[raypin]

Mm....glad the M Scaler was developed. Me? As a Blu MK 2 Dave owner that pairs beautifully with my HE1, I am not at all perturbed. I am perfectly happy with the Blu MK 2 and am busily building my CD collection. It is just a better listening experience than USB/Tidal Hifi.

I am glad that the standalone M Scaler is more affordable and more accessible to budget-minded summiteers, sans the CD player. Am I offended by the lower price point? Not really. It is simple. I ve been enjoying (tremendously) the BluDave for a year now. By the time that this new flavor of the month ships by end of year or early next, it means that I ve had a headstart of 18 months or more. It is 18 months that I wouldn’t trade for anything. At my age, time is more important than money.

 

[Med Stude]

Looking so much forward to the Hugo M Scaler in the Hugo 2 format. It‘ll come.

 

[Clive101]

And now for the main event.....

The Mscaler at camJam 2018

 

[ecwl]

Fascinating. Because in the Q&A, Rob Watts basically recommended that for non-CD users, Hugo M-Scaler is probably better than Blu2 because of the presence of better >2GHz RF noise filtering post FPGA. In fact, ferrites make the sound worse with Hugo M-Scaler. I guess technology marches on. I don’t use ferrites with my Blu2 and am perfectly happy with the sound.

 

[Clive101]

I have placed an order for the Mscaler looking forward to a ferrite free household.

 

[AndrewOld]

Fascinating. Because in the Q&A, Rob Watts basically recommended that for non-CD users, Hugo M-Scaler is probably better than Blu2 because of the presence of better >2GHz RF noise filtering post FPGA. In fact, ferrites make the sound worse with Hugo M-Scaler. I guess technology marches on. I don’t use ferrites with my Blu2 and am perfectly happy with the sound.

So does that mean you could upgrade a Blu2 by adding an M Scaler if you wanted the best from cd? And didn’t want to use ferrites?

 

[Med Stude]

Mm....glad the M Scaler was developed. Me? As a Blu MK 2 Dave owner that pairs beautifully with my HE1, I am not at all perturbed. I am perfectly happy with the Blu MK 2 and am busily building my CD collection. It is just a better listening experience than USB/Tidal Hifi.

I am glad that the standalone M Scaler is more affordable and more accessible to budget-minded summiteers, sans the CD player. Am I offended by the lower price point? Not really. It is simple. I ve been enjoying (tremendously) the BluDave for a year now. By the time that this new flavor of the month ships by end of year or early next, it means that I ve had a headstart of 18 months or more. It is 18 months that I wouldn’t trade for anything. At my age, time is more important than money.

Here I like technical advancements, because it makes things possible not doable before. The HMS opens up hope for a portable HMS 2 at some point, that includes a huge audience, which is fantastic news.

 

[AndrewOld]

And now for the main event.....

The Mscaler at camJam 2018

About 33:00in ..

“I have managed to eliminate the need for ferrites. That’s because I have improved the isolation of the BNC outputs.”

Guess we can wave goodbye to ferrites then ..

 

[AndrewH13]

Are we actually sure that the M Scaler will not benefit from ferrites? What basis does this assumption have? Can't just be the galvanic isolation on the BNC output can it, as the Blu2 has this.

Rob said today at unveiling, that while Blu2 benefitted from ferrites, M Scaler does not need them.

 

[Jawed]

Hard to see how adding a DAC - ADC before the digital input of the Kiis could possibly be beneficial. Even if if the DAC is a DAVE and it were perfect, the ADC won’t be transparent, so I would have thought the best way to drive the Kiis would be with the original digital signal.

So, the way I look at this is that an ordinary speaker with its passive crossover phase anomalies spread across several octaves and bad time alignment for its drivers is doing more harm to what comes out of DAVE.

The step response of Kii 3, for example, is like you'd get with an electrostatic speaker.

ATC active is the old school approach (I used to live with the Naim version of this approach, which I liked very much). At least the crossover evils of a passive speaker are eliminated, but time alignment doesn't seem to be a priority for ATC - would like to be proven wrong. The two-driver passive SCM 19, for example:

http://www.avmentor.net/reviews/2016/atc_scm19_2.shtml
http://www.avmentor.net/reviews/2016/atc_scm19_2.shtml
shows about 6ms of timing error between "bass" and "treble".

My reference these days is headphones where these problems don't exist (generally speaking). Speakers, in general, sound badly broken to me. So when I listen to various speakers the first question is going to be do I want to run away? I've listened to two speakers already and I wanted to run away. But I think the amp and room were especially bad...

I was focused on ATC for my future plans, but then I stumbled upon Kii 3, which seems like a really serious attempt at solving classic speaker problems. It'll probably be months before I investigate properly...

 

[adyc]

Fascinating. Because in the Q&A, Rob Watts basically recommended that for non-CD users, Hugo M-Scaler is probably better than Blu2 because of the presence of better >2GHz RF noise filtering post FPGA. In fact, ferrites make the sound worse with Hugo M-Scaler. I guess technology marches on. I don’t use ferrites with my Blu2 and am perfectly happy with the sound.

I don’t understand why ferrites will worsen the sound. They are supposed to remove RF noises. If there are no RF noises, they should do nothing. Remember digital is digital.

 

[Jawed]

Perhaps I can put it this way. The Dave can be seen as having two parts: an upscaler section and a DAC. When you use any of its inputs (apart from dual BNC) the signal travels through both before coming out at the analogue outputs. If you use an m-scaler into the dual BNC inputs on the Dave, the Dave’s own upsampling is bypassed (which is why it runs cooler) and the signal goes to the DAC part.

Even when using dual-BNC from Blu 2 into DAVE it's possible to configure the sampling rate to be less than 16FS. So in that situation, the first stage WTA in DAVE is working. But with 16FS input, DAVE's WTA 1 is idle, as you say.

The real bonus is the DX volume control. Is the Dave now redundant for ultimate sound quality when the DX amps are released?

Yes. As I predicted a long time back...

I think the DX output format is different from the Dual-BNC output format. I think DX output is a single channel of audio per BNC, so that each DX amp, ("power pulse array amplifier"), gets one channel of music when using two DX amps, each in mono. Whereas Dual-BNC format, to feed DAVE or Qutest or Hugo 2, splits the data into high and low bits across the two cables. I think this is why there is a button on the front of Hugo M Scaler labelled "DX OP", to switch from one output mode to the other.

 

[jonstatt]

The blu output is one channel per BNC not high / low bits. On Dave if you connect then the wrong way around the channels are reversed.

 

[adyc]

After a night sleep, I have some reflections. MScaler is purely digital to digital devices. There are two ways I can think of it will affect sound quality downstream. One is the well known RF noises from the dual BNC outputs. In Blu2 case, this problem is more or less addressed by the ferrites BNC cable. In Hugo M case, it is addressed by better isolation ( subject to confirmations from future owners). The second is the power supply which the noises of power supply propagate through BNC outputs or inject back to AC lines through the power cable. In Blu2 case, it can be addressed by proper power conditioner. In Hugo M case, a good quality LPS should be sufficient. If both are adddressed properly, Blu2 and Hugo M should provide identical sound quality. Blu2 owners should not be too upset.

 

[Med Stude]

Rob Watts describes using the HMS with a portable battery bank and a Hugo 2 in a backpack [25:55]. I like that.