Chord Quartet upscaler

Is this in the wild yet and has anyone heard it (or bought it)?

Or is the price just a bridge too far?

.sjb

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I was interested until I saw the price. It seemed preposterous. That said, I’m curious how much of an improvement it actually brings.

Their website says available to order, Audiobarn have it on their website at £25k and in stock. I would think at that price its not flying off the shelves.

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As I understand it the M scaler was primarily intended for the TT, hence it’s styling, with one for Dave anticipated – so perhaps rather high price is unsurprising though £25k seems particularly extreme. I was unaware it had been released so I just had a quick look at Chord’s website, and interestingly note that it includes an ADC so you can play analog sources through it.

I have often wondered what happened to the previously proposed Davina, matching ADC for Dave - perhaps it has been effectively combined with this product. The benefit of a matching ADC and DAC is effectively perfect reconstruction so for users of Dave who also use any DSP tools (e.g. room correction) the same could be applied to analogue sourced music with no negative impact retaining Dave as the DAC. My own interest was briefly piqued for the idea of playing musical instruments through Davina, but I expect the overall latency to be far too high for live playing/monitoring, while cost would probably place it out of consideration for most people - certainly the Quartet is way beyond consideration for me?

Interesting Quartet threads over on Head-Fi, Rob Watts has also contributed. If / when Fanthorpes eventually stock the Quartet I will arrange a listening season, but at 25k its a price too high for me.

September is a date thats been mentioned when those with deep pockets receive theirs.

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The Quartet was on demo in the Chord Electronics room at the NorthWest Audio show. I sat and listened to it for a while (iirc with an Innuos streamer, the new Chord power amp an Ultima pre 3 and of course a DAVE).

We were given the chance to listen with and without the Quartet in the chain. For me it gave a warmer sound overall which was not unpleasant……..but worth 25k, I am not sure! Still, if 25k is peanuts money to you then maybe it’s a good deal :thinking:

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Is it, though? A Quartet plus Dave, comes in about the same price as a Linn DSM3 which more than one forum member runs. Both are hefty investments, but pocket money in comparison with some dCS gear.

Roger

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Valid relative comparisons. My frame of reference was the M Scaler was slightly less expensive than its mate the TT2, so at two boxes I thought the Quartet might be double the cost of the Dave but it’s actually triple!

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Yes, very expensive! Whilst a group of us were looking at the Chord set up one guy ask how much the little stack of three boxes cost……err 40k came the reply (Dave = 10.5, quartet boxes 25, choral stand 3x 1.5). Seems many of us need to keep saving :frowning: