@macfan 1. If you’re asking, you should get M-Scaler later. Enjoy one thing at a time 2. The issue is mostly that different people listen at different volumes. At my Head-Fi meet, I find people who listen at -10dB quieter than me and at +25dB louder than me. It’s not possible for us to know...

I only asked because sometimes if you only treat the mid- to high-frequencies, you can make the room too dead instead of just evenly damped. Imagine if the bass is at 0.8-0.9 and you treated the mid- to high-frequencies to 0.1-0.2, it'll sound a bit weird. But I guess you would hear it and just...

What’s your RT60 measurements?

No. I don’t hear a sonic difference between my iPad into Chord products vs my streamer Toslink into Chord products. As long as you’re not using some weird USB-C splitter where you’re charging your iPad while feeding USB signals to the M-Scaler. The problem of RF noise going into the USB of Chord...

You can dim M-Scaler like you can dim TT2. Whether the dimmed light is still too bright for you as hard to predict.

I checked some more. I don’t have usb input connected, just Toslink. When there is no signal, all 3 buttons on the right are dark. But if I press on the third button from the right (DX OP), it’ll change color twice and then go back to dark and when it changes to the other colors, the DX volume...

I’m trying to figure out why your M-scaler lights for the DX volume buttons are on (the two right most buttons) Mine are always dark.

I thought @number1sixerfan was trying Toslink and USB a few years back but there were some dropout issues. I was wondering if you have had a chance to go back to Toslink before contemplating the power supply mods. I have tried many times to get my USB source to be as clean as possible and I...

Haha... Same here at my local head-fi meet last time where I setup DCA Stealth/Chord Hugo 2. People hated it. They much prefer Hugo 2 with pretty much any other headphones. But they almost all use class A or tube amps to drive their planar magnetic or electrostatic headphones so they are also...

With time, I'm more and more convinced that many people just prefer euphonic distortions, particularly for poor recordings. Daniel Hertz by Mark Levinson recently came out with new products that uses a technology called C-wave. The patent is available for review...

I will admit that I have very low expectations for flexibility and options for the new Quartet M Scaler EQ, given what was provided for Mojo2. The truth is, different people have different EQ "needs". And it is just not possible for a hardware product to fulfill all those needs. Especially when...

No. Topping DDC sounds too expensive to me. I use this...

Since my living room stereo definitely needs EQ and I am definitely buying the Quartet M Scaler, I would love to volunteer to beta test your pre-production unit in the middle of nowhere Canada. I don’t even mind paying Chord in full now and can exchange the production unit for the pre-production...

I think you're going to get different opinions from different people. I personally think your setup is optimal. But I know some people here would insist that you need linear power supplies for M-Scaler and TT2. Personally, I think you should enjoy the music.

Even if people bypass the 16fs upsampling, in terms of the Pulse Array DAC design alone Mojo/Mojo2: 4-element, 5th order noise shaper Hugo 2/Qutest: 10-element, 11th order noise shaper Dave: 20-element, 17th order noise shaper Sure there are other aspects to the design but at the end of the...

Okay so SBC or AptX. And maybe LDAC. The challenge is the working out part. I used to use in-ear monitors for that. Not sure which big over ear headphones or even on ear headphones work. Let’s see what other says here. do you want it on ear like Porta Pro or can it be over ear? What’s your...

What Bluetooth playback device do you use and do you know what audio codec it supports?

My main concern is the two boxes. Thinking of the cheapest Choral product, it’ll be that x2 minimum. Will have to wait to see the pricing. I think your pricing is the minimum price.

Hmmm. The input sensitivity of the airtight is listed as 290mV. I’m surprised the 3V RCA from DAVE is not clipping the airtight. Have you tried switching DAVE to preamp mode at -7dB to put out 2V or even -13dB to put out 1V and see if it sounds better? It’s possible that airtight just doesn’t...

Haha. You set a very high bar for immune. But point well taken. Thanks for showing the measurements.

Fair enough. I think because all engineering is about compromises, different designers optimize for different parameters that they believe are sonically relevant. So you can almost always go online to find some measurement to justify why your favorite DAC sounds better. It can become silly. On...

I think old MSB DAC measurements from stereophile looks pretty good. Mostly because stereophile rarely measures nonlinearity. But hifi news does. And yeah, MSB Premier measurements have great jitter rejection but the graph speaks for itself on linearity...

Most DACs nowadays have some way to reclock the incoming S/PDIF or USB signals to significantly lower jitter. However, ultimately, it’s the DAC architecture that determines how much jitter your DAC actually outputs in the music. Chord‘s Pulse Array DAC architecture is jitter-immune so it...

This is my conjecture of what is happening. Your Roon Nucleus, despite the improved power supply is still sending some RF noise from the Nucleus through the USB into the MScaler and then into the TT2. That is where the thinness comes from. When you use Roon to upsample all music to 192/24, what...

I think they sound very very different. In general, I’m not an R2R DAC fan. That’s why I prefer HMS+Dave. I have a friend who swears by MSB and he loves the MSB Premier. Definitely not my cup of tea. I don’t want his MSB to touch my system and he doesn’t want my Chord to touch his systems. But...