Chord Electronics Owners & Discussion Thread

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, agisthos said:

I personally want to know how much a difference the Qtest/TT2/DAVE makes to the final sound of the M-Scaler.

As I’ve stated earlier, you’ll probably find that the differences will be completely relevant to the differences between those DAC’s in a non m Scaler scenario. 

[davewantsmoore]

33 minutes ago, agisthos said:

If you think a PC with long filters can sound as good as the Chord, do a real world comparison.

I would not necessarily expect that the filters I would use, would sound the same/as good as, what Chord are using.

33 minutes ago, agisthos said:

encouraged people to say a simple PC would be better.

Would be, and could be are two very different things.    If we listened to a "computer" and the Chord, and the Chord sounded better, then it doesn't change anything I have said.

 

What I was saying has been completely lost.    If Chord are saying that longer filters are better ... then they should use more.

33 minutes ago, agisthos said:

Let focus on actual listening reports of the M-Scaler.

I didn't start this deep dive ..... I just made a comment about Chords justification for why this is good.

[rand129678]

1 hour ago, agisthos said:

If you think a PC with long filters can sound as good as the Chord, do a real world comparison.

I've demo'd the M-Scaler with Dave.

 

I still enjoy my Hugo2 and have chatted with Rob Watts plenty of times over the years. He knows I'm a fan of his state of the art gear. Huge respect for his work.

At the same time as having Chord DACs, I've enjoyed other DACs used with HQPlayer and enjoyed many chats with Jussi Laako... Big fan of HQPlayer... And I like the idea of the powerful PC being in another room (other side of the house if you want) and just having a very low noise 'endpoint' (computer) connected directly to the DAC... isolated by the network, including perfectly isolated by fiber optic cable if you like...

 

It's never been about picking one side for me. I can enjoy both of their work... Both guys are proud of their work so it's no surprise they disagree vocally on some things. That's natural...

 

I didn't hear the drastic improvement others  have reported, adding M-Scaler to Dave. I didn't hear a big enough difference at all to be honest. Many others have though. There's been a few M-Scalers put up for sale on Head-Fi, quite early after getting them, so there's people on both sides of the fence. 

 

Just sharing my subjective impression. I'm only one datapoint of course.

 

And I'm allowed to love one Rob Watts product and not be a fan of another hehe.

 

I still enjoy discussing the technical aspects and reading these impressions - especially when it makes people enjoy the music more! That's what it's all about.

 

 

 

Edited January 21, 2019 by Music2496

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Music2496 said:

especially when it makes people enjoy the music more! That's what it's all about.

My partner didn’t want to go to bed at all during last nights listening session, and that’s a first. Whatever it’s doing, its doing it. 

Edited January 21, 2019 by Sime V2

[rand129678]

3 minutes ago, Sime V2 said:

My partner didn’t want to go to bed at all during last nights listening session, and that’s a first. 

We can discuss technical stuff all day till the cows come home (and I enjoy that, as is probably obviously in this thread...) - but this (bold) is the most important thing!

Edited January 21, 2019 by Music2496

[Ittaku]

It could well be that the Dave with its already quite long filters will benefit a lot less compared to the lower spec models with shorter filters.

[Cruncher]

@agisthos  Over the years I have used a number of products / tweaks. Currently I use Audivarna which has up-scaling. On the Audivarna forum I do not see people go on about the benefits 2M taps or being negative about other vendors products. I have used SoX and iZotope set to various tap lengths right up to 2 millions taps and I have done real world comparisons between computer upscaling and the mscaler and the results are absolutely not the same.

 

I would be interested in a mscaler + mojo / Qutest / TT / DAVE shoot out.

[rand129678]

30 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

It could well be that the Dave with its already quite long filters will benefit a lot less compared to the lower spec models with shorter filters.

Possible. Although Rob says the difference between 500k taps and 1M taps is huge...

 

In case anyone is interested, the ~164k taps you see mentioned for Dave applies to WTA1 (1st stage filtering)...

 

The same for Hugo2's ~50k taps and TT2's ~100k taps mentioned - all apply to WTA1.

This is why Rob says "WTA 1 (getting to 16FS) uses 90% of the FPGA DSP, and most of the FPGA fabric."

M-Scaler outputs PCM705/768kHz, to by-passes Dave's (and TT2/Qutest/Hugo2) WTA1 filter stage..

 

So Dave/TT2/Qutest/Hugo2 essentially all have the same number (~1 milli) of taps (and same filter length) when connected to an M-Scaler...

 

Sources (always from the horses mouth...):

 

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chord-electronics-dave.766517/page-218#post-12628179

 

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chord-electronics-hugo-2-the-official-thread.831345/page-142#post-13364897

 

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hugo-tt-2-by-chord-electronics-the-official-thread.879425/page-102#post-14402348

 

 

Edited January 21, 2019 by Music2496

[Guest]

@Music2496 interesting. 

