Chord DSX 1000 Network Music Player Review

[beckphotonik]

Seeing that Simon was hoping for some equipment reviews in this part of the forum, I thought I might start the ball rolling, especially as I have had some control issues. A few weeks ago I said goodbye to my remaining Cyrus kit and purchased the Chord Electronics DSX1000 Network Music Player.  Here is a brief review of my impressions so far.

Physically, this is built like the proverbial battleship!  12Kg of high grade aluminium and electronics for a streamer is pretty serious stuff, it comes with a small, well engineered remote, a rather long mains cable and an ethernet cable.  After a bit of a search, I downloaded the associated iPad and Android apps to my tablets.  You can do everything using the remote control or even the control on the unit itself but a tablet is far easier.  There is a headphone output, RCA and XLR outputs, both fixed and volume controlled and I use the volume controlled XLRs straight into my Ncores. There is also a BNC S/PDIF input which is active whenever the ethernet isn’t used and that is connected to my ageing CD.

Immediately out of the box the sound was a little brittle but this soon wore off.  My impression then, as it still is now, is akin to “Oh WOW”.  Compared to my old Cyrus kit there is a whole layer of added texture to the music from all formats 16/44.1 right up to 24/192.  The bass is deep and tight, the treble nice and smooth with a great coherence all round. It is a very impressive piece of kit.  I wanted to try DSD64 format, just to see what it sounded like.  Documentation on “how to” is not clear for the uninitiated and caused emails to my Dealer and Chord and with their advice was finally sorted by me installing MinimServer and MinimStreamer on my Synology DS 212j NAS and setting the transcode option to package the DSD bitstream for transmission over internet.  I was not disappointed by the sound.  I have yet to check if there are any differences between DSD64 and flac 24/192 but getting a decent tag editor for .dsf files on the iMac and their extra cost means I shall stick with 24/192 for now.

So, are there any minus points?  Well yes I’m afraid to say there are.
1. The unit is very fussy about its network connection.  With the pre-MinimServer set-up (Synology Media Server) there were drop-outs on 24/192 FLAC. This was resolved, on advice from Chord, by ensuring the ethernet connection to the DSD1000 was 100MB/s ethernet NOT 1GB/s, a flow control issue apparently. Using MinimServer with DSD64 files, the drop-outs returned. I resolved this by tweaking the ports on my Netgear ProSafe switches to ensure that the NAS to Streamer port priority was the highest and that the data rate to and from the streamer port was limited to 128MB/s. I now have drop-out free music on all FLAC bit depth/sample rate formats and .dsf/.dff DSD64 formats. How stable this is, is unknown but it works at the moment.

2. The remote control needs a little getting used to. With recessed buttons, knarled and wizened old fingers like mine makes the usability disappointing in comparison with the design aesthetics. Some operations are slow to respond, most notably the volume control. With a direct connection to my Ncores, the volume control is right down at the bottom of its setting and I suspect the volume control is light sensitive resistor technology which has an inherent delay. Putting a 10dB attenuator on the input to my amps to match the levels has brought the volume control to mid range and I can now use the slider on the control point rather than need to use the remote. 

3. The Chord HD App has problems.  More often than not, cover art fails to display and returning to the Chord App, if you need to use your tablet for other activities whilst listening, causes to DSX1000 display to freeze on the list of selected tracks.  I know this does not affect the sheer pleasure of the music but for a premium product, Chord have got to get this right.  Talking to Chord, there is a major firmware upgrade on the way so this may well resolve these issues, I hope so.  At least users can perform a firmware upgrade without returning the unit to a dealer! For the record, I have tried BubbleUpnp (free version) as a control point but cannot achieve gapless playback which is important to me.

Am I glad I bought it?  Well, despite these shortcomings - absolutely!  As a device for reproducing music it is supreme, Chord just need to work a little harder on the user interfaces.