Hugo M Scaler by Chord Electronics - The Official Thread

[Ham Sandwich]

There is at least one HiFi magazine which does technical reviews of ‘hi res‘ recordings and reveals which ones are genuine as opposed to just being upsampled.

If you mean a HiFi magazine publishing Mark Waldrep's analysis of high-res then you need to find a different source. Mark Waldrep is a Ph.D. educated beyond his means. He claims that anything recorded from master tape cannot be high-res because of his ignorant beliefs about sound quality. I've listened to high-res recordings that were transferred from high speed analog tape and compared those recordings to the same done to CD. And the high-res versions do sound better. High quality analog tape is a valid high-res source. I've heard it be better than CD transfers.

If you're playing around with gear like the M Scaler or HQPlayer or a good high quality DAC then ignore Mark Waldrep. He's Ph.D. whose education is piled higher and deeper.

 

[Triode User]

If you mean a HiFi magazine publishing Mark Waldrep's analysis of high-res then you need to find a different source. Mark Waldrep is a Ph.D. educated beyond his means. He claims that anything recorded from master tape cannot be high-res because of his ignorant beliefs about sound quality. I've listened to high-res recordings that were transferred from high speed analog tape and compared those recordings to the same done to CD. And the high-res versions do sound better. High quality analog tape is a valid high-res source. I've heard it be better than CD transfers.

If you're playing around with gear like the M Scaler or HQPlayer or a good high quality DAC then ignore Mark Waldrep. He's Ph.D. whose education is piled higher and deeper.

I was thinking of the HiFi News and Record Review magazine published in the UK and which on its website claims to be “still the only magazine that tests high resolution music downloads”.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

I was thinking of the HiFi News and Record Review magazine published in the UK and which on its website claims to be “still the only magazine that tests high resolution music downloads”.

HiFi News and Record Report still relies too much on measurements rather than ears to determine what is a legit high-res recording and what is not. The benefits of high-res are in capturing more accurate transients and timing. Not in capturing frequencies that only bats can hear. HiFi News analysis is all about measuring whether high-res contains frequencies that only bats can hear. They ignore the things about more accurate transients and timing. The M Scaler is about upscaling to recover better transients and timing. The things that the HiFi News analysis ignores.

I don't find HiFi News reviews of Hi-Res to be very relevant to what I listen for when determining whether a recording is hi-res or not. The HiFi News reviews of hi-res may find recordings that are questionable and need further listening analysis to determine if the recording is hi-res wrothy. The HiFi News reviews aren't sufficient in themselves to determine if a recording is worthing of being called hi-res. Plust I think I own about two hi-res recordings that HiFi News has reviewed. They aren't very relevant to me.

I've heard some hi-res recordings made from 44.1 digital that were transferred to analog tape to be EQed with analog gear and re-mastered with analog gear, then converted to hi-res digital. And those remasterings can sound better in hi-res than the same remastering downsampled to CD-res. So it depends. There are certainly no legit frequencies above 22 kHz in the digital source, but transferring the 44.1 khz digital to analog tape and doing high quality analog EQ and remastering can make them sound better and worthy of being a hi-res transfer.

 

[Rob Watts]

@Rob Watts Have you considered designing your own power bank and making it a crowdsourced project (indiegogo or kickstarter)? or do you think current power banks are as good as it gets?

No I wouldn't design a powerbank - it's not something that would ever make sense. My focus is on and will be on making my designs immune to kit attached to it - be it sources or PSUs. The ideal is so that when a noisy random RF source (like a linear PSU ) are attached there is no change in SQ!

As to current powerbanks I know that they are not perfect, so I do have more work to do to make my designs immune from the power and the sources - but this is something I have been working on for some time.

 

[alekc]

Many of the times these so called hi res files are just regular 44.1 but upsampled to higher values using some crude interpolation filters.
Sometimes you can even see 44.1 version of the file and it's 'hires' 96khz...
Which is strange as 96 is not a multiplier of 44.1 but 48. So it's going to have timing problems.

That's why many times feeding m scaler with native 44.1 is better than using 'fake' high res files.

@alxw0w this is why I've explicitly said that I'm concerned about true higher sample rates files. While Chord and Rob Watts apparently dislikes DSD I guess there is still a small set of DXD recordings for example?

