Chordette GEM the world’s first high quality digital Bluetooth music receiver.

Turn your cell phone, PC or PDA into a CD quality music player.

Introducing the new Chordette Gem from England’s Chord Electronics. The Chordette Gem delivers true high end sound from cell phones, PDAs, PCs and music servers to any hi-fi system – wirelessly or via it’s USB input. The Gem is a derivative of Chord’s new $6,000 ultra high end DAC the QBD76, (center unit next page). The Gem is not as feature rich as the QBD76 but it includes all the same wireless and USB connectivity technology at a consumer friendly $895.

Modern phones, PDAs and personal computers now have the ability to transmit high quality audio using the Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile or A2DP for short. Chord engineers worked with the originators of Bluetooth in Finland to design a custom Bluetooth receiver which is able to extract and decrypt the normally unused digital audio signal from any Bluetooth A2DP enabled phone or PDA, or any PC or music server with a USB port, and input this directly into a high quality digital to analog converter.

Chord’s new DACs are the world’s first to use the superior digital output from Bluetooth. Connection is a breeze thanks to a very simple pairing procedure and, with a range of up to 100 feet, you can select your music and control your stereo from your phone, PC, or PDA from anywhere in the home.

The addition of a USB port also allows direct streaming of audio from a hard drive. The USB port can be connected to a personal computer, or music server, and will seamlessly appear as an audio device by the operating system. Any music played will be digitally decoded and then converted to a CD quality signal for playback. The Bluetooth input and USB can be selected using a simple switch on the rear of the device. Audio outputs connections are made via two gold plated RCA phono sockets.

All Bluetooth A2DP devices contain a digital signal and an analog signal. The digital signal is such high quality that the Gem is able to reproduce music transmitted wirelessly literally at CD quality. Chord’s new generation of DACs are the world’s first to unlock and use the digital signal. Therefore the Gem will sound substantially better than all other devices which can only access the analog audio output of Bluetooth. The Gem is truly a breakthrough product delivering previously unimagined, and currently unmatched, high quality sound from cell phones, PCs, PDAs or music servers.

The Gem is available in silver, black, purple and blue. Retail price is $799.

" This is as good as disc-free hi-fi gets, sounding better than any iPod dock out there...

... the Gem teases out sounds as well as CD players twice the price, provided you use lossless or high-quality digital files."   - Mail on Sunday, July 2008