Chord Electronics announced Quest Standalone DAC

Chord Electronic just announced the new Quest Standalone DAC at CES 2018, an affordable home DAC that does nothing but making your devices sound better. Without any sort of headphone amplification or rechargeable batteries like others in the same product range.

Utilizing the FPGA technology that made the Hugo 2 DAC/headphone amp one of the lead DACs made by Chord Electronics. The Quest Standalone DAC brings this power to a wide range of connectible devices and sound sources, featuring an isolated USB-B port with optical and coaxial digital inputs.

Made from aircraft-grade aluminium metal, the Quest Standalone DAC is noticeably heavier than it’s previous, therefore offering a safe case fore the Qutest PCB to rest within. protecting the circuit board from external vibration. Hence, enhancing the overall sound quality of the DAC.

You can control the Quest DAC’s frequency-shaping filters and input selection using the two spheres mounted on the front-side of the DAC, and on the back-side you can find RCA analogue outputs to connect amplifiers, preamps and headphone amp, alongside high-resolution dual-data digital inputs to connect other Chord Electronics products.

You can select the output voltage ranging from 1, 2 and 3V RMS, this provides flexible connectivity with a wide range of devices. The Device also supports driverless connecting to Mac OS X and Linux devices, while a driver is required to connect with windows based devices.

The DAC made debut internationally in CES 2018 and will be shown later in the UK at the Bristol Show later in February this year. It will also cost around 1600$ and will be made available later this year.

Tune in with us for more CES 2018 news and updates, as we’ll be covering all kinds of audio related news from there.