Chord Electronics Owners & Discussion Thread

[Guest]

Yeah but your sub is working independently from the m Scaler. 

Edited January 15, 2019 by Sime V2

[Ittaku]

17 minutes ago, Sime V2 said:

Yeah but your sub is working independently from the m Scaler. 

And the sub only does below 30Hz. There is no punch, nor much of any real great detail and information at those frequencies...

[Ittaku]

If it worries you, we can do the whole comparison with my speakers full range. It's trivial to do but I guarantee the mscaler will have no audible effect at those ultra low frequencies...

Edited January 15, 2019 by Ittaku

[Guest]

@Ittaku it’s all good mate

[Cruncher]

The mscaler puts out S/PDIF, so you could just put that into the DSP with little fuss.

 

Alternatively you could put it in after the DSP and do delay compensation which could be tricky. I think it buffers a lot of traffic.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Cruncher

[Ittaku]

51 minutes ago, Cruncher said:

The mscaler puts out S/PDIF, so you could just put that into the DSP with little fuss.

 

Alternatively you could put it in after the DSP and do delay compensation which could be tricky. I think it buffers a lot of traffic.

My DSP operates internally at 96 or 88. This means there's no point upscaling if the DSP is just going to downscale it again. The whole points is to upscale to 38x something which the MSB DAC supports. It will be going between the DSP and the MSB DAC, and the delay for the subs will be adjusted with the DSP.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Ittaku

[Cruncher]

If you connect the mscaler before the DSP ( which I thought would be straight forward) you are changing only one variable. You will be able to hear the difference that ( ?,000) WTA make to your system, if any. If you are right, the mscaler will up-scale and down-scale and there will be no difference. This may be useful information to know for people who use S/PDIF to their DAC.

 

If you connect it behind the DSP, and then change the DSP timing you are making two or three changes (1) adding 500,000 WTA (2) possibly changing inputs into your DAC and (3) different timing between speakers and sub.

 

If the focus is on mscaler + R2R, since you have full range speakers you could leave the DSP and Sub out of it and connect the mscaler to your DAC using S/PDIF and then later via Co-axial cable. With the co-axial connection you can bypass the mscaler and see 1 WTA vs 500,000 WTA. Rob Watts said there is a big difference between ½ a 1 Million WTA. You will not get to hear 1 Million WTA with your DAC without dual co-ax. 

 

If you want hear the difference between 1 WTA vs. 1 Million WTA with a Chord DAC then connect Sime’s mscaler + qutest into your amp.  

 

I am interested to hear about what you end up doing and the results.
 

  

  

[Guest]

@Cruncher I’m bringing the Qutest with me and I’ll guess there will be some choppin and changing throughout the arvo. 

[PKay]

37 minutes ago, Sime V2 said:

@Cruncher I’m bringing the Qutest with me and I’ll guess there will be some choppin and changing throughout the arvo. 

Shame you can’t get your hands on DAVE that would be an interesting comparison. 

[Ittaku]

16 hours ago, Cruncher said:

If you connect the mscaler before the DSP ( which I thought would be straight forward) you are changing only one variable. You will be able to hear the difference that ( ?,000) WTA make to your system, if any. If you are right, the mscaler will up-scale and down-scale and there will be no difference. This may be useful information to know for people who use S/PDIF to their DAC.

What do you mean if I'm right? The DSP only processes at 88 or 96 and its output is limited to those frequencies max. That has nothing to do with my impression or opinion? Putting it in before the DSP will be absolutely pointless except in the case of 44 and then it's only upscaling to 88 anyway - but note I already upscale 44 to 88 in my PC so it won't even be useful there! It can ONLY be of use after my DSP and before the MSB, and to derive the full benefit it needs to upscale to the highest the DAC supports which is 352 or 384. I will be turning the sub off for comparisons so forget the rest.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Ittaku

[Guest]

I’m at legend speakers headquarters in Nowra, and needless to say, the M-Scaler is making the CEO smile  

Edited January 17, 2019 by Sime V2

[Cruncher]

@Ittaku I think the question you originally posed along the lines of ‘can a mscaler can make a difference to a R2R DAC’ is an interesting one and I was hoping it would spawn a fruitful discussion and hopefully I would learn something in the process. I have a R2R DAC, so I am curious. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

From your post, I took it that you thought the mscaler only did upscaling ( interpolation ) and therefore it could not make a difference to a 44k signal in and 44k out ( or 88k in, 88k out) because it would upscale ( add data) and downscale (remove the very same data) leaving the original bit stream. Do I understand you view correctly ? I don’t know what it will do so I thought you could test it fairly easily.

