It’s likely we will have all formed an acquaintance with the Chord’s Qutest, the dinky DAC champion that’s more than held its own over the last decade. By comparison, the Chord Anni is a much more hidden beast. It seems so rarely that the Anni is even so much as breathed a mention, despite it hailing from Chord’s stable of familiar Qutest products. A stable in which the Chord Huei, itself highly praised in the world of phono stages, completes a triumvirate of high-fidelity desktop delights.

So… what is the Chord Anni? Why would anyone need or want one? And what happened when it crossed paths with the stellar Sennheiser HD 820 headphones? Hope you’re sitting comfortably… it’s time to lift the lid on the Anni and see what lurks beneath!

Hello and welcome. A quick introduction… my name is Rishi (no, thankfully not the chancellor), and I’ve recently embarked on a dream journey into the world of working in hi-fi and audio-visual at Audio T Reading. Whilst I’m familiar to audio and hi-fi, I’m still wet behind the ears when it comes to working in a hi-fi shop. I’m loving the variety, one minute making up a lovely set of Chord Company Shawline X speaker cables complete with Ohmic plugs for our friendly customers, the next minute lugging inconceivably heavy, but also lovely, ATC SCM40 speakers up three flights of stairs to our main demo room!

Ok, truth be told, I’m not loving the lugging part. But such is life, even in hi-fi, got to take the rough with the smooth… sometimes got to swallow a stone-cold coffee whilst listening to the sweet tones of the Audio Note Cobra integrated amplifier. Actually, that amp makes even the most bitterly cold coffee taste sublime! But I digress…

While still in a daze in the new day job, I sometimes find myself eyeballing all the amazing equipment, a lot of which I could only dream of getting my hands on someday. So, one day while mesmerically gawping at the supreme Sennheiser HD 820 closed-back headphones, and with Gareth warming up a new Chord Anni desktop integrated amplifier, fresh from its crisp box, I saw a perfect opportunity to try them both together... and I did! I mean why not? Here’s what unfolded…

FIRST UP – THE CUTE, OR PERHAPS QUTE, CHORD ANNI

Curiously, I must admit, my first slightly nagging thought was… what’s the point of this Chord Anni? While it’s appreciably compact, it’s largely restricted to doing amplifying duties, and it doesn’t have the wanderlust and wire-free portability of say the Chord Hugo 2. The Anni needs to be plugged into the mains like any other integrated amplifier, so why on earth would I want to use this at home, when I can plug my headphones into my Exposure 3010S2D integrated amplifier? Oh wait, my Exposure doesn’t have a headphone output! As it turns out, none of my other equipment does either, which is why I acquired a thumb-sized Audioquest DragonFly Cobalt USB DAC/amp for headphone listening. Ok, so it turns out I’ve stumbled across a first use case for the Chord Anni.

It then also dawned on me that the Anni may be rendered redundant, as my living arrangement is such that I can reach for my full-size hi-fi and give it a blast anytime I choose, especially because I’m not sharing casa-de-Rishi with anyone else (which is to everyone else’s benefit of course). But there are many of us who have a requirement for more private listening, maybe to tune out the unwanted drone of the TV, or perhaps some of us want a little lunchtime escape to jam out to some tunes whilst working from home. And maybe jam out in the highest quality possible. This is the key with the Anni. Each and every one of its 10 watts per channel is serving up ultra-pure and magnificent quality, all based on Chord Electronics range topping ULTIMA models.

A good food-for-thought question I’ve heard come up a few times in the hi-fi circles is ‘How good is the first watt?’ Me personally, I’d rather have 10 watts of blissful audio than be subjected to 100 watts of shoulder-tightening, ear-splitting noise-a-rama! Get the first watt right, and amping up that watt becomes a joyous experience, especially if you have something of the ilk of the Sennheiser HD 820 to appreciate every bit of it. More to come on this... I’m also now thinking, with Chord’s Qutest range, which includes the Anni, it’s now a reality to have a separates system that’s diminutive, taking up hardly any space, whilst still possessing the heightened sound quality that a separate casework and separate power supply that both can, and do, bring to the table.

Ok, now I’m starting to see and get a taste for the virtues of the Anni. And after spending time listening to it, I’ll cut to the chase… I think I may want one!

