Chord Qutest upsampling with Macbook Pro

peter_ryan · March 8, 2020, 9:37pm

Having fun with settings

jhwalker · March 8, 2020, 9:49pm

No personal experience, but I’ve been told the Chord DACs work best with PCM. Have you tried upsampling using PCM instead?

peter_ryan · March 8, 2020, 10:17pm

Yes, trying different settings.

Mediahound · March 9, 2020, 3:41am

IMO, don’t do a software upsample as the DAC already does internal upsampling.

jhwalker · March 9, 2020, 4:09pm

Almost all DACs (with the exception of those specifically advertised as NOS; i.e., non oversampling) perform internal upsampling.

Those who chose to upsample outside the DAC are betting that the greater resources of a PC (i.e., Windows / Mac / Linux, et al.) and external software programmers can perform upsampling “better” than the designer of the DAC - which is sometimes objectively true and sometimes (perhaps) not

But it’s pretty cool to have the option to try!

Mediahound · March 9, 2020, 5:01pm

Rob Watts, the designer of Chord’s DACs has said never to upsample with his DACs, unless you want worse quality.

Digital_Dude · May 16, 2020, 1:56am

Makes no sense to upsample or convert to DSD with a Chord DAC… It has been shown that the addition of noise to small signals can sometimes sound better… Of course you have to break source small signals to add noise…