 

[alekc]

Which input will limit you? Even toslink takes 192k pcm. Do you have any music above that? Then you can use USB, it is also isolated, just not as perfectly as toslink.

@ra990 yes I do have. Are you using single source or multiple sources when using both toslink and usb? To be clear I don't see it as a problem. I just wanted to highlight that for a certain tiny number of recordings toslink can be limiting and in fact one can loose a bit of original music. I get a feeling that my original post has been greatly misunderstood.

 

[new2mus]

There is at least one HiFi magazine which does technical reviews of ‘hi res‘ recordings and reveals which ones are genuine as opposed to just being upsampled.

I always learn something new here. Will check this out.

 

[SteveHulk]

As to current powerbanks I know that they are not perfect, so I do have more work to do to make my designs immune from the power and the sources - but this is something I have been working on for some time.

I'm very glad to hear that you are doing this work. All power to you!

However, don't you think there is anything to be gained from first proactively trying to prevent these problems from reaching your designs rather than just reactively trying to deal with them when they've already arrived?

 

[Rob Watts]

I'm very glad to hear that you are doing this work. All power to you!

However, don't you think there is anything to be gained from first proactively trying to prevent these problems from reaching your designs rather than just reactively trying to deal with them when they've already arrived?

Of course I pro-actively try to prevent these problems from occurring in the first place - you wouldn't believe the number of RF filters and separate multiple regulation that goes on as a matter of course - the designs are currently immune from problems, but that doesn't mean completely isolated or perfectly immune. And possibly the goal of perfect immunity from source and PSU issues will turn out to be impossible.... But that doesn't stop me from trying to make it more immune.

 

[audio_1]

Message deleted

 

[Somatic]

Have a question about RF and noise floor modulation. Does anyone prefer solo Dave vs HMS/Dave (using stock BNC cables)? Would increased RF, increase noise floor modulation making things sound more sibilant at times etc even though you get some Mscaler benefits?

 

[MvRBE10]

If using dave and hms my experience is the std bnc cables really suck (also quality wise they tend to have bad connection, in contrary to the toslink cables those are briljant from chord). The wave cables make it all darker and much more musical. That said with my new farad lps i like the dave solo much more. I am simplifiing my setup and each step it gets more musical and nicer to listen to, all music 80’ 90’ high res and low res. In my old setup the nice albums sounded nice but old stuff not so.

For example i always had billie eilish ‘no time to die’ in my playlist for the sake it just always sucked. For the first time it sound like in the cinema. Open and musical and nice to ears. Bizarrrr

 

[Somatic]

If using dave and hms my experience is the std bnc cables really suck (also quality wise they tend to have bad connection, in contrary to the toslink cables those are briljant from chord). The wave cables make it all darker and much more musical. That said with my new farad lps i like the dave solo much more. I am simplifiing my setup and each step it gets more musical and nicer to listen to, all music 80’ 90’ high res and low res. In my old setup the nice albums sounded nice but old stuff not so.

For example i always had billie eilish ‘no time to die’ in my playlist for the sake it just always sucked. For the first time it sound like in the cinema. Open and musical and nice to ears. Bizarrrr

Hmm so even HMS/Dave/Farad you preferred the Dave/Farad? Part of me thinks this is the way to go as well. Clean up the power. Does Farad power supplies show any graphs on what it is doing to the power? Curious on how much cleaner things get ...

 

[Triode User]

Have a question about RF and noise floor modulation. Does anyone prefer solo Dave vs HMS/Dave (using stock BNC cables)? Would increased RF, increase noise floor modulation making things sound more sibilant at times etc even though you get some Mscaler benefits?

Don’t you have a Dave and Mscaler? Or at least coming soon? The absolute best way to answer your question is to do the test in your own system.

 

[Somatic]

Don’t you have a Dave and Mscaler? Or at least coming soon? The absolute best way to answer your question is to do the test in your own system.

Guess I am asking as I heard positive differences but also some increased brightness ... guessing from RF noise. My wife threw me for a loop after she said "what did you do, something is missing" vs solo Dave lol .... (she is not an audiophile, but made me question what I was hearing lol)