@kemela

Chord Electronics has a proven track record for world leading DAC technology and cutting edge amplifiers in high-tech industrial designs.

The unifying concept across all products from British company Chord Electronics is to preserve transients, energy and dynamics in reproduced sound which is the electrical equivalent of the art of performing artists. And this is why Chord Electronics is used in professional recording studios and commercial venues. There are many ways during the recording and playback of music performance where these key properties can be significantly diminished taking drama and excitement away and leaving the music ho-hum and unengaging or even tiring.

Starting with the source Chord Electronics has low noise phono stages and a range of ultra precision DACs (for which it is particularly known for) that don't use typical off the shelf chips. When the timing of digital signals is preserved, sound quality improves because timbral, texture, transient and spatial information is more specific and differentiated.

Next, when the source signals are amplified, we want to keep the micro second by micro second changing information identifiable and rapidly swing much larger voltages and current to drive the loudspeakers to trace out the source signal dynamics; but they require much more energy. We don't just want to translate 0.5mv to 1.0 mv into 50mv to 50.5mv; we want to preserve the relative dynamic in the source signal and amplify/scale into 50mv to 100mv. To get close to doing this we require the amplifier to leverage a lot of energy immediately when it is needed without any lag and follow the transients we have preserved in the source signal. It's about keeping the contrasts rather than just making everything loud. Customers often remark when switching to Chord Electronics how much better things also sound at quieter volumes.

Chord Electronics has developed a number of key technologies to address these goals; Advanced switch mode power supplies with self-compensating virtual gyroscopic-like balanced positive and negative voltage rails that respond to sudden transient demands that regular transformers cannot muster, proprietary dual-die MOSFET transistors, dual feed-forward error correction as used in the Ultima suite of amplifiers, proprietary custom coded FPGA chip-based DACs and upscaling technology (used to preprocess digital signals before they are passed onto the DAC) and many others.

New for 2025 Chord Electronics introduces the radically different SUZI component interlocking system.

Pride of ownership is enhanced by the distinctive visually interesting industrial design. Aircraft grade aluminum casing and laser etched labels give the products very durable finishes which hold up over years of use and color coded control operation takes the products out of the ordinary. Chord Electronics products are hand-built to order with typically a 6-8 week lead time. Custom engravings and finish options are available.