[Triode User]

The slight delay your experiecing has been caused by myself putting a hold on production due to an issue with the colour density of a newly supplied plastic IR filters central in the front face. I seems some are too dark to allow for consistent IR reception from more than three metres. All units were originally tested for distance of the IR with an alternative source. Subsequently they have been tested for function, though only at closer range. The New filters were being machined last week and they I’m told will be with us first thing Monday morning to enable full production to start again.

For those of you experiencing any IR problem please let your dealer know to contact us and we will send new plastic filter by speed post to allow for simple service swap out of the drop in filter at the store. Fortunately this is a very simple job for any service guy.

John,
Thank you for a spot on and perfect response. As suggested I will contact my dealer for the replacement part.
Thanks again.

 

[penguin69]

The slight delay your experiecing has been caused by myself putting a hold on production due to an issue with the colour density of a newly supplied plastic IR filters central in the front face. I seems some are too dark to allow for consistent IR reception from more than three metres. All units were originally tested for distance of the IR with an alternative source. Subsequently they have been tested for function, though only at closer range. The New filters were being machined last week and they I’m told will be with us first thing Monday morning to enable full production to start again.

For those of you experiencing any IR problem please let your dealer know to contact us and we will send new plastic filter by speed post to allow for simple service swap out of the drop in filter at the store. Fortunately this is a very simple job for any service guy.

Thanks for the reply, John.

 

[marcmccalmont]

I sort of think that a big question is, if one has to choose between a DAVE-by-itself or an Mscaler with a Hugo2 or TT2, what is the best route to take?.
I don't think there are any impressions on this choice yet. (I'm sure Rob and other Chord people have heard it, but that's another story.)

All I know is that I sure would not be in any mood to give up my DAVE for any lesser DAC.

Guys help me out here ..

God help me, but I've decided I can't detect the slightest difference between the full scaled output and the 44.1 kHz bypass on the M Scaler.

I have been A/B'ing for about 48 hours now (time off work) and although it was hard to admit it, I can't lie to myself. My comments a couple of days ago were before I started playing with the bypass button. Lo and behold what I thought I was writing about the upscaled presentation turns out to have been identical to the pass-through option.

Now I write this not to upset people or discourage people but as a plea for ideas as to any possible reasons.

I presume there is something wrong on my end and my comments should (please) be taken with that in mind.

Any ideas? Things to try?

Is there a way to "reset" the M Scaler in case it stopped working properly? (Or is it just not that kind of device?) .. powering on / off seems to make no difference.

After all I did think I heard a significant difference at first, a couple of days ago ...

Could something have gone wrong inside the M

Guys help me out here ..

God help me, but I've decided I can't detect the slightest difference between the full scaled output and the 44.1 kHz bypass on the M Scaler.

I have been A/B'ing for about 48 hours now (time off work) and although it was hard to admit it, I can't lie to myself. My comments a couple of days ago were before I started playing with the bypass button. Lo and behold what I thought I was writing about the upscaled presentation turns out to have been identical to the pass-through option.

Now I write this not to upset people or discourage people but as a plea for ideas as to any possible reasons.

I presume there is something wrong on my end and my comments should (please) be taken with that in mind.

Any ideas? Things to try?

Is there a way to "reset" the M Scaler in case it stopped working properly? (Or is it just not that kind of device?) .. powering on / off seems to make no difference.

After all I did think I heard a significant difference at first, a couple of days ago ...

Could something have gone wrong inside the M Scaler?

what is the rest of your system?

 

[Amberlamps]

The slight delay your experiecing has been caused by myself putting a hold on production due to an issue with the colour density of a newly supplied plastic IR filters central in the front face. I seems some are too dark to allow for consistent IR reception from more than three metres. All units were originally tested for distance of the IR with an alternative source. Subsequently they have been tested for function, though only at closer range. The New filters were being machined last week and they I’m told will be with us first thing Monday morning to enable full production to start again.

For those of you experiencing any IR problem please let your dealer know to contact us and we will send new plastic filter by speed post to allow for simple service swap out of the drop in filter at the store. Fortunately this is a very simple job for any service guy.

