Please allow me to disagree with Paolo. I have tested different upsampling configurations with Qutest and definitely stand alone Qutest deals very well with any incoming untouched sampling rate but my ears find that Roon or HQPlayer software do a better job. Anyway it is a matter of taste as well I suppose but don’t assume your wonderful CHORD DAC is perfect for upsampling. And for those that are a bit lost, yes of course CHORD DACs do upsampling internally, almost all modern DACs do so!.
By the way Qutest does a terryble job dealing with DSD, it can handle it, but id is not good. You achive much better results converting DSD into PCM and then feed the CHORD. Test your ears and let me know.
Chord DAC’s convert DSD to PCM, and are the DSD stream is therefore processed through the WTA (‘Watts Transient Aligned’ filter) as PCM filtering/processing.
A direct quote from Rob Watts the designer of these Chord DACs…
“For Hugo 2/Qutest the signal path is:
1FS to 8FS input > 16FS WTA1 filter (49,152 taps) > 256FS WTA 2 filter > 3rd order 2048 FS filter > pulse array noise shaper at 104 MHz > analogue”
Chord DACs do internal upsampling, not to be confused with WTA filtering…
Additionally Rob said: “When an M scaler is connected, the WTA1 filter is not used, and it is passed through to the 256 FS WTA 2 filter.”
The Hugo M Scaler, and the Blu Mk II also do a similar thing only with a different WTA filter with (1,015,808 taps) with output on the other side being digital to feed a DAC…
