[musicday]

Dear (dawktah2),

Thank you for your order from Moon-Audio.com! We wanted to let you know that your order (#10000XXXXX) was shipped via FedEx, FedEx Ground® on 2/19/2019. Whoo Hoo!

Did you order headphone cables?

 

[bdh]

Ha! Just got that notice as well, and I placed my order on Friday.

 

[CreditingKarma]

Sweet

Nice I ordered from my local shop 2 weeks ago and they are still waiting for an update. No love from the distributer for smaller dealers????

 

[supervisor]

Nice I ordered from my local shop 2 weeks ago and they are still waiting for an update. No love from the distributer for smaller dealers????

I believe @dawktah2 ordered his a lot further back than 2 weeks ago. we all waited months for our TT2s in the US.

 

[Rob Watts]

Classic case of over analysing if you ask me.
If you can afford it and like it then buy it. Chord will always create compromised products at various price points, its called business.
As for the power plug issue, unplug it at the wall if you feel the need.
Relax and enjoy the music.

Qutest was designed to be powered up 24/7; it only consumes 2 and a quarter Watts, so don't worry about it.

As too "Chord will always create compromised products at various price points..." - I must strongly counter that. I know some manufacturers cripple performance so that you can have an upgrade path, in order to make more money - but this is not the objective in my case at all. Each product I design for sure has a bill of material constraint, as I have a rough idea of the target retail price; but at each price point I categorically try to do the best I can to get the maximum sound quality and measured performance as possible. Indeed, my pride of design effort trumps all other considerations. I remember one Sunday afternoon struggling to perfect an aspect of PCB layout for an extremely inexpensive product; and after spending the whole afternoon getting it right I told myself that I was completely nuts going to this effort, as nobody would possibly hear the improvements I was wroughting; but - and this is the rub - I knew it was not quite perfect, or rather the best I could do. The sense of pride in getting as close to perfection as possible, given the constraints you are working under, is something that money can't give you.

Moreover - Hugo 1, Mojo, Dave, Hugo 2, Hugo TT2, M scaler - these are all products that I have used extensively for my own musical enjoyment. You are getting products that I as a music lover want and need - and to me it would be an absolute sacrilege to purposefully cripple performance just to make some cash.

 

[CreditingKarma]

I believe @dawktah2 ordered his a lot further back than 2 weeks ago. we all waited months for our TT2s in the US.

I was referring to bdh who said they just placed the order Friday and their unit has already shipped. Hopefully I will get some kind of update this week.

 

[Triode User]

Qutest was designed to be powered up 24/7; it only consumes 2 and a quarter Watts, so don't worry about it.

As too "Chord will always create compromised products at various price points..." - I must strongly counter that. I know some manufacturers cripple performance so that you can have an upgrade path, in order to make more money - but this is not the objective in my case at all. Each product I design for sure has a bill of material constraint, as I have a rough idea of the target retail price; but at each price point I categorically try to do the best I can to get the maximum sound quality and measured performance as possible. Indeed, my pride of design effort trumps all other considerations. I remember one Sunday afternoon struggling to perfect an aspect of PCB layout for an extremely inexpensive product; and after spending the whole afternoon getting it right I told myself that I was completely nuts going to this effort, as nobody would possibly hear the improvements I was wroughting; but - and this is the rub - I knew it was not quite perfect, or rather the best I could do. The sense of pride in getting as close to perfection as possible, given the constraints you are working under, is something that money can't give you.

Moreover - Hugo 1, Mojo, Dave, Hugo 2, Hugo TT2, M scaler - these are all products that I have used extensively for my own musical enjoyment. You are getting products that I as a music lover want and need - and to me it would be an absolute sacrilege to purposefully cripple performance just to make some cash.

I would have double liked this post if there was that feature!!

 

[dawktah2]

I believe @dawktah2 ordered his a lot further back than 2 weeks ago. we all waited months for our TT2s in the US.

Ordered Jan 6th after shipping started

I was referring to bdh who said they just placed the order Friday and their unit has already shipped. Hopefully I will get some kind of update this week.

No indication of bdh's his/her location.

 

[CreditingKarma]

Ordered Jan 6th after shipping started



No indication of bdh's his/her location.

Enjoy the new toy. The waiting is really bad I wish I had not heard the LCD 4Z through the TT2 it makes the waiting worse knowing what i am missing.

I could have already been listening if I ordered through the source av. They had some in stock but I wanted to show some love for my local dealer.

 

[dawktah2]

Enjoy the new toy. The waiting is really bad I wish I had not heard the LCD 4Z through the TT2 it makes the waiting worse knowing what i am missing.

I could have already been listening if I ordered through the source av. They had some in stock but I wanted to show some love for my local dealer.

I unfortunately don't have a local dealer. So I am working on my audition playlist!!!

 

[CClose]

Dear (dawktah2),

Thank you for your order from Moon-Audio.com! We wanted to let you know that your order (#10000XXXXX) was shipped via FedEx, FedEx Ground® on 2/19/2019. Whoo Hoo!

Awesome! Congrats! It’s finally on its way. Looking forward to your first impressions.

 

[dawktah2]

Awesome! Congrats! It’s finally on its way. Looking forward to your first impressions.

Thanks! I will.

 

[Christer]

Qutest was designed to be powered up 24/7; it only consumes 2 and a quarter Watts, so don't worry about it.