Speed Post sounds fast John. It’s good to see that Chord is on the ball regarding infrared. Hi John, will 2go be released this year ? If the price has been settled on, is it possible to share ?

For everyone else, I just bought a new set of iem’s, Anew U1, I had never heard of them before, but I was told they rivalled and in most cases beat iBasso iT01’s. I got my set on Friday and wow, for the price they are oustanding. They easily surpass iBasso iT01. They are only $130, and I can’t describe just how good they are for the price. If anyone is looking to buy iem’s, you won’t go wrong buying these. There is only one problem, they only come in white, but don’t worry, you can’t see the color whilst they are in your ears.

 

[threeweeksatf8]

Silly question but just checking, when you switch to pass through does your DAC switch back to 44.1?

Yep -- Red light on M Scaler OP button results in DAVE instantly displaying 44.1/48Khz input with matching Red colour background. Cycling through OP button results in instant changes between sample rates displayed on DAVE, just as expected.

what is the rest of your system?

TAD Micro Evolution One speakers, and
Amps are either Crayon CFA-1.2, Analog Domain M75D (both integrateds) or RWA Liliana monoblocks using DAVE as preamp. All three display fairly obvious differences in sonic presentation and each have their merits. With any of them the sonic scene is holographic and allows any ambient cues to be fairly obvious. Speaker cabling and RCA interconnects are both Tellurium Q Black Diamond and on the digital side is an UltraRendu / LPS-1 combo Roon front-end feeding USB via Curious cable. Changing just about anything around on the analogue side results in audible differences.

No amount of swapping or changing things around seems to allow a difference to be heard and I have also tried experimenting with HD800S phones, straight out of the DAVE. Same story, no difference ..

(interestingly when I first put the headphones on after not listening to them for months I thought they sounded dull but then I realised the detail was there, it was just presented differently to the speakers).

The main reason I want to mess around with it is that I was pretty certain I heard a difference when I first installed the M Scaler a few nights ago. Tighter sound, larger, more "free and open" presentation etc ..

Hence I am worried that something has stopped working properly. I am super confused. I wonder whether the M Scaler could stop inserting the 1M taps somehow, yet still output 705.6KHz ... I doubt it though.

I am thinking maybe I should just turn the HiFi off for a while and come back to it later with fresh ears.

 

[thePhones]

I hope that I understand (despite I'm speaking german) your configuration you have mentioned. But you did not seem to mention your source and selected sample rate. One thing I have noticed is that it is crucial for the wta filter in any chord dac to work you need bitperfekt data especially regarding sample rate. I did not notice any loss in quality when using (good) software eq yet. But I notice a big change in the ability to hear timbre variation and bass when I use the "audio-midi-setup" on my mac to change the sample rate that is used for Hugo1. Youtube for example seems to have all videos formatted in 48khz and it is like it locks in when I change the sample rate to the right one. But then there is also the sample rate used in production that matters, so one video can sound amazing and the other one just ok. If the sample rate that is used in production is not a multiple of the one that is used in streaming to the Hugo it also messes things up because the reduction is then technically bad. (oh man that was a lot of translation, I hope you can understand )
This phenomenon of things sounding better in an instant by changing the sample rate gets even more noticeable as the taps of of your chord dac gets higher. When doing the same thing with Hugo2 instead of Hugo1 it's not just "klick" it's rather "bang". And i assume with the M scaler it should be like
With the wrong sample rate you still have the differences between the dacs regarding resolution, distortion levels and so on, but the wta magic is gone.

Finally I have one more example: In Germany we have different subscriptions for Netflix regarding quality, don't know if it's the same everywhere... but with the 1080p sub I always felt like blu rays had so much more musicality and I was almost loosing the fun of watching. But then I wanted to try 4k to test the picture with my IMac. Picture was better but the first thing I noticed was that the always missing musicality was finally there, but not on every track. So I changed from german 5.1 to english 5.1 and it's like... "boom" there it is. Sometimes both tracks sound the same except one is german language of course, and I think this is because some studios mess with the sampling frequency when dubbing the movie and others don't.

 

[ZappaMan]

Yep