Chord Electronics digital upscalers are FPGA-based outboard processors that sit between a digital source and a DAC, interpolating low-rate PCM up to 768 kHz before conversion. Rob Watts designed both models on custom Xilinx FPGAs running proprietary Watts Transient Aligned filter code, the same engineering DNA inside Chord's reference DAVE DAC. Where most upscalers buy off-the-shelf math, Chord writes its own algorithms and runs them on hardware big enough to compute every coefficient in real time without resorting to software shortcuts.
The Hugo M Scaler remains the table-top reference at over a million filter taps, paired specifically with the Hugo TT2 DAC. The new Quartet is the flagship: a two-box design built over eight years, with five FPGAs, four million Blackbird WTA taps, an integrated Pulse Array ADC for analog sources, and a Rob-Watts-designed external power supply. The Quartet was engineered specifically to unlock the full digital resolution of the DAVE DAC.