[rand129678]

2 minutes ago, Sime V2 said:

@Music2496 interesting. 

 

Ha. I'm glad one person found that. Makes all the time to type it not feel wasted, ha

Edited January 21, 2019 by Music2496

[Guest]

@Music2496 I do, because if that’s case, I’ll just be happy with the Qutest (not that I need convincing, it’s pretty darn good combo)

[agisthos]

12 minutes ago, Music2496 said:

 

So Dave/TT2/Qutest/Hugo2 essentially all have the same number (~1 milli) of taps (and same filter length) when connected to an M-Scaler...

 

 

That's right, but then the DAVE has the 10 element output stage, vs 5 for the TT2 and others. I wonder how big a difference that makes.

[rand129678]

24 minutes ago, agisthos said:

That's right, but then the DAVE has the 10 element output stage, vs 5 for the TT2 and others. I wonder how big a difference that makes.

Absolutely, the analogue output sections matter hugely... the above discussion has only been talking about digital filtering.

 

See the late and well respected Charles Hansen's (Ayre founder) post below about the most important performance features of a DAC... DAC power supply design and analogue section design comes before digital filters...  and of course Rob has gone bonkers with Dave in those areas and circuit/layout design etc (significantly bigger budget for him to do so...). And that's not to say the digital filtering doesn't make a difference. Everything matters.

 

See Charles' great post below. A great read (and re-read every now and then ) :

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/35106-how-does-a-perfect-dac-analog-signal-look-different-than-a-cheap-dac/?page=7&tab=comments#comment-713189

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 21, 2019 by Music2496

[rand129678]

One other interesting thing. If one connects the following dots:

 

1. M-Scaler outputs 16FS (PCM705/768kHz), by-passing Dave/HTT2/Hugo2/Qutest's WTA 1 filtering stage.

 

2. Rob Watts on his DACs WTA 1 filtering stage:  "WTA 1 (getting to 16FS) uses 90% of the FPGA DSP, and most of the FPGA fabric."

 

3. Rob Watts on M-Scaler: "The RF noise that the FPGA generates is a nightmare; it's 12A of correlated current with large amounts of 2GHz noise. In the long term I would like to integrate an M scaler with a DAC; but I have not been able to figure out how to do it without it compromising sound quality."

 

.... it may be that some of the improvement M-Scaler immediately brings is not only due to 1 million taps and the digital filtering side talked about everywhere all the time -  but improvements also resulting by taking the heavy FGPA DSP (WTA1) outside of the D-to-A converter's housing and away from the D-to-A converter's sensitive analogue section... i.e. possible improvements in SQ (subjectively) from an RF/EMI aspect... I say subjectively (and possibly) because I don't see anything in Dave or Qutest measurements to suggest there is an issue with RFI. But clearly Rob does see any issue when increasing number of taps (see point #3 above).

 

dCS has been doing this 2-box solution (separate up-sampler box and DAC box) since the late 1990's... I'm not sure if they were the absolute first but they were among the first.

 

This 2-box solution is a big part of the HQPlayer (or any software up-sampling) philosophy too - to take the noisy (RF) DSP processing outside of the DAC's housing away from the DAC's analogue section (and of course HQPlayer's developer will also say this is to replace the DAC's internal DSP with better DSP but that's a separate thing). In my case, I have this noisy RF generating DSP being done by HQP in a separate room, network (fiber optic) isolated from the DAC. It can be on the other side of the house if one wants.

 

So it may not just about the digital filtering and talking about taps with M-Scaler - but also taking the powerful DSP away from the DAC's sensitive analogue section. 

 

Maybe - who knows.

 

 

[Ittaku]

So here's something amusing and interesting. Recall I was looking at the latency added by the mscaler and how that would affect my crossover set up in my own system - the documentation says that the latency is 600ms in its maximum upscaling mode. Well I contacted MSB about my own DAC to find out what the internal latency is there and they actually informed me my DAC can be up to 500ms itself, depending on source material. So it seems whatever shaping and upscaling the MSB Reference DAC does adds quite significant latency too, so this isn't that unusual. None of this will affect our experimenting since we'll only be using the main speakers and even 1 second of latency is irrelevant. It does however make me wonder just what it is the MSB DAC does that makes it take so long, and how dissimilar is it to what the mscaler does...

Edited January 21, 2019 by Ittaku

[Kaynin]

31 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

It does however make me wonder just what it is the MSB DAC does that makes it take so long, and how dissimilar is it to what the mscaler does...

 

That's interesting, nothing in the spec sheet?  Maybe even the sales flyer may give an indication.

[Ittaku]

58 minutes ago, Kaynin said:

That's interesting, nothing in the spec sheet?  Maybe even the sales flyer may give an indication.

