DACs, U-Turns, Laurels and Yannys

Posted by: SongStream on 02 June 2018

I'd like to give an update as I posted a thread giving a glowing review of a Chord Qutest following a home demo, and then some weeks later, after taking delivery of my own, posted reporting that ultimately it wasn't as enjoyable as my Naim DAC-V1.  

I took delivery of the Chord beginning of April, went through what I considered a reasonable run-in period of 3 weeks, and then in a moment of general dissatisfaction switched back to the DAC-V1 and realised that it was instantly more enjoyable.  Since the 'dissatisfaction' post, the DAC-V1 ruled the roost for three weeks-ish, and then two weeks ago I decided I'd try the Chord again.  During its break the Chord had been left powered on and connected up, just off duty.  This time, and for the first time with my own unit, I was instantly engaged and enjoying it.  A couple of tracks in and it was reminding me much more of my feelings during the demo, and why I bought the thing.  

Now if I look back at my comments here after the demo, they all make sense again, and most of what I said a month ago seems unfair based on the performance over the last two weeks.  Somehow, the Qutest seems to have weighted up, and become the punchy and organic sounding performer I signed up for.  As a result, it's ruled the roost for the last two weeks, and the DAC-V1 hasn't had a look in.  Very different from what happened last time I switched back, where the Chord survived about a single day.

When I first listened to my own Qutest, I remember thinking 'I hope it improves with run-in'; it wasn't like my memory of the demo at all.   Over the following three weeks it did improve, but never did it leave me hooked.  Can it really be the case that a DAC like this requires six weeks of power on, and with 50% of that time unused to run-in and properly start to sing?  I understand that things need to warm up, but when you look at the insides of a Chord Qutest, there doesn't look like there's much in it?  I mean, what's warming up?  

Could it be entirely down to me?  This is where the Laurel vs Yanny thing comes into my thinking.  Although it made the news, some of you may not be aware that there is a short sample of a word being repeated three times, which went viral around 'internet, because some people hear 'Yanny' and others hear 'Laurel', and the divide is near enough 50/50, so it's provoked quite a lot of debate.  I first played the sample via the BBC news website, using i-phone ear-pods, and clearly heard 'Laurel' and to the extent I couldn't imagine how anyone would hear anything else.  Later that day, a colleague played the sample on desktop speakers, and I clearly heard 'Yanny'.  He was on the Reddit website from where the whole thing originated, so I demanded he played the clip from the BBC website.  I still heard 'Yanny'.  I went back to my office and put the earpods in, played the clip from the BBC and heard 'Yanny'.  What's going on?  I played it again and again, yanny yanny yanny.  Then I caught the faintest hint of Laurel, and then with real concentration on the lower frequencies, I finally got it back to 'Laurel'.

The reason I find the Laurel/Yanny thing interesting is because I heard both.  There's been lot's of waffle about how different people hear differently, and older vs younger people blah etc, and I can buy that, but at different times I heard both, and that's plain weird.  When I previously switched DACs, was I in a particularly Yanny mood or something?  Pww, who knows?    Right now, I'm hearing Laurel, and it's very good. 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on: 02 June 2018 by ngarritson

Thank you for the update.  Glad to hear it's coming around.  

Posted on: 02 June 2018 by DC71

Songstream, good to hear it finally locked in for you. Although I was enjoying mine from the start, it did also take around 6+ weeks to finally reach its peak sound quality.

As I mentioned in the earlier thread, it also needed some experimentation with IC and speaker cable matching to find the best sound, and I got a further gain when I separated the Qutest switching PS and a new network switch (on a ifi iPower) away from my dedicated hifi power spur.

It has continued to delight me ever since, and although it's a cliché, just connects me to the music instead of thinking about the sound or the system.

I'm still running it from a bluesound node2, so I think the only change I may go for would be to treat it to a better transport, maybe something from sotm, sonore etc. But at the moment I'm struggling to imagine how the system could sound much better.

