chordette gem needs a re-review

[admin_exported]

Sorry what hifi, but for a £400 device i dont think enough comparison was made against other cheaper, or indeed more expensive DACs.

You say the DAC has stronger dynamics than a laptop, this is hardly helpful as a sub £100 DAC would be a complete rip off if it was not capable of this also.

Maybe when you do a DAC roundup in the future you could fix these issues, and i dont think it is just me who is a little enraged, see the time of my post, its keeping me up 🙂

It seems the 5* award has been predominantly given for the pioneering inclusion of a bluetooth input, i hope this is wrong.

 

[Anonymous]

Haven't heard the thing, but from what I've read it seems like it actually compress the signal to get it through the Bluetooth bottleneck.

For half the prize you'll get an AirPort Express and a cheap DAC that pass through the signal unaltered, and outperform a PC sound card anyway....

 

[Clare Newsome]

Thanks for the feedback, but the Gem was tested in a range of set-ups - the Bluetooth ability is merely an option.

And yes, re-reviews will happen - as with all products as/when new contenders come along. We've got a DAC round-up due v.soon...

 

[Anonymous]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about this product, especially around sound fidelity when using the Bluetooth function. It's a shame as it's quite a novel product but with so little information about it I would be very reluctant to gamble £400 on it being worth the money. It would be interesting if some of the team who reviewed it could maybe shed a little more light on it?

Gareth

 

[Ketan Bharadia]

The Chord DAC is aimed squarely at PC, laptop and phone users. It only has Bluetooth and USB inputs.ÿ The performance difference between the inputs is small and favours USB.The Bluetooth capability was unique at the time of the review and we thought it was useful enough to have an impact on our overall rating. As always, the star rating would change if we come across something that does the same job better, or offers a similar performance at less money. At the moment we would keep the Gem at 5 stars.

 

[Ajani]

Ketan Bharadia:The Chord DAC is aimed squarely at PC, laptop and phone users. It only has Bluetooth and USB inputs. ....

That would be my main concern regarding the Gem... Whenever I see products (Integrated Amps, Headphone Amps, etc...) that only offer USB access to their internal DAC (no additional optical or coaxial inputs), I assume it means that the internal DAC is nothing special... i.e. it's better than what's in your computer (and in the Gem's case: your cellphone) but likely no better than a cheap CD/DVD Player...