The Ultimate Linear Power Supply for Chord 2Qute DAC

This is a limited edition linear power supply using the best materials for improving the sound quality of this excellent DAC.

Proven by existing customer feedbacks. The up-grades consist of pure silver DC cabling, Furutech gold plated IEC inlet fitted with an AMR audiophile fuse, and a IsoTEk EVO3 premier mains power lead fitted with mains plug to suit your country (EU Schuko, USA, Australia, UK). The PSU is fitted with an Oyaide gold plated DC plug soldered using audio note 6% silver solder.

MCRU give a 30 day money back guarantee with everything we sell, if you cannot hear the improvements this power supply makes feel free to return it.

We cannot put an image of the DAC itself so please google for that!

The Chord 2Qute DAC is powered by 12V DC and as standard ships with a SMPS wall wart psu. Our PSU delivers a regulated 12V supply based on a 2 box design, see the design rationale at the bottom of the page, the Chord DAC is described on Chord’s website as a world beater, fit our power supply and see what happens to the sound!

Here is the review of the PSU working with the Arcam R-DAC.

The design thoughts behind the 2 box PSU are below.

When thinking of regulation, it’s worth remembering the Roman god Janus. Who was the god of gateways, and was a two faced god looking in both directions. Likewise a good voltage regulator is required to look in both directions at once. From one direction you have the mains supply, with the ever increasing noise, distortion and random variation that exists on our household mains supply. In the other direction you have the device you are supplying power to. The load will be asking constantly varying current, and the job of the regulator will be to ignore the varying load and to supply a rock steady voltage that ignores the changing load.

To ask a single regulator to perform both tasks means that it can not do either as well as it could. We don’t ask our regulators to be two faced, we split the two functions into two separate regulators and put them both where they can do the best job.

The first regulator is close to the mains supply, its job is to take the incoming mains and convert it into a low(ish) noise DC supply, and to isolate the mess that is our household power lines from what follows. In most power supplies on the market, the output of the first stage would be directly connected to the load device, and that would certainly be an improvement over the supplies that most manufactures provide. But we can do better by adding the other face of Janus to the system.

The second regulator is supplied with a clean low noise supply, and its job is to handle the changing demands of the load. To do that, it needs to be as close to the load as possible. So we remove the second regulator from the main box, and place it close to the load, both electrically and physically, that removes it from the noise and interference of the mains supply, and allows it to spend its time looking towards the load. Typical commercial voltage regulator chips are general purpose devices, but are not quiet enough for the task on hand, so the second regulator uses a bespoke regulator based on a low noise multi stage filtered voltage reference, a low noise error amplifier and a high current low resistance mosfet. To allow it to handle the changing load it also needs to supply current on demand, so all the remaining space in the second regulator is filled with low impedance capacitors to act as a local energy source.

Using the two stages of regulator, we achieve a noise floor equal or better than most battery supplies, and a effective source resistance of the order of 0.02 ohm (and the short cable run to the load avoids increasing this valve by adding copper where its not needed, and the use of a discrete regulator design allows that tiny value to be maintained way above frequency any audio device operates at.

Here is a comment from the first owner of this power supply…

”I bought the ‘cables r us’ power supply for a Chord Qute Dac to replace the standard power supply, that imo isn’t beefy enough. The difference was outstanding: less sibilance, better definition, improved imaging and a big increase in the quality and quantity of the bass. It was impressive straight out of the box but ‘broke in’ after about 24 hours and took another step up in quality. The power supply was extremely well finished, so much so that you would think you were looking at something that was closer to £1000 than £150.

I ordered it for next day delivery and it arrived on time. David e-mailed several times to check that everything had arrived and that I was with happy with the product.

Highly recommended from start to finish. Well done David and thank you.”

Hi David, just wanted to say thanks for the delivery today of the Chord Qutehd dac regulated power supply it has improved the sound so much,really very happy.

Gary Wilson

Hi David,
I got the power supply today for my QuteHD and it sounds fabulous.  A significant improvement!  I also have the dac connected to an Empirical Off Ramp 4.  I’m very impressed with the new power supply.  It added more weight to the music and gave it a fuller presentation, including expanding the soundstage!  The music doesn’t sound digital at all.  It actually sounds better than vinyl because it sounds like the performers are actually performing in my living room!

Mr E. Flores