Time has come to reveal.
“Quartet now officially launched.” That was the title of the email that we got yesterday from Chord Electronics. And just like that, we were transported over a month back in time when we visited the Chord premises in Kent. The time to reveal has come – we listened to the Chord Quartet back then, even though it was not yet an officially available product in their lineup. We looked into it, observed it on the test bench, and listened to it in the Chord main system. We just couldn’t talk about, all right…
You can check out our factory tour of Chord Electronics and take a look behind the scenes at all the goodies and quite impressive hardware. But mostly, meet the team behind it all, exceptionally talented people.
It is for sure one of the most significant digital products in the outstanding 37-year history of Chord Electronics. One of those giant leaps forward in digital processing, with monumental processing power and timing accuracy. Now, the new Quartet is implemented in a two-box design, separating the highly considered power supply to the massive FPGA of 3,700 DSP cores of no less than 5 (five) Xilinx processors. Reaching the 5 (five) times processing power of DAVE DAC (reviewed here) and a clear improvement in transient timing accuracy of the M Scaler, Chord Quartet is a monster with a sole scope of recreating the data details of the initial analog signal in the most time accurate manner possible, real-life transients, and zero aliasing distortion.
From the pure hardware perspective, Chord Quartet is more than impressive. Only seeing all that processing power is quite overwhelming. It is also very technically interesting to see how they managed to cool it and maintain a reliable power supply that will not strain the system under zero-latency conditions and deliver the purest power available – that will be another Rob Watts design, along with the highly sophisticated algorithms that require all that monstrous raw processing power.
Quartet key features:
- 4 million filter taps: Utilises the all-new proprietary Blackbird WTA (Watts Transient Aligned) filter, offering more than a tenfold improvement in transient timing accuracy over the M Scaler.
- Built-in Pulse Array ADC: A Chord Electronics upscaler first, allowing analogue sources and turntables to benefit from powerful upscaling technology with zero aliasing distortion.
- Massive FPGA architecture: Powered by 5x Xilinx FPGAs and 3,700 DSP cores (boasting five times the processing power of the DAVE DAC).
- Direct hardware filtering: Implemented entirely within hardware to avoid the timing errors introduced by standard software FFT ‘shortcuts’.
- Two-box design: Features a separate, highly sophisticated Rob Watts-designed power supply utilising proprietary RF rejection for absolute signal purity.
- Lossless 108-bit Digital EQ: Includes a ten-shelf digital equalization system (±18 dB) for flawless control across varying file and recording qualities.
- Works with all Chord Electronics DACs: The Quartet is compatible with all of our DACs and can also ‘unlock’ the full potential of the DAVE.
High End Vienna 2026
We have been informed that production versions will be on display at HIGH END 2026 in Vienna from 4 June. That means we, the lucky ones who will travel this year to the probably most important show on the planet, will have the chance to listen to the real thing, in flesh and blood, or better said, in brushed aluminum and pure power through its veins.
We hope to get a Quartet for serious evaluation here at Sound News and in our systems later this year. We are a bit scared because we already heard it on the Chord premises in Kent, and we were left with some serious marks of outstanding performance, incredibly transparent, and speed real-life transients with perfect details reproduction. So, it will not be easy to contain such a beast:)
I am genuinely looking forward to our upcoming trip to Vienna, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to reconnect with some members of the Chord team in person once again. It will be a pleasure to see some of you, our friends. I want to assure everyone that the story we began today is far from over; it is just the beginning of something much bigger and more meaningful, and I am excited to see how it unfolds in the times ahead. Or in plain journalistic terms, this is a developing story.
