Seriously there is nothing you would not like about the Chord Electronics Qutest as a pure DAC. Though it is not a total carbon copy of the Hugo 2's DAC signature it still offers resolutely detailed and fantastically natural sounding with just about any amp.
The Chord proposition has been a coercieve pitch since the Hugo crash-came into the portable audio scene a few years ago. The Qutest DAC takes the experience of the Hugo 2’s next-generation FPGA Xilinx Artix 7 chipset rather than off-the-shelf DAC chips. Turning from the 2Qute to the Qutest DAC is almost the same type of upgrade on the previous 45nm Spartan 6 inside the last-gen 2Qute DAC.
Essentially, Chord comes with a much higher degree of control in its engineering process compared to many of its competitors due to the use of in-house FPGA programming. The maun difference between traditional DAC designs, and the ‘Chord way’, is that the DAC implementation and the pulse array programming
around it are entirely made by Chord and not “bought” from another supplier.
Switching to the Xilinx Artix 7 chipset is crucial in the context of how Chord takes the measurement of the improved technical excellence in the Qutest compared to the 2Cute and the Hugo 1. The XC7A15T processor has become 30% faster than the older Spartan 6 and purports to be twice as efficient. Explore more about the product on jaguaraudio.com.
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