Chord Electronics
Quartet
The Quartet is an upscaler, not a converter: it rebuilds the waveform between the samples and hands the result to your DAC. Chord's new Blackbird filter runs four million taps — DAVE, the reference, runs 164,000 — and it takes five Xilinx FPGAs and 3,700 DSP cores to carry it, five times the processing power of DAVE itself. All that arithmetic buys one thing: transients that arrive when they should. There is a Pulse Array ADC on board as well, a first for a Chord upscaler, so a turntable can be upscaled like everything else. The power supply sits in its own box with Rob Watts' pinch-off RF filter inside, mains-fed but as quiet as a battery. Two boxes, 6.2 kilos, 768 kHz out on dual BNC.
Specifications
| Pulse array | Integrated Pulse Array ADC with advanced decimation filtering, for analogue sources |
|---|---|
| Tap length | 4,000,000 taps |
| Processing power | 5x Xilinx FPGA; 3,700 DSP cores; over 2 million lines of code |
| PCM support | Maximum resolution 768kHz |
| Digital filters | Blackbird WTA (Watts Transient Aligned) filter |
| Latency | Programmable, 10 milliseconds to 3 seconds |
| Inputs | 2x RCA |
| Digital inputs | 2x BNC (or dual BNC); 2x Optical; 1x USB-B (galvanically isolated) |
| Digital outputs | 1x Optical 192kHz; 1x S/PDIF; 2x Dual BNC 768kHz output |
| Equalisation range | 108-bit lossless digital EQ; ten-shelf system; +/- 18 dB |
| Power consumption | Full power - 130 W; Standby - 20 W |
| Dimensions | 7.8cm (H) 33.5cm (W) 15.2cm (D) - also applies to the power supply |
| Weight | 3kg; PSU 3.2kg |
| Finishes | Black and Silver |
Where to listen
Every model is sold and demonstrated through Joenit's authorized dealer network in the Benelux. Find your nearest dealer to hear it for yourself.