From my reading and understanding the mscaler could make a difference to the 352.8k bitstream (44k PCM in, 44k PCM out) because it being put through what I will call the Rob Watt’s algorithm. (To test my Hypothesis and get a definitive answer I could get an analyser to generate a 44K PCM stream send it into the mscaler and take it out and back into the analyser and get it do a bit level comparison. I have neither a digital analyser or mscaler ).

 

I will try and explain why I currently think that the mscaler can make a change to a bit-stream independent of output stream speed; by using an example. There are a variety of methods / algorithms of getting a numerical approximation of PI. The table below is using the Gottfried Leibniz infinite series method.

 

If I was to calculate a numerical approximation to PI to accuracy of 4 decimal places. If I only used one term it would be very inaccurate (4.0000). As I used more terms it becomes accurate, and eventually becomes accurate to 4 decimal places.

In the Chord world it appears the more Watt’s Taps the better hence the mscaler product. Even if the mscaler did make a change to a 44k bit stream (smaller number WTA) I feel it would be minor and may not be audible, or only audible a revealing system with a sharp ear.

You have the ability to test 1 vs 12,000 vs 500,000 using your DAC. What you do is up to you but I would be still interested in hearing about what happened.

[Ittaku]

No, the mscaler is nothing more than a fancy upscaler. If you don't output and use its higher sample rate you don't derive any benefit and stand to compromise the sound if anything by sampling it back down again. That said we'll have plenty of time on that day to do many experiments.

[Cardiiiii]

2 hours ago, Ittaku said:

No, the mscaler is nothing more than a fancy upscaler. If you don't output and use its higher sample rate you don't derive any benefit and stand to compromise the sound if anything by sampling it back down again. That said we'll have plenty of time on that day to do many experiments.

 

So basically if I listen to my Spring DAC is NOS mode (44.1), I will get no benefit from this device?

[legend]

6 hours ago, Sime V2 said:

I’m at legend speakers headquarters in Nowra, and needless to say, the M-Scaler is making the CEO smile  

And many thanks to Simon for driving all the way from Canberra to Nowra to bring a smile to my face!

 

The M-Scaler certainly made a significant improvement to my recently purchased Qutest DAC - which itself was a significant improvement over my Project S2 DAC that I already thought was pretty good!  Both upgrades seemed to improve the imaging (particularly depth) as well as clarity and PRAT.  In fact they were the same type of improvements I hear with MQA, though probably much(?) greater - certainly the combined effect of M-Scaler and Qutest was much better than Project S2 with MQA for the same piano recording.

 

I do not know much about the theory of the M-scaler (having only just heard about it from Simon) but wonder if talk about the million taps relates to FFT and so whether the aural improvements are due to improvements in timing - in much the same way as MQA claims?

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Cardiiiii said:

 

So basically if I listen to my Spring DAC is NOS mode (44.1), I will get no benefit from this device?

You mean as in pass through on the M-Scaler?

 

sorry, I don’t know what NOS mode is. 

Edited January 17, 2019 by Sime V2

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, legend said:

And many thanks to Simon for driving all the way from Canberra to Nowra to bring a smile to my face!

 

The M-Scaler certainly made a significant improvement to my recently purchased Qutest DAC - which itself was a significant improvement over my Project S2 DAC that I already thought was pretty good!  Both upgrades seemed to improve the imaging (particularly depth) as well as clarity and PRAT.  In fact they were the same type of improvements I hear with MQA, though probably much(?) greater - certainly the combined effect of M-Scaler and Qutest was much better than Project S2 with MQA for the same piano recording.

 

I do not know much about the theory of the M-scaler (having only just heard about it from Simon) but wonder if talk about the million taps relates to FFT and so whether the aural improvements are due to improvements in timing - in much the same way as MQA claims?

It was a good day indeed, and the M-Scaler kicked ass really, it’s not subtle at all in what it does. 

[Ittaku]

4 minutes ago, Cardiiiii said:

 

So basically if I listen to my Spring DAC is NOS mode (44.1), I will get no benefit from this device?

