Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
Nothing was fighting for a prime time or for my full attention, everything felt spread out and so defined in its own bubble of air. The soundstage was massive…easily on the same level with the Musician Aquarius and approaching dangerously close to the Denafrips Terminator Plus – which so far, was the soundstage king in my book. R26 Discrete felt bigger sounding than any of the Delta-Sigma Oversampling DACs and the difference was literally…night and day, even with drivers sitting centimeters away from my eardrums.
Breaking away from what used to be done inside a single chip, the AK4191 has been designed and conceptualized for discrete digital filtering and delta-sigma modulation. Where the traditional digital-to-analog conversion happens is in a dual-DAC AK4499EX implementation. The least impressive sounding inputs were Optical and Coaxial, I found them boring sounding at all times, transforming it from 3D to 2.5D sounding. The resolution took another hit and it seems that both inputs won’t accept MQA, native DSD, or 32-bit PCM material. Yikes! Having said all that, here are some reasons you should not take my view as gospel without more corroboration. a) I have very little DAC experience, having only owned two (plus a couple of real cheapies that don’t really count). b) I only use it as a DAC (not a streamer or a pre), so YMMV if you use it differently. On the lower frequencies, the Qutest showed a tighter trait on instrument placement. The A26 however is the one that readily displayed its nature through its richer thump that slightly lingered longer for room definition. In simpler words, what a single AK4499EQ chip could do a few years ago was moved into three separate devices, two AK4499EX (for a fully balanced signal), and a single AK4191 used as a premium delta-sigma modulator. Since every chip does its own thing never to be bothered with additional tasks, the noise floor and distortion lowered, the sound became faster and more accurate than ever before.
XMOS XU216
Chord however got more involved when they opted to custom code an FPGA-based XC7A15T chip to their standards. Peer into the viewing glass of the Qutest and the Xilinx module can be appreciated. Before going deep into the rabbit hole, let’s once again remember what a DAC needs to do in the first place. A DAC is a mini computer that receives a digital signal and outputs an analog one that will be amplified later on. A DAC crunches math and there’s no ambiguity in its job. It needs to be flawless, without inducing any errors in the chain. The problem is that the whole unbridled, honest, and non-sugar-coated truth is oftentimes hard to accept. Usually, people want nice stories and high doses of dopamine injected into their bloodstream. A good DAC should be the bearer of truth, although it could be a pain where the sun doesn’t shine and the truth is unbearable a lot of times. If the scale of the music is important to you, being immersed in your music, having a very good placement of all the notes around you, then I just described one of the most impressive delta-sigma DACs I’ve tried of late. Treble is the standard ESS Sabre affair, without the usual glare and brightness associated with this chipset. It goes sky high, there are as many details as you please, it just breathes in the treble. You will not find nasty pre or post-ringing in the treble. Its timing its perfect and it never appeared as harsh or bright sounding to me. The interesting part is that X26 PRO was always connected to a Benchmark HPA4 that is straight as a line and doesn’t awake as many emotions, it can even transform several sources into bright ones, but that never happened, even for a micro-second with the Gustard unit. I’m glad to tell you that it pairs very well with lean and linear setups, you can easily use it bright setups too. It worked with warm sounding setups, I personally used several Class-A amplifiers and it worked great with all of them. Keep in mind that you can also alter its voicing a little bit, by the help of its digital filters and NOS modes. What I appreciate about the Qutest are the two BNC digital inputs which can be triggered to play together or separately. Still, the Qutest does have a few features absent when compared to the A26 such as MQA, streaming, and balanced outputs to name a few.
The cool thing here is the friendlier upper midrange that plays well with the bright ATH-ADX5000. Also, turning to bass lines and synths, the roomier and more capable oomph doesn’t ruin the balance as it stays close to neutrality. Select Comparisons SMSL SU-10 TechnicalHeadphone Amps: Benchmark HPA4, SparkoS Labs Aries, Flux Lab Acoustics FCN-10, SMSL SP400, Burson Soloist 3X, xDuoo XA-10
From the streaming point of view, R26 is still immature product, it require a customised firmware for each streaming technology, the one size fit all approach doesn't work well due to the RAM shortage. It probably won't be fixed by the firmware upgrade, you need to wait for the new model with more RAM to get flexibility in chosing streaming standards. In the headphone setup, it was mostly connected to the Benchmark HPA4 driving several high-end planar-magnetic headphones and a bunch of dynamic headphones. Okay folks, enough with the talk, my ears are itching for some music, so let’s hit some ear-drums!
One more thing that probably comes into play, well it doesnt hurt thats for sure. I put it in , but I never really did any critical listening. I changed the power cord to my Running Springs Audio Dmitri. I had a fairly inexpensive Pangea AC9SE power cord on it and I added a RSA High Zoot powercord. Wow what a nice cord. It is a 60 conductor litz construction, maybe a little more than 1 1/4 inches in diameter, but still very flexible. A26 felt sharper sounding and slightly more defined, as the contours of the notes were outlined via A26. The latter has a higher dynamic range and with the right equipment and selection of music, you can hear that. Headphone Amps: Trafomatic Primavera, Trafomatic Head 2, Enleum AMP-23R, Ferrum OOR + HYPSOS, Burson Soloist 3X GT, Flux Lab Acoustics Volot Headphones: (i) Martin Logan Mikros 90 , Ultrasone PRO 780i , Beyerdynamic Amiron Home , Neumann NDH-30 , Ultrasone Edition Eleven ; (ii) Audeze MM-500 . I tested an A-GD R7 a while ago and it was indeed quite slow and mellow, but R26 feels like a different beast altogether."
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