I have NOT been impressed with the Chord reviews as a rule, and I would venture to guess you could do much better with say a Metrum for about the same bucks. The name is taking a hit with todays value DAC's ex., M2Tech, Peachtree, Wadia, April Music, Imperial Audio, Mhdt, Audiophillio, Schiit,  on and on. My advice to Chord - sell this sucker for under a $Kilo. Then you will get some action. If its good. You will get some buz and repeat customers looking to upgrade.

As a stocking Chord dealer with a Qute HD on display along with:

M2 Tech Young

Arcam DAC

AMR DP 777

Naim NDX

DAC Magic Plus

Chord QBD 76

Meitner MA 1

EMM Labs DAC 2XS

Esoteric D02 

Plus many high end cd players, and a few other dacs, so you can say I know what great digital sounds like, and you are judging the Qute by its size and packaging rather than the technology and sound quality,

1: The Chord Qute HD is using the same proprietary decoding technology as the Chord QBD 76 HD which sells for $8,500.00!

2: The Chord dacs employ a unique FPGA running an incrediblly sophisticated decodring algorithm and filtering software that took a British engineer 10 years to develop that address time domain disortions.

3: The Qute HD has allready been singled out as offering ridiculous level of performance for the money, both Alvin Gold and myself have compared this $1,800.00 Dac to one of the  industry stadard reference dacs the Meitner MA 1, at $7,000.00 which quite frankly blows away 95% of the digital out there, and the Meitner is still way better, howerver, this is the first dac under $3k that reminds me of many of the salient qualities of the incredible Meitner whiich is still way more three dimensional and airy, but I can not remember when I have heard an affordable dac that reminds me of many of the same qualities of the $7,000.00 Meitner. 

4: If you also understand that Chord is world famous for their advanced engineering and technology, that by removing the internal power supply, removing the big ram buffer, and balanced circuits makes the Qute tiny, but this little box is chock full of novel and advanced engineering, you will appreicate  that this is a very serious kit. 

5: Most of the dac's out there are running standard dac chips, Sabre, or Burr Browns, Chord has been implimenting there own technlogy for ten years, that mirrors what the most exotic and expensive companies do such as DCS, or EMM Labs, their Watt Time and Transient Aligned Filtering technology is unique and makes a very good sounding, high resolution product. 

6: Instead of looking at a product and juding it without ever evaluting it is stupid and shows your ignorance, the Chord Qute HD is amazing sounding and is an incredible value! Can you guess which sub $3,000.00 Dac I am recommending to my clients? 

SIncerely,

Dave Lalin, President, Audio Doctor, www.audiodoctor.com