That's correct, however bear in mind r2r dacs have excellent impulse response by design, and the infinite sinc function that the mscaler is trying to create better impulse response meaning it is more suited to improving delta sigma DACs. That's why it'll be interesting to try it on my r2r DAC.

[rocky500]

1 hour ago, Cardiiiii said:

 

So basically if I listen to my Spring DAC is NOS mode (44.1), I will get no benefit from this device?

If it is possible to plug into a Holo Dac (not sure what connections are needed) then I would think it would work great!

 

Your Dac would switch to 705.6kHz/768kHz Nos mode I think as that is what the M Scaler would output?. Nos mode is what comes in goes out unaltered?

 

Quote from webpage

"The Hugo M Scaler is a highly advanced standalone upscaler capable of redefining sound quality from digital audio. It uses Rob Watts’ (our Digital Design Consultant’s) unique filter technology, the most advanced in the world, to upscale standard 44.1kHz digital audio up to 705.6kHz (16x CD’s 44.1kHz native resolution), ready to be passed to a suitable DAC; Hugo M Scaler extends its upscaling performance to 768kHz (from 96kHz input data) for our dual-BNC-input DACs: DAVE, Qutest and the new Hugo TT 2."

 

 

ADDED: I don't think it will work as looking online only the USB input on the Holo Dac is capable of 768kHz.

 

Edited January 17, 2019 by rocky500

[the sound of Tao]

Congratulations Sime,

Glad your enjoying yours as well. I found nice gains with it burning in over the first 5 or 6 weeks but essentially sounded great from the start. 

 

The upsample to a million taps is where all the magic is I figure so it really benefits pairing the m scaler with a chord dac to be able to use dual BNC to get it up to full million taps, way past the taps used if just single bnc in on the dac. Just a pity that Chord didn’t ultimately go via USB for the output as then it would have opened up the 1 million tap rate to many more dacs as far as I understand it.

 

Enjoy the m scaler, I certainly won’t be without it now that I’ve gotten used to that standard of resolution and timbre. Loving mine for sure!! Just plays music so much better. Awesome.

Edited January 17, 2019 by the sound of Tao

[Guest]

@the sound of Tao that’s the problem, it HAS to be a keeper, or go the next level they build. Imo, anyone with a serious Digital front end has to have one of these. 

[rocky500]

5 minutes ago, the sound of Tao said:

The upsample to a million taps is where all the magic is I figure so it really benefits pairing the m scaler with a chord dac to be able to use dual BNC to get it up to full million taps, way past the taps used if just single bnc in on the dac. Pity that Chord didn’t ultimately go via USB for the output as then it would have opened up the 1 million tap rate to many more dacs as far as I understand it. Enjoy the m scaler, I certainly won’t be without it now that I’ve gotten used to that standard of resolution and timbre. Loving mine for sure!!

I see now, they were smart to use dual BNC as it means it locks you into one of the great Chord Dacs instead of using another brand to get the major benefits of the m scaler.

 

[powerav]

1 hour ago, legend said:

certainly the combined effect of M-Scaler and Qutest was much better than Project S2 with MQA for the same piano recording.

I would hope so at about $10000 vs $500

[rand129678]

1 hour ago, legend said:

wonder if talk about the million taps relates to FFT and so whether the aural improvements are due to improvements in timing - in much the same way as MQA claims?

 

Jussi Laako (of HQPlayer) had a comment related to this:

 

"looked from two extremes, both Chord talking about transient accuracy with extremely long filters and MQA talking about transient accuracy with extremely short filters are both right in a way, but only looking at things from one point of view while ignoring others. As usual in life, truth is somewhere between the extremes..."

 

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/49609-john-atkinson-yes-mqa-is-elegant/?do=findComment&comment=866897

[the sound of Tao]

36 minutes ago, rocky500 said:

I see now, they were smart to use dual BNC as it means it locks you into one of the great Chord Dacs instead of using another brand to get the major benefits of the m scaler.

 

That’s the way I thought originally but this thing sounds so good upsampled at a million taps that maybe they also cut themselves out of a much larger market if the top level output rate was via a more universal way like USB.

 

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a USB output version m scaler down the track. That said Chord do have their own way of doing things.

 

I’m super happy with how the qutest/m scaler sounds and glad that I held off just going Dave first. I’ll maybe consider the next gen Chord Dave if I can save some $$$... in the meantime this qutest with m scaler suits me just fine.

Edited January 17, 2019 by the sound of Tao