NEXT UP – THE SENSATIONAL SENNHEISER HD 820

Oh my! So I mentioned earlier about being mesmerised while looking at the Sennheiser HD 820 headphones. They are a closed-back design, with a see-through window that was imploring me to have a good gawp at the sporty, but also elegant looking drivers on each earcup. Designed in this way as a visual hint, perhaps, of the potential sonic goodness on offer. To snap myself out of my stare, I did what any reasonable person should with headphones… I put them on my head! But it didn’t stop me trying to catch further glimpses of them in the conveniently reflective Perspex covid shield protecting our store counter…

But upon placing them on my bonce, I couldn’t help but notice how light and comfortable they felt in-situ. I could wear these for hours, I thought. I really, really hope they sound good, I thought some more, this time with fingers virtually crossed. Once I plugged the Sennheiser’s into the Anni, I realised I need not have harboured such insecure hopes…

BETTER TOGETHER – THE SWEET SOUND OF THE ANNI WITH THE HD 820

Upon plugging the 6.3 mm jack of the Sennheiser HD 820 into the Chord Anni, I could hear all the feed-forward corrective technology of the Anni kicking into action. A series of satisfying relay clicks were automatically adjusting to the electrical load of the Sennheiser’s to ensure the appropriate drive and volume was ready to be delivered to the HD 820. I can tell you that this corrective technology works an absolute treat! To demonstrate its excellence, I plugged in my own Sennheiser HD 660s and various other headphones of different electrical load that I had to hand, and each time the drive and volume level from the Anni was spot on. The Anni is a great unit for testing the sound quality of headphones as it does a grand job of removing the bias of higher or lower volume from the equation. For those of us with a healthy (or perhaps unhealthy) collection of headphones, the Chord Anni is bordering on being an essential pairing.

It's worth noting that the Anni will also drive reasonably efficient (and apparently even some inefficient) loudspeakers and has high-quality banana socket terminals inboard. But the Anni’s ability to drive a range of loudspeakers wasn’t tested here, though a quick peruse online implies that it does this favourably in a desktop environment.

To get to the eagerly anticipated business-end – getting some tunes flowing - a streaming solution comprising of a Bluesound Node streamer, a Chord Qutest DAC and the Anni with adjoined HD 820 was assembled. All interlinking cabling came courtesy of The Chord Company. First up, I was in the mood for some Electro, something to get this headphone system fired-up and bouncing. And bounce it certainly did while playing Skream by EMF! Initially, I wasn’t accustomed to the presentation as it’s the first time I’ve listened to a headphone setup of such gravitas (relative to what I’ve been used to). Each pounding, warbling synth-line from the HD 820 was dripping with texture and definition, so much so that while I could I hear it… I could almost taste it! The bass didn’t just thump and boom in a compressed space (what I’m normally accustomed to), but instead it completely filled the cans with a huge wall of well-defined low-frequency goodness.

Time then to try out some vocals… so a quick thumb-press on the play icon on my heavily smudged and smeared phone screen saw Billie Eilish’s Your Power set in motion. Smudged and smeared are the complete opposites of what the Anni and HD 820 are all about. On the intro to the track, it was a treat to hear, with transparency, the delicate strum-work of the acoustic guitar. Each string pluck was skilfully delineated, with the player’s finger-slides along the fretboard bringing a tingly sensation. Billie’s vocals were breathy, lazily gravely as they should be, and holographic. The experience was emotive, and it felt like the Anni and the Sennheiser’s were taking me on a guided tour around Eilish’s voice box. My shoulders further untightened, and I found myself enjoying every second.

For the final track, I cued up Dave’s We’re All Alone in This Together album, a fairly new offering and the first time I was hearing it. Please take caution, it’s an explicit offering, but one that is expertly produced and mastered. While listening to the track We’re All Alone it was noticeable how unshakably on-point the imaging of Dave’s voice was. Each carefully crafted layer of the track that sequentially unfurled into earshot had its own secure space in the mix, the fullness of the piano elements was particularly impressive as it completely and densely filled the space of the HD 820’s ear cups and seemingly filled space beyond the earcups too! An impressive feat for closed-back headphones. My head was nodding furiously like a rooster imitating a woodpecker when the rhythms snapped into focus.

That’s the thing with this Chord and Sennheiser combo… You just can’t help but get deeply engrossed into the music, and this continued way into the early hours of the morning!

CLOSING THOUGHTS – CHORD ANNI & SENNHEISER HD 820

The Chord Anni is a joy to use and while it’s minimalist feature count won’t get a technophile’s heart racing, it’s that simplicity and purity that ensures the Anni keeps out of the way of the music. Paired with the Sennheiser HD 820, the presentation is full, nuanced, engaging and above all enjoyable. There’s a brightness to the combination, but it’s the welcome kind of bright that is skilfully executed and intelligently shines a light on the performance, as opposed to that gnawing brightness that resembles the glare of an oncoming car, with poorly adjusted headlights… on a rainy night… down a pitch-black B-road… ugh you get the idea! What’s also great about the HD 820 is that its closed-back construction not only looks incredible, but it ensures a fully private and intimate listen, with minimal sound invasion to and from the outside world. The whole experience of the listening to the Anni and HD 820 has been a joy, one I didn’t want to end, and as a high quality, high-fidelity desktop solution, it’s likely there won’t be much that surpasses it. But don’t take my word for it; please do come along to Audio T to experience this system, and others. We’ll have a hot beverage and a comfy chair waiting for you…

Rishi, Gareth and Rob – Audio T Reading

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