I have not had any digital equipment in my house for the past four years as I made a decision to listen only to vinyl and analogue after rediscovering how good vinyl sounded in contrast to digital (CD). At the time I bought my turntable I was actually thinking of using a digital front end but this was halted in its tracks after an enlightening experience at a friends house. I bought a VPI turntable and for the past 3 years this has been my only source for music in the home.

I have however kept a close eye and ear on where digital has got too with an explosion in streaming and a move to file based audio. I always though the DAC was the key part of the digital chain and everything else was secondary but I have since learnt that in digital audio every part and technical aspect of the system can make dramatic differences to the end result.

I have long argued that analogue sounds better than digital and I still hold this view but this weekend I concluded a long journey to final arrive at a possible digital based system to be used in my hifi set up. I knew it would not be simple, just look at all the stuff written just on this forum about DACs, USB cables, FBA, Servers, streamers, CDP, Pi, ripping, bit rates etc etc. There seems to be even more technical aspects to digital audio and a good outcome than vinyl!

So after a much research and questioning all over the net and on various forums I have come to my own conclusion as to what matters and more importantly what works well. Everyone has an opinion but some arguments don't hold up when scrutinised and when theory is replaced with actual listening experience the truth comes out.

So I put together two systems based around the latest DAC from Chord called the Qutest.

[IMG]IMG_0007 by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/162281319@N03/][/IMG]

The Qutest was also very easy to set up and control. It is extremely well made and very small but solid. I tried all the filters with my Macbook but nothing improved on the neutral setting

First system was using my Macbook Pro and probably the best software out there for FBA which is Audirvana. The whole experience with Audirvana was excellent. It worked perfectly and sounded excellent. I used Audirvana Plus on the iPad to control it. I hooked up my Macbook to the Qutest via USB and spent a day listening to a wide range of material. Again Audirvana worked perfectly and sounded really good through the Qutest. However everything I played back had a certain sound which although not bad, robbed the music of some of its vitality and dynamics. The music sounded very smooth but I always felt a distance from the performance like everything was veiled. I tried optical output but this was worse. This system although good left me unconvinced and I questioned how good the Qutest DAC actually was. I was a little disappointed but it was a learning curve. Ripped files to a Laptop even using proprietary software was only going to get you so far.

So next system I tried again using FBA was build around the InnuOS Zen mini Mk2.

[IMG]IMG_0006 by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/162281319@N03/][/IMG]

This is also a small unit but very well made. It is a CD ripper/ NAS/streamer and again was amazingly easy to set up and integrate in my system. I used Ipeng on the iPad to control it and I must say it worked flawlessly. All music on this device was bit perfect rips of CDs mostly 16bit with a few 24bit downloads. I connected this using USB 2 interface.

As soon as I played the first track through my Croft amp into my Spender SP2s I knew something dramatically had improved! Wow what a difference, literally night and day! Dynamics increased massively as did the bass, detail and realism. The Qutest was now showing its pedigree. It is an unbelievable great DAC, simply superb. This set up showed how utterly important your digital front end needs to be.
The sound stunned me and I spent a very long day and night listening to a huge amount of material. I had found a digital system that could compete with my vinyl system at last.

The Chord Qutest / InnuOS server sounded wonderful and delivered a compelling performance. The veils were lifted totally and I heard detail and superb tonal quality. Vocals sounded real and in the room and on well mastered material it was fabulous. I could go on all day but to conclude.

I now know what it takes to get a great digital sound in my system. I now know which bits are important to get right .Although it sounded smooth and much more like analogue than digital it was still not as good as the best analogue, however it was good enough in its own right to earn a place in my system. I loved it and it showed a well thought out digital set up can sound excellent even to an old digital cynic like me!

[IMG]IMG_0007 by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/162281319@N03/][/IMG]
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