USB to Dual Coax Bridge for Qutest DAC

@audphile1 

Happy New Year.

I contacted the seller and may potentially pull the trigger this week.

Without ever hearing the M3, I'm a bit hesitant to do just that.  Pre-buyers remorse.

Did some critical listening on Qobuz this morning using a Chesky playlist.  Most tracks sound pretty good with my Qutest.

So, asking for some encouragement that I am going to take my streaming experience to a significantly higher level with the Bricasti.  I realize this may be a strange request from an Audiogon member, but what the heck.

Rich a/k/a drlou77

Yes. Rob Watts is a digital genius. I love the Chord sound. It’s remarkable what he’s been able to accomplish there.

I have two minor gripes there with the Qutest and the TT2…

1. Power supply - wall wart? Really? Advantage is, minus one power cord upgrade but other than that, not cool

2. Ergonomics - I do like the the original design with the changing LED colors depending on what bit rate is coming into the dac, but it’s a bit too unsubtle and I like to see the bitrate on the screen

Zero complaints about the sound, I think sonically they’re solid dacs. The TT2 will be more of what the Qutest has to offer but I’m sorry at the price of the TT2 I expect a really good linear power supply. It’s definitely worth trying if that’s the route you wanna go. I’m confident it’ll be a great dac and an upgrade over the already pretty awesome qutest.

@audphile1 

Did you ever consider a Chord TT2?  Just curious.

I own one with the network card. Your streaming front end is excellent. No need for the dac inbuilt player. 

@audphile1 okay.  Will contact the seller and research the DAC a bit.  I don’t need the network option, but maybe that’s why it’s not selling.

It’s a great dac. The fact that it’s been listed for a while gives you leverage to get a great deal. I went from Qutest to Bryston to Benchmark to Bricasti M3 and the M3 is the best DAC out of them all. Contact the seller just make sure you cross all Ts and dot all Is. Read reviews. Read up on design and implementation. At that price and potentially even lower, it’s a bargain. 

@audphile1 thanks for your suggestion.  I can swing $3k for the M3:  It’s been listed for a while.  If it’s such a great deal, why hasn’t somebody snatched it up?

Just thinking out loud, that’s all.

Happy New Year!

@drlou77 I think your USB setup is as good as it gets right now. Upgrade the DAC.
TT2 isn’t a qutest with preamp and headphone amp. It’s a better DAC. Another good choice would be this Bricasti M3 you can probably get a great deal on.

Its a better DAC than the Qutest with a more refined sound, better dynamics and lower noise floor. You can sell your Qutest…don’t trade it in as you will just get robbed pretty much

https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/650047539-bricasti-m3/

@drlou77 I think I made my opinion clear. but I’m just a guy on the internet. Many will disagree with me. but many 5 digit price DACs are built around USB still.

Seems like $300 is a lot for a box with 4 wires in it. I don't think any electronics are involved to do this adapter (but I may be wrong).

Jerry

@carlsbad2 

Yeah, kind of.  Am I following a path based on urban legend?
 

@audphile1 

I suppose I may look into a TT2 at some point, but I just retired and don’t have an extra $5k laying around.  Really that much better than a Qutest?  I get the Civic analogy.  I suppose I could trade in my Qutest for credit and make it a little less expensive.  I really don’t need the pre amp, though.  Never listen to headphones.

I wouldn’t discount the USB implementation in the Innuous and in the Qutest. If you can try that Audiowise SRC-DX with a return policy do it. But keep in mind the cost of good digital cables and the power cords/supplies fir the Audiowise SRC-DX.
I know you’re not looking at a dac upgrade but I’m pretty sure you’re heading there. Chord TT2 with USB will be a good level or two above the Qutest (one of my favorite DACs by the way). You can only soup up a Civic so much…it will never become a BMW M3. Just keep an open mind.

So I take it you've bought into the marketing pitch that "USB is crap".  I have a chord DAVE that I ran for years on USB.  Spectacular DAC.  Switched to AES/EBU when I bought a Grimm streamer and the sound was different from the different streamer but I didn't attribute any of it to having escaped the dreadful and hideous monster known as USB.

Jerry

Those are pretty complicated.  The USB bridge basically has to pretend to be a DAC, so it has a handshake, says "I'm such and such a DAC and these are my capabilities" and it also has to have it's own clock, which you have to trust, to ask the sender for data samples on time.

IMHO, you are much better experimenting with a USB galvanic isolator (~ $50) than a converter.