[cczero17]

I suppose I would of thought this amount of upscaling was obscene a couple of years ago, but reading about and auditioning Chord’s upscalers has changed my views on this. It is a low computational overhead for PCM and results in a signal that is more faithful to the original analogue signal.

For me it is not about more detail, but realism. Before lockdown myself and my wife would try to go to live music performances as often as possible and this resets the brain as to what a good hifi should sound like. In my opinion upscaling with HQP gets me a sound that is closer to a live performance. It is not about the amount of upscaling applied, but the quality of the filter used. I would agree with Rob Watts’ argument that the timing of transients is critical for creating a realistic sounding signal, and to get accurate timing you need the best possible reconstruction filter to reproduce the signal between the digitised samples.

Antipodes has a similar design philosphy in that they do not overdo the noise filtering as this can remove high frequency signal that is critical for transient perception. This is why Innuos servers sound lush and warm but not as realistic as Antipodes (my opinion, based on owning both). The innuos is great for laid back genres but is not a good all rounder. If I want to tune my setup for different genres I would rather do that by choosing different headphones and/or amplifiers instead of adversely damaging the HF signal in the server.

I think the mathematical theory that underlies the filter design in Chord DACS and HQP software is sound. You can test by taking a native signal with a high sample rate, delete intermediate samples and then try to reconstruct the known missing signal with different filters. Note that all DACS do upscaling, its just a question of how well the reconstruction filter represents the analogue signal. Even the so called Non Oversampling Dacs do a rudimentary upscaling using a ’sample and hold’ approach. It can be mathematically proven that this does a poor job of reconstructing the intermediate samples.

In summary, if you have not heard upscaling done well, I would recommend trying again with either HQP software or a Chord M scaler.

Indeed I use HQP and Antipodes Solution, however I differ on the DAC front. I have an Aqua La Scala MK2 Optologic DAC. No it doesn't upsample as high as Chord but still sounds fantastic. I did however find that can converting to DSD, DSD7 and Sinc - M has better realism
than PCM Sinc- M, LNS15. I guess this all depends on our DACs

 

[andrewd01]

Your observations make sense. In my opinion the quality of the filter matters more than the amount of upscaling, but for a given filter you may as well push it as much as the DAC can take. I recall that Jussi recommends converting to DSD to just about all DAC’s except Chord. I think this is because the Chord FPGA code works natively in PCM and converts any DSD signal to PCM anyway, so better to feed it the best possible PCM.

 

[Whazzzup]

Wish I could hear a la scala, or even better formula. Course why torment myself, I haven’t heard a Dave yet either but would be good to know if there is a next step.

 

[Progisus]

Wish I could hear a la scala, or even better formula. Course why torment myself, I haven’t heard a Dave yet either but would be good to know if there is a next step.

Is HQPlayer part of the software package on the DX?

 

[Whazzzup]

Is HQPlayer part of the software package on the DX?

yes but I'm scared to try/install itv

 

[Progisus]

yes but I'm scared to try/install it

It is better than mscaler with the TT.

 

[Whazzzup]

It is better than mscaler with the TT.

you know i looked a while back and thought i had it on my DX, now i don't see it. ya under my app switcher i see no hq player? no HQ in apps either

 

[Kapiti]

you know i looked a while back and thought i had it on my DX, now i don't see it. ya under my app switcher i see no hq player? no HQ in apps either

Contact Antipodes Support and that can be sorted for you

 

[Progisus]

you know i looked a while back and thought i had it on my DX, now i don't see it. ya under my app switcher i see no hq player? no HQ in apps either

I looked online re DX and HQP and there was reference to the HQP NAA being available. If this is (software upgrade?) then you could run HQP desktop on another computer and play to the naa in the DX. This gives superb results on the EX. Just a thought.

 

[Whazzzup]

I dunno had mark and the techy dude at hifi Center team view my system for operational effectiveness and optimal playability. Not that I don’t doubt hqp for your systems, not sure about DX. Maybe if mark or kapiti from antipodes could chime in on DX, I’m tending to leave it as installed. But if there is a preferred player?

 

[andrewd01]

I think the DX has very similar if not more processing power than the EX, so it will handle PCM upscaling in HQP without any problems.
I think you just need the latest Antipodes OS. There was a point where this needed to be updated by Antipodes tech support.

 

[Whazzzup]

I think the DX has very similar if not more processing power than the EX, so it will handle PCM upscaling in HQP without any problems.
I think you just need the latest Antipodes OS. There was a point where this needed to be updated by Antipodes tech support.

its not updated with the software manager? i have the latest version

 

[andrewd01]

Maybe its firmware. There was a previous generation where you couldn’t install your own storage disks etc and used myantipodes instead of antipodes.online to access the server. I am guessing Mark will clarify.

Described on post 31 here:
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/antipodes-cx-ex.28338/page-2

 

[Whazzzup]

Contact Antipodes Support and that can be sorted for you

Thx everyone, when motivated I’ll contact antipodes to see how to get updated firmware for my DX.

 

[Clive101]

V 3 Guide is now available.

https://antipodes.audio/amsv3-guide/index.html?page=1