Sure, but I'm conscious of being offtopic here so let's keep this brief (or take it to another thread if we want to continue the discussion.) Part of it is the buffering of data - it internally reclocks and regenerates the data meaning any clock inaccuracies upstream become irrelevant, and regenerating the data creates a purer signal devoid of any noise that comes from upstream. The rest sounds like filtering and oversampling according to a massive sales blurb:

"Then the datastream is sent to MSB’s proprietary Intersample Harshness Correction. This circuit was designed in response to the universal complaints that digital sound was harsh with complex overtones on instruments like multiple horns, multiple violins, massed voices, etc. It is even more harsh when those multiple instruments or voices get louder as the artists express themselves. It was discovered that virtually all factory made discs and recordings we could find violated industry standards resulting in digital “clipping” and the resulting harshness. MSB designed the Intersample harshness correction as a no-compromise correcting process that brings the bit values into the correct signal level freeing up the top end of the signal and associated harmonics to be accurately converted and further improve dynamic range."

This part just sounds like a very complicated way of saying "we turn the volume down".

 

The next process is the digital filter necessary to remove artifacts above the audio range that are not related to the analog signal. The implementation of this filter is critical and there are none available off the shelf that come close to MSB’s requirements. Digital filters are written in house and installed on a SHARC DSP chip big enough to contain at least 4 of MSB’s proprietary filters. These are the fastest DSPs available and run a single-stage 80-bit fixed point FIR Filter, resulting in very fine resolution that MSB’s DAC modules can take full advantage of."

And this is just them describing their own heavy handed approach digital filtering and oversampling. This part could well be the bulk of the latency.

Edited January 21, 2019 by Ittaku

[Guest]

I have no issue in this thread of anything  related to upscaling being involved, Being Chord or other brands

[Kaynin]

Thanks @Ittaku  very well explained.

 

It's going to be very interesting to see (hear) how two quality products mix together.

[Steveo888]

Hi All

Just thought I would chime in that I have tried the Dave with the deqx unit. I have tried it the following ways

 

1. Source>Deqx>digital out into Dave->amps->speakers

and

2. Source>Dave>analog out into deqx>amps>speakers

 

Number 2 sounds heads and shoulders above number 1. Number 1 made me want to return the dave, Number 2 made me want to keep it and explore the mscaler in the number 2 chain.

 

It seems to be either the deqx doesn't like anything between it and the speakers or the dave doesn't like any dsp before it. This would make sense as Rob Watts specifically said not to upsample before his dacs. In a way the deqx would be upsampling all music to 24/96.

 

So for any deqx users with chord dacs, I would suggest using/trying it via analog in. This means that you can also use a dave on a fully active set up because if you went via digital out you would need three daves and three mscalers to run something like the Legend Tikandis.

 

This bridges the way to the mscaler as the upsampled signal gets into the analog domain into the deqx and the deqx has a very transparent analog to digital converter it seems. I realise Analog to digital seems blasphemous however whatever I am losing on the A- D is made up with the signal from the dave and the overall goodness of the deqx room and speaker correction

 

Now I need to get my hands on a mscaler to see if it increases it further..

[davewantsmoore]

16 hours ago, Cruncher said:

I have used SoX and iZotope set to various tap lengths right up to 2 millions taps and I have done real world comparisons between computer upscaling and the mscaler

Of course, what is happening in the M Scaler is more complex than just having more filter taps.

16 hours ago, Cruncher said:

and the results are absolutely not the same.

Can we be really clear that I never said that the result would be the same .... because the result depends on not having the filter taps, but what you do with them  (and yes, we have a pretty good general idea what RW is doing with them).

 

Only that having (many! if you want) more filter taps is not anything special.

[davewantsmoore]

6 minutes ago, sandrews888 said:

Number 2 sounds heads and shoulders above number 1. Number 1 made me want to return the dave, Number 2 made me want to keep it and explore the mscaler in the number 2 chain.

That's really surprising (and yes, I know what RW said).

[Ittaku]

13 minutes ago, sandrews888 said:

1. Source>Deqx>digital out into Dave->amps->speakers

and

2. Source>Dave>analog out into deqx>amps>speakers

 

Number 2 sounds heads and shoulders above number 1. Number 1 made me want to return the dave, Number 2 made me want to keep it and explore the mscaler in the number 2 chain.

 

It seems to be either the deqx doesn't like anything between it and the speakers or the dave doesn't like any dsp before it. This would make sense as Rob Watts specifically said not to upsample before his dacs. In a way the deqx would be upsampling all music to 24/96.

That's fascinating since that then makes the final DA conversion to be done by your deqx and not the Dave. I never even tried that combination when I auditioned the Dave (I tried it after my DSP or standalone only).

[rocky500]

34 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

That's fascinating since that then makes the final DA conversion to be done by your deqx and not the Dave. I never even tried that combination when I auditioned the Dave (I tried it after my DSP or standalone only).

Time to borrow a Dave again.

 

[Ittaku]

1 minute ago, rocky500 said:

Time to borrow a Dave again.

 

Offtopic, but definitely no.