As too "Chord will always create compromised products at various price points..." - I must strongly counter that. I know some manufacturers cripple performance so that you can have an upgrade path, in order to make more money - but this is not the objective in my case at all. Each product I design for sure has a bill of material constraint, as I have a rough idea of the target retail price; but at each price point I categorically try to do the best I can to get the maximum sound quality and measured performance as possible. Indeed, my pride of design effort trumps all other considerations. I remember one Sunday afternoon struggling to perfect an aspect of PCB layout for an extremely inexpensive product; and after spending the whole afternoon getting it right I told myself that I was completely nuts going to this effort, as nobody would possibly hear the improvements I was wroughting; but - and this is the rub - I knew it was not quite perfect, or rather the best I could do. The sense of pride in getting as close to perfection as possible, given the constraints you are working under, is something that money can't give you.

Moreover - Hugo 1, Mojo, Dave, Hugo 2, Hugo TT2, M scaler - these are all products that I have used extensively for my own musical enjoyment. You are getting products that I as a music lover want and need - and to me it would be an absolute sacrilege to purposefully cripple performance just to make some cash.

Comforting to hear these things from you personally Rob.

Although I personally would prefer not to have to buy new expensive hardware products for every new advance made.
I am not sure if for example a company like PS Audio actually intentionally limits their products to be able to offer software upgrades at a later stage?
As I understand it they offer downloadable software upgrades onto the already excisting FPGAs in their products for free no extra charges involved as far as I know?

As far as Qutest and its annoying little micro usb port is concerned, I have solved the problem by using a battery powered LPS with an on and off switch and also gained a bit more transparency by-passing dirty mains here in Asia.
I can't vouch for that the same will apply back home but here I definitely get a cleaner, warmer, less harsh ,less edgy result simply by not plugging in the supplied power unit.
That is something I can quite easily hear whenever I run out of battery and have to plug in the wallplugged power unit to finish a work I am listening to.
I am now stationary for a couple of months in a Condo.
No problems but I unplug M Scaler by pulling the wallplug every day for safety reasons.
A thunderstorm could come at night and unlike some other electronics I own back home like the DAC 2, your products don't have any safety fuses do they?
But when working as a Tourguide or actively travelling around as a photographer moving from one hotel to another every two or three nights, both with HUGO and Qutest they have to be unplugged almost daily and the wear and tear involved over a few years has made HUGO sometimes difficult to get to work reliably.
It loses connection to my laptop because the micro usb is worn out.

Now over to something completely different.
What about the 40 elements Davina?
When will it actually become available?
Having learnt from you and others here what gains it could bring both in transparency and SNR, both at the recording side and replaying, it sounds very tempting indeed.
Don't you feel it needs to get done sooner rather than later?

The "edge" and "hardening" I can sometimes hear even from some native 24/96 material from some recording companies would be nice not to have to hear at all.

I never hear it from live acoustic music.

And even with compromised old analogue recordings on LPs that unnatural pcm edge is not heard. There can be lots of other distortions from analogue. But that pcm artifact "digital ringing" "pre and post ringing" or whatever it is, it can still be very annoying even with M Scaler in the chain.
M Scaler seems to tame some of it quite well but not always.
I don't hear anything like that "hard edge" from native DSD recordings although they can sound a bit thick and soft compared to live.



But I have to say, I am also deriving LOTS of musical enjoyment from some of your products especially since getting an M Scaler with my Qutest.

PS. Will you have knuckle irons or boxing gloves ready in your pockets if I bump into you in Singapore?
Cheers Controversial Christer

 

[Christer]

Yes for the ideal sinc FIR case... with long tap length, 1M taps, you have to wait for half the samples because it looks into the future, so 500k samples which is too long for video. IIR has no delay but no good for this case. Rob did an asymmetric FIR to reduce it, has less taps for future.

Thanks again but excuse my ignorance of some of these tech terms what is IIR?
As far as the latency problem with some of the 24/96 DVD music videos I have with me this winter is concerned, I sometimes only listen to them without watching the video and then I can enjoy the benefit of the full 1 M taps.
For me music is mainly something I pay full aural attention to,not visual.

Cheers Controversial Christer

 

[Sound Trooper]

Qutest was designed to be powered up 24/7; it only consumes 2 and a quarter Watts, so don't worry about it.

As too "Chord will always create compromised products at various price points..." - I must strongly counter that. I know some manufacturers cripple performance so that you can have an upgrade path, in order to make more money - but this is not the objective in my case at all. Each product I design for sure has a bill of material constraint, as I have a rough idea of the target retail price; but at each price point I categorically try to do the best I can to get the maximum sound quality and measured performance as possible. Indeed, my pride of design effort trumps all other considerations. I remember one Sunday afternoon struggling to perfect an aspect of PCB layout for an extremely inexpensive product; and after spending the whole afternoon getting it right I told myself that I was completely nuts going to this effort, as nobody would possibly hear the improvements I was wroughting; but - and this is the rub - I knew it was not quite perfect, or rather the best I could do. The sense of pride in getting as close to perfection as possible, given the constraints you are working under, is something that money can't give you.

Moreover - Hugo 1, Mojo, Dave, Hugo 2, Hugo TT2, M scaler - these are all products that I have used extensively for my own musical enjoyment. You are getting products that I as a music lover want and need - and to me it would be an absolute sacrilege to purposefully cripple performance just to make some cash.

'nuff said. I really respect what @Rob Watts and believe that his dac designs are truly first class. I do hear an appreciable difference when moving up to a HugoTT2 from a Hugo2 and I expect an even bigger difference once my Blu MkII makes it back to me.