, and that means MQA.

I struggled to get the right settings in ROON for my Qutest. I was only getting the 44.1Khz "red light" when playing some MQA files. I figured out that I needed to use the "enable MQA Core Decoder" option to get the Qutest to light up with a "Green" 96Khz

Here's my settings:

 

[nick77]

I picked up a Chord Qutest 2 days ago - replacing my Holo Spring non-oversampling "R2R" DAC. While I enjoyed the Holo, the Qutest has far more detail.

Hey Tbone welcome to the thread, Im a recovering Holo Spring addict as well!
I felt the Qutest was a tad more musical and is fitting in nicely here. I am still messing around with settings in Jriver and HQP.

 

[Triode User]

I use ROON to stream music from headphone system to my 2-channel vinyl rig in the living room. I'm not a big fan of MQA, but if you use ROON, you use TIDAL, and that means MQA.

I also use Roon and now that also supports Qobuz. I changed from Tidal to Qobuz to get away from MQA.

 

[Baten]

Hey Tbone welcome to the thread, Im a recovering Holo Spring addict as well!
I felt the Qutest was a tad more musical and is fitting in nicely here. I am still messing around with settings in Jriver and HQP.

Damn I'm really really loving the holo spring 2. Can't even imagine the qutest being much better! I'm a NOS fan though, doesn't the qutest sound much harsher?

 

[Zzt231gr]

Hey guys-do you have any idea why Herb likes Holo more than Qutest?I trust this guy a lot and he has good and honest reputation but both of you say otherwise.

 

[Joe-Siow]

Hey guys-do you have any idea why Herb likes Holo more than Qutest?I trust this guy a lot and he has good and honest reputation but both of you say otherwise.

It is always about personal tastes. I imagine the Holo to be softer and more romantic sounding compared to Qutest's more precise nature. No right or wrong choices, just which suits your listening habits more

 

[Zzt231gr]

It is always about personal tastes. I imagine the Holo to be softer and more romantic sounding compared to Qutest's more precise nature. No right or wrong choices, just which suits your listening habits more

For personal taste I couldn't agree more!But he mentions that Holo is more natural and transparent!Please read his conclusions.Could it be any connection compatibility?

 

[Baten]

For personal taste I couldn't agree more!But he mentions that Holo is more natural and transparent!Please read his conclusions.Could it be any connection compatibility?

Link?

 

[Zzt231gr]

Herb Reichert reviewed the Qutest in March 2019 (Vol.42 No.3):
https://www.stereophile.com/content/chord-electronics-qutest-da-processor-herb-reichert-march-2019

Here you are sir!

 

[Baten]

Here you are sir!

Interesting! I can understand 'natural', but I find 'transparent' a bad choice of word for the Holo spring (which I own) is surely more colored than the Qutest.

 

[Joe-Siow]

For personal taste I couldn't agree more!But he mentions that Holo is more natural and transparent!Please read his conclusions.Could it be any connection compatibility?

I heard the Holo quite sometime back, but it was not on a system that I was familiar with, so my impression might be sketchy.

The Holo is definitely more natural sounding with a more softer/ romantic/ musical presentation. As for transparency, I would think both the Holo and Qutest come very close to one other. We might be splitting hairs here.

A friend owns the Holo, with the Melco N100 as source. I can arrange to drop by his place with my Qutest but it will close to end of March as I will be travelling next week.