Posted on: 03 June 2018 by SongStream

@DC71, thanks.  There were a couple of mentions of interconnects in the previous thread, but the thing that fried my head was that in the demo I used the same interconnects, and at the time thought it was all great, I just wasn't getting the same feeling with my own unit and couldn't understand it.  Until two weeks ago that is.  I did borrow another interconnect cable to try with the demo unit, but preferred my long serving VDH cables by quite a margin, and 90% percent of the demo time was using my cable.  The little Chord does sound rather wonderful now though, and that's not to say it was awful before by any means, but wasn't what I expected in the early weeks.  I just wouldn't have expected it to require that much run-in time, but I have no other explanation for the change that has occurred.  All good in the end. :-)

 

Posted on: 03 June 2018 by Mayor West

Thanks for the update Songstream. I bought my Hugo second hand so the run in had already been done for me so it was pretty instantaneous, obvious improvement in comparison to DAC-V1. As I've said before, it wasn't that DAC-V1 was bad, its just that I found Hugo to have more of everything which resulted overall in a much more insightful and enjoyable musical experience. Glad that your Qutest is now doing the same

Posted on: 04 June 2018 by analogmusic

Rob Watts DAC's aren't simple - quite complex machines.

They look at the musical data, each sample, both back and forward in time - and then recreate the music.

The more you pay, the more accurate the re-creation.

At the level of Blu2 - that's really state of the art recreation - has to be heard to understand... but $$$$

Posted on: 04 June 2018 by SongStream
analogmusic posted:

Rob Watts DAC's aren't simple - quite complex machines.

They look at the musical data, each sample, both back and forward in time - and then recreate the music.

The more you pay, the more accurate the re-creation.

At the level of Blu2 - that's really state of the art recreation - has to be heard to understand... but $$$$

I don't recall saying it was simple.

Posted on: 04 June 2018 by analogmusic

I thought you did when you said above

“when you look at the insides of a Chord Qutest, there doesn't look like there's much in it?  I mean, what's warming up?  “

Posted on: 05 June 2018 by SongStream
analogmusic posted:

I thought you did when you said above

“when you look at the insides of a Chord Qutest, there doesn't look like there's much in it?  I mean, what's warming up?  “

Well, there isn't much in it, because all of the work is done on the FPGA allowing for a discrete output stage, there's not further filtering by active electronics.  In that sense it is simple.  However, that doesn't make the coding required for the FPGA simple, far from it.

Posted on: 05 June 2018 by DC71

[@mention:40424794201076322], since you mentioned that your Qutest now plays well with your favourite VdH cable, I revisited my cable swapping and put back in my long-time VdH 3T The Sea IC. This time, it is playing very nicely indeed, with increased extension at both frequency extremes compared to my lighter sounding Groneberg cable. Also I no longer hear any recessed mids, so it seems those negatives I heard were temporary ups & downs during the long Qutest run-in. 

Next step will be to swap back in my VdH speaker cables and see if they're preferable to the current Mogami. I guess the best advice we can give to anyone with a new Qutest is to give it 6 weeks of on time/play time to settle before fine tuning with cables etc.

I've seen a few up for sale here in Singapore with sellers saying the units are only a few weeks old - crazy premature decision I think!

Posted on: 05 June 2018 by SongStream

[@mention:31133010783678037] Interesting stuff.  The cable I use is the d102 MkIII and I find it's darker than most (probably all actually) other cables I've tried, but at the same time among the most detailed, really sweet at the top end, and with excellent punchy timing.  A bit down the pecking order from yours I believe, but from what you've just said I think probably has some similarities.  That's why if something sounds a bit lean and light-footed, I tend to worry, and doubt that cable switching is likely to help, as I particularly like a weighty full bodied sound, and that is what the VDH cable tends to deliver.

I too found that the mids, particularly what I would call lower-mids, were lacking in the first month or so, but decided not to switch cables about, although was thinking about giving it a try.  With hindsight I'm quite glad I didn't, because now I am back to a kind of bench mark and know where I am.  

As for advice to new owners, and even for dealers lending them out, I completely agree.  Definitely let this one run-in for a good while before messing with cables or passing any kind of final judgement, it will probably prevent a lot of confusion and faffing about.

Good luck with the speaker cable experiment.  I am not familiar with VDH speaker cable, but would be interested to hear how you get on.  I am on the Naim prescribed NAC-A5, which made my Proac D18s sound totally un-listenable, but makes my Kudos X3s sound absolutely ridiculously fantastic.  Bonkers!!!