compared to the tt2 + mscaler, the qutest sounds thin, les stage (the mscaler helps somewhat, but still not in tt2 territory). I had a little less issue with headphone and amp, but connected to my full hifi set, the difference became huge. the tt2 combi has more stage, depth, air around instruments and a smoothness the qutest just can't touch.@jjazzy That's very good to know! I've always thought that I'd be buying a lot of features that I would never use like the headphone amp and preamp capability of the tt2. I'm assuming that you don't find it to sound "thin" compared to the Qutest/MScaler combo? I read a comment on a different forum that someone felt that way. But I'd guess that the tt2 was not burned in. Chord equipment is fantstic but needs a good burn-in to hit it's sweet spot. For the first 50 hours of listening on my Qutest I wondered if I'd made a big mistake. Then it got better - sweeter/smoother and more fleshed-out/meatier and much better bass and kept improving with additional burn-in. My MScaler needed some burn-in but was definitely better initially compared to the Qutest.
But the qutest is a very good dac on it's own. especially for the price. I mean the tt2+mscaler is AMAZING, but that doesn't come cheap