[Rob Watts]

Actually, my experience with USB cables have been with Hugo, Hugo 2 and Dave when I have done listening tests, and not heard a difference with the cables.

The M scaler is not analogue, so should be even less sensitive - but again YMWV depending upon source and ancillary components.

 

[Qute Beats]

Thanks Rob, I'm happy with the current cable and now reassured that it's not worth the effort of chasing further, so will just enjoy the music

 

[Jawed]

It's definitely worth putting 20+ cheap clip on ferrites on a USB cable. See my signature for an idea of how cheap this is.

If your music player has an optical output using TOSLink then you should try that with your Qutest, instead of USB. There should be an optical cable in the box for Qutest. If that sounds better than USB then you can either stick with the optical cable or use lots of ferrites on your USB cable to get the same result.

Optical digital connections into Chord DACs are the reference for sound quality. I once believed the galvanic isolation on Hugo TT and DAVE was good enough so that USB would sound best, but this turned out to be utterly wrong for my setup.

Audioquest and similar companies prey on people who don't know about ferrites and optical.

 

[maxh22]

It's definitely worth putting 20+ cheap clip on ferrites on a USB cable. See my signature for an idea of how cheap this is.

If your music player has an optical output using TOSLink then you should try that with your Qutest, instead of USB. There should be an optical cable in the box for Qutest. If that sounds better than USB then you can either stick with the optical cable or use lots of ferrites on your USB cable to get the same result.

Optical digital connections into Chord DACs are the reference for sound quality. I once believed the galvanic isolation on Hugo TT and DAVE was good enough so that USB would sound best, but this turned out to be utterly wrong for my setup.

Audioquest and similar companies prey on people who don't know about ferrites and optical.

Ferrites even benefit the Apple cck cable, I put a couple on there and the sound was definitely smoother with more body. It reduced some top end edge that was caused by my phones LTE.

 

[musickid]

Hi Rob,

If you took the output from a dave/hms and fed that analogue signal into chord's TOTL pre-amps which have headphone out's would that give you the ultimate headphone listening experience available from any combination of chord products bypassing and improving on the headphone out directly from dave?? have you listened to the HP out from these TOTL chord preamps? thanks mk.

 

[jarnopp]

Hi Rob,

If you took the output from a dave/hms and fed that analogue signal into chord's TOTL pre-amps which have headphone out's would that give you the ultimate headphone listening experience available from any combination of chord products bypassing and improving on the headphone out directly from dave?? have you listened to the HP out from these TOTL chord preamps? thanks mk.

MK,

Rob may answer, but remember that you cannot bypass anything coming out of Chord DACs. The D-A conversion is also the output, and probably more voltage than the Chord preamp hp outputs anyway. You would only be adding another amp and cable, etc. to the chain.

 

[Triode User]

Hi Rob,

If you took the output from a dave/hms and fed that analogue signal into chord's TOTL pre-amps which have headphone out's would that give you the ultimate headphone listening experience available from any combination of chord products bypassing and improving on the headphone out directly from dave?? have you listened to the HP out from these TOTL chord preamps? thanks mk.

Rob can answer but the 'output signal' from Dave is exactly the same signal as the Dave headphone output so you are not bypassing anything. All you are doing is taking the Dave output and adding another amplifier stage after the Dave and no matter how good it is, it cannot improve on Dave and at best it will be a slight loss in transparency compared to Dave's own output.

 

[musickid]

Sorry should have been clearer. when i said bypass i meant to be superior to or better than. a level above if you like. anyway i think my question was answered. i'm still curious though they must be very high quality HP out's.

 

[Chester Rockwell]

Sorry should have been clearer. when i said bypass i meant to be superior to or better than. a level above if you like. anyway i think my question was answered. i'm still curious though they must be very high quality HP out's.

The Hugo 2 output seems to be of a good standard. I think the way to look at it is, even if you added a headphone amp or pre amp that was made with all the best components money could buy, you are still introducing an additional stage in the chain and with every additional stage you get further from the original analogue signal produced, directly after the conversion process.

That’s not to say it will sound bad, just different and further from what was converted.

 

[AndrewOld]

Sure The BNC to BNC connection is RF sensitive; and it's due to the RF noise that the M scaler creates, rather than Dave being sensitive. USB is insensitive to RF, with the listening I have done on my sources. The only time I have heard changes with USB is with audiophile cables that actually create more RF noise, and sound worse. But certified class 2 cables sound the same.

The M scaler, with it's huge amount of processing, does create ground plane noise, which is subjectively worse at 2 GHz or thereabouts. The nature of this noise makes it particularly a problem, as it is weakly signal correlated; and this can interfere with depth perception. Now the BNC OP is galvanically isolated (the grounds are not connected - except by 5pF of capacitance). Unfortunately, it's this 5pF capacitance that couples Dave ground plane to Blu 2 ground plane, so this 2GHz noise can become a current that flows through Dave's ground plane, and back into the mains. By using ferrites, that are at 2 GHz or designed for GHz rejection, increases the impedance, and so the currents are reduced. This is why simple clip-on ferrites ferrites work with Blu 2.

But with the Hugo M scaler, I improved the isolation - in simple terms, put 2 GHz chip ferrites within the BNC driver (plus some other things that are too complex to explain). Now with the M scaler, you will actually degrade the SQ if you use clip on ferrites - but the solid core ferrites do offer a small advantage.

Using longer cables works with both Hugo M scaler and Blu 2; again what is happening is the extra inductance of the ground return increases the impedance and reduces the size of the current in Dave's ground plane. Going longer than 2m does not give any significant benefit - also the cable should not be looped...

Thank you very much for sharing this. Any chance you could recommend a specific ferrite, and number of them, and associated cable for M Scaler/DAVE? Would save those of us that want to get the most out of our gear an awful lot of messing about - we could just get the bits and make up the cables, or have them made up. Or is a 2m cable as effective as a 1m cable plus ferrite(s)?

 

[Qute Beats]

It's definitely worth putting 20+ cheap clip on ferrites on a USB cable. See my signature for an idea of how cheap this is.

If your music player has an optical output using TOSLink then you should try that with your Qutest, instead of USB. There should be an optical cable in the box for Qutest. If that sounds better than USB then you can either stick with the optical cable or use lots of ferrites on your USB cable to get the same result.

Optical digital connections into Chord DACs are the reference for sound quality. I once believed the galvanic isolation on Hugo TT and DAVE was good enough so that USB would sound best, but this turned out to be utterly wrong for my setup.

Audioquest and similar companies prey on people who don't know about ferrites and optical.

Thanks for the suggestion, already had 5 on a 3m cable, have ordered another 20! Worth a shot for sure.

 

[Babysnake]

Thanks for the suggestion, already had 5 on a 3m cable, have ordered another 20! Worth a shot for sure.

From reading everything I decided to try to eliminate BLU2's output of undue RFI into the DAVE

One particular cable dual-BNC cable I tried between Blu2 and DAVE caused dropouts

Breaks (Not skips or noises) occurred in the music

As the DAVE flashed each time (I run in screenoff) I take it this represents an unrecoverable data transfer error between the Blu2 and DAVE

The problem disappeared when I swapped back to my old cable

Sad, as these cables sounded great otherwise, revealing the value of attempts to eliminate RFI

Why might that occur?

 

[Triode User]

From reading everything I decided to try to eliminate BLU2's output of undue RFI into the DAVE

One particular cable dual-BNC cable I tried between Blu2 and DAVE caused dropouts

Breaks (Not skips or noises) occurred in the music

As the DAVE flashed each time (I run in screenoff) I take it this represents an unrecoverable data transfer error between the Blu2 and DAVE

The problem disappeared when I swapped back to my old cable

Sad, as these cables sounded great otherwise, revealing the value of attempts to eliminate RFI

Why might that occur?

Is it possible it is just a poor connection with the BNC connectors?

 

[Babysnake]

Is it possible it is just a poor connection with the BNC connectors?

The cables come as RCA only so I'm using RCA-BNC connectors

I sort of assumed that they would be 'transparent' so it will be a cheap thing to try some others

I'll try that first, thank you

 

[Triode User]

The cables come as RCA only so I'm using RCA-BNC connectors

I sort of assumed that they would be 'transparent' so it will be a cheap thing to try some others

I'll try that first, thank you

Normally converters will work fine but each ‘join’ can cause reflections. Or it might simply be that they just dint make a very good electrical contact. Also, again it would not normally cause an issue but are you sure the rca to rca cables you have are 75ohm?

What was it you liked about the sound of the different cables?