Chord DACs with HQPlayer - white noise blasts

Audio Gear Talk HQ Player
1

Yes a friend of mine has this so I asked to borrow to measure with my Mojo2.

Here are HQPlayer PCM 44.1k test signals → PCM705k with gauss-xla, LNS15

Performance is really excellent for its size, but for the price… DAC + SRC-DX is not cheap. It’s above half the price of Holo Cyan2 when you get the adapter and cables required. But still cheaper than Cyan2 I guess and has headphone out which is quite good.

Cyan2 still measures better but no doubt this is excellent.

No noise floor modulation as Rob Watts claims (but same goes for Cyan2 anyway). And no jitter (like Cyan2)

This is a nice way to eliminate the white noise issue.

Multitone
Multitone1600×900 138 KB

1kHz - 1
1kHz - 11600×900 119 KB

Jitter
Jitter1600×900 111 KB

Noise floor -0dBFS
Noise floor -0dBFS1600×900 125 KB

Noise floor -50dBFS
Noise floor -50dBFS1600×900 119 KB

Noise floor -90dBFS
Noise floor -90dBFS1600×900 118 KB

pico
pico1600×900 67.4 KB

1 Like
2

I had a mojo 2, using hqplayer upsampled to 705.6 pcm fixed the white noise issue. Not sure if it also has anything to do with the intona I inserted in the chain. But no white noise issue for a year and a half before I sold it for a cyan 2

3

You must have got lucky, white noise blast for me and lots of others trying PCM705k

Even with my Intona

This device fully solves the problem.

HQPlayer definitely cleans up the performance compared to WTA 1

4

Yup it worked for me right up to the time I sold it for the cyan 2!!

5

I like having both.

Mojo2 with HQPlayer has much lower IMD vs level performance , compared to Cyan2

and a direct headphone out

Great for travel with HQP on my Macbook

6

I have had the mojo2 and ru6 as portable solution then realized in light of pandemic, I was no longer required to work in the office and decided to sell both and get a cyan 2 instead.

But now I am back to the office, I just bought a hidizs s9 pro plus Martha and a pair of zero:red iem with a rpi5 running hqp desktop …

7

SRC-DX should solve the white noise blast for good, since you don’t have to use the problematic USB interface while you still get full PCM input rate capability

Wish there would be a way to get direct DSD pass-through in Chord DACs. Because the Chord modulator has various noise modulation / spurious tone problems. Just highly unlikely to happen.

8

He has written so much against DSD publicly, mostly based on his 1990’s experiences probably, there is more chance of me winning Powerball.

I can’t detect any noise modulation, as per my results shown above. Noise floor remains the same with different input levels.

The noise that is there is fixed level in my testing and not really a practical concern.

1 Like