All questions
100 questions, grouped by subject. Answers marked New owner are short, practical ones; the rest go into design, theory and the debates.
Owning, choosing and caring for the products (12)
- Can I stack TT2 and an M Scaler, and how hot is too hot? New owner
- Can I take DAVE, Hugo 2, an M Scaler and a power bank on a plane, and how does Rob listen on flights? New owner
- How do Mojo 2 and Hugo 2, or TT2 and DAVE, compare? New owner
- How does the Quartet M Scaler differ from the Hugo M Scaler? New owner
- How many taps and pulse array elements does each Chord DAC have? New owner
- Is TT2 plus an M Scaler as good as DAVE? New owner
- My DAC drops out, clicks or loses lock. What should I check before returning it? New owner
- Should I add an M Scaler to my Qutest or Hugo 2, or upgrade to TT2 first? New owner
- Should I leave my Qutest, TT2, DAVE or M Scaler switched on all the time? New owner
- Which headphones, speakers and sources does Rob use himself, and which pair well with Chord DACs? New owner
- Why does my DAC mute or click when the track or sample rate changes? New owner
- Will existing Chord products get firmware or code updates, and can DAVE be upgraded? New owner
Inputs, sources, cables and clocking (14)
- Do I need the Chord driver on Windows, should I use ASIO or WASAPI, and will my DAC work with Mac, Linux, Android or an iPhone? New owner
- How do I connect the M Scaler to DAVE, and why does dual BNC only work with the output set to white? New owner
- How do I make sure my player sends bit-perfect data at the native sample rate? New owner
- How good is Bluetooth on Hugo and Hugo 2, and are aptX HD or LDAC lossless? New owner
- Should I put ferrites on my BNC or USB cables, and which kind? New owner
- Should I use optical or coax into my Qutest? New owner
- Which BNC cables, and what length, should I use between an M Scaler and my DAC? New owner
- Which Chord DACs accept 705.6/768 kHz from an M Scaler, and how do I connect Hugo 2 or Qutest to get the full 1M taps? New owner
- Which kind of source does Rob recommend feeding a Chord DAC? New owner
- Do digital cables (USB, coax, glass or plastic optical) make a sonic difference, and if so through what mechanism?
- Does source jitter matter with a Chord DAC, and would a reclocker, external clock or USB-to-SPDIF converter help?
- If the data reaching the DAC is bit perfect, can the source (laptop, phone, streamer, CD transport or network gear) still change the sound?
- What are the DX outputs for, and what happened to the pulse array power amplifiers?
- Which input sounds best on a Chord DAC (optical, coax, USB or BNC), and why does Rob prefer optical when it is said to have more jitter?
Analog stage, outputs and amplification (14)
- Can DAVE drive power amplifiers directly, and is its DAC mode any different from pre-amp mode at -3 dB? New owner
- Can Hugo, Hugo 2, Mojo, TT2 or DAVE drive loudspeakers directly from the headphone output, and what load is too low? New owner
- Can I make an XLR-to-RCA adaptor by shorting the negative pin? New owner
- Is Chord's digital volume control transparent, and does it lose resolution at low volume? New owner
- Is my Chord DAC powerful enough for my headphones? New owner
- Should I add an external headphone amp to a Chord DAC? New owner
- Should I use a pre-amp (tube or solid state), or run the Chord DAC straight into a power amp? New owner
- Should I use balanced or single-ended headphone drive, and why are Chord headphone outputs single-ended? New owner
- Should I use the RCA or XLR line outputs on TT2 or DAVE into my amplifier? New owner
- Which output level should I feed my amp: Qutest's 1, 2 or 3 V setting, TT2's DAC mode or gain, or the volume control? New owner
- Why does Rob use a digital DC servo instead of coupling capacitors, and is there anything worth modding? New owner
- Will sensitive IEMs hiss on a Chord DAC? New owner
- What does Rob think of Class D amplifiers, and how do his pulse array power amps differ from them?
- Why do passive components, inductors and ferrites in the signal path affect sound even when they measure perfectly?
RF noise, grounding and power (10)
- Can I use Hugo, Mojo or Mojo 2 while it is charging, and is it OK to leave it plugged in all the time? New owner
- How does desktop mode work on Hugo 2 and Mojo 2, and will Mojo 2 drain on the shelf? New owner
- Why do I hear a buzz or feel a tingle when the charger is connected, and should I earth my unit? New owner
- Why does my Hugo 2 switch itself off, and how does standby work on the battery-powered DACs? New owner
- Will a better supply than the 5V USB adapter shipped with Qutest improve it, and what voltage does it accept? New owner
- How does RF noise get into a DAC, and why does it make the sound brighter?
- Is battery power better than mains, and can I power the M Scaler or Qutest from a power bank?
- Should I replace the supplied power supply with a linear or aftermarket one, and will that affect my warranty?
- Which Chord inputs are galvanically isolated, and which setups short the isolation out?
- Will a USB purifier, JitterBug or USB isolator improve my DAVE, TT2 or Hugo?
Features, settings and controls (6)
- How much delay do the long filters add, and how do I keep lip sync with video? New owner
- How should I use Mojo 2's EQ, and is it really lossless? New owner
- What do the colored indicators mean (volume, sample rate, charging), and is a volume color the same level across Chord DACs? New owner
- What does Rob think of room correction, HRTF processing and surround sound? New owner
- What does crossfeed do, which setting should I use, and why didn't the original Mojo have it? New owner
- Which filter setting should I use on Hugo 2, TT2 or Qutest, and what does the HF filter do?
Formats, recordings and ADCs (10)
- Do lossy or streamed files sound worse than local files on a Chord DAC? New owner
- Has Rob published his own recordings, and how were they made? New owner
- Should I send DSD as DoP or native? New owner
- What DSD rates does each input on a Chord DAC accept? New owner
- Why does my M Scaler give no output with native DSD? New owner
- Do Chord DACs decode MQA, and what does Rob think of it?
- Does hi-res audio sound better than CD, and should I buy the 96k or the 44.1k release?
- How do Chord DACs handle DSD, and does Rob consider DSD better or worse than PCM?
- How do microphones, studio conversion and mastering limit what a DAC can reproduce?
- What is Davina, and what happened to the pulse array ADC?
Upscaling and the M Scalers (6)
- Does an M Scaler help Mojo, Mojo 2 or a non-Chord DAC? New owner
- Is M Scaler pass-through bit perfect, and why is the scaled output quieter? New owner
- What does the M Scaler actually do, and is it worth adding to my DAC? New owner
- Why is the M Scaler a separate box instead of being built into the DAC? New owner
- How can upscaling to 705.6/768 kHz improve sound if the recording has nothing above 22 kHz?
- Should I upsample in software (HQPlayer, PGGB or my player) before a Chord DAC, and can it match an M Scaler?
Reconstruction filters and timing (7)
- How are Chord's filter stages split across 16FS, 256FS and 2048FS, and what does each stage do?
- Is the filter algorithm more important than the tap count, and would more than a million taps keep improving the sound?
- Isn't pre-ringing bad? Why doesn't Chord offer minimum-phase, apodizing or NOS filters, and are NOS DACs really bit perfect?
- What is a transient timing error, and why is it audible when a fixed delay or phase shift is not?
- What is the WTA filter, how was it tuned, and how does it differ from a conventional windowed sinc filter?
- Why are half-band decimation filters and studio sample-rate conversion a problem, and how much aliasing rejection is enough?
- Why does tap length matter, and why a million taps?
Noise shaping, accuracy and conversion hardware (6)
- How does a pulse array DAC work, how does it differ from R2R and delta-sigma, and why is it insensitive to jitter?
- Should audio processing dither or noise-shape, and is 64-bit floating point transparent?
- What do noise shaper order and speed buy, and why does DAVE's 350 dB noise shaper matter?
- What is noise floor modulation, how does Rob measure it, and why does he say it is audible below what can be measured?
- Why does Chord use FPGAs and discrete conversion instead of DAC chips or a custom ASIC?
- Why does Rob design to -301 dB, how can that be verified, and how does small-signal accuracy relate to depth?
Perception, listening and measurement (9)
- How loud is safe, and does hearing loss make high-end gear pointless? New owner
- Do Chord DACs need burn-in or warm-up?
- Do measurements tell you how good a DAC sounds, and is Rob an objectivist or a subjectivist?
- How does Rob run listening tests, which tracks does he use, and how should I run my own?
- What does Rob mean by 'starting and stopping of notes', timbre variation and 'sense of flow', and what causes them?
- What does Rob mean by depth, and what in a DAC improves or collapses it?
- Which kinds of error does Rob consider audible, and which does he consider benign?
- Why does Rob distinguish perception from hearing, and why does he distrust psychoacoustic thresholds?
- Why might a brighter or more detailed change actually be a step backward?
Watts, Chord, community and miscellany (6)
- Is Chord working on a DAVE 2, Hugo 3, Mojo 3 or TT3, and when might the Ultima DAC arrive? New owner
- Is Rob a Chord employee, and which Chord products (Poly, 2go, the amplifiers) did he not design? New owner
- What music does Rob listen to? New owner
- Why won't Rob comment on other brands' products? New owner
- How were Chord's current DACs and the M Scaler developed, and how long did each take?
- What did Rob design before Hugo, and how did the WTA filter and pulse array come about?