by Rob Waugh, Mail On Sunday LIVE

These latest wireless Bluetooth hi-fis from Chord are another nail in the coffin of the CD.

Bluetooth hi-fis sound like an excellent idea – streaming music from phones to amps and speakers, like a Bluetooth wireless headset in high-quality stereo. But the first one I saw was shaped like a banana, sounded like it was buried in wet sand and had an effective range of around 4ft. I think it’s still somewhere in my shed.

This year, the technology has picked up pace. Companies such as Sony now have hi-fis using A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution profile) Bluetooth stereo – but I did a double-take when Chord, a British firm known for £4,000-plus amplifiers, launched its Bluetooth Chordette Gem. Hi-fi nerds don’t do wireless. It’s the rules.

Even more weirdly, the Gem is only £400. But the device does make sense. Chord has built expensive digital-analogue converters (DACs) for years – devices designed to take digital signals such as CD recordings or MP3 files and turn them into analogue for an amplifier to digest. When you listen to digital music, it’s largely the DAC you hear.

But now prices for computer chips have dropped to the level where Chord can shoehorn a DAC that would have cost thousands into the Gem. Old habits die hard, though: there’s also a high-end version, the QBD76 (the fancierlooking one pictured above), which sets you back £3,000. Personally, I think you’d be crazy to go for that. The Gem
teases out sounds as well as CD players twice the price, provided
you use lossless or high-quality digital files. Plug it into a decent amp and speakers and basslines leap out at you – and on a song I’d
heard hundreds of times, I made out a lyric I’d never understood
before.

Pairing the Gem with a music source is as simple as typing in a four-digit code on your PC or phone. It’s got a range of about 30ft, and unlike Wi-Fi-based devices such as Apple TV, it isn’t prone to cutting out. Chord hopes to tempt phone-toting teenagers with the device, but that sounds like an idea from high in the clouds of luxury audio. Four hundred pounds isn’t cheap enough for most teens.

But if you can find a decent hi-fi amp and speakers – your dad’s, perhaps, or from eBay – this is as good as disc-free hi-fi gets, sounding better than any iPod dock out there. Just make sure your music is high-quality (192Kbps plus) and your phone or PC is A2DP-equipped.

The Gem might not spell the death of CD, but it’s a step in that direction, and superb at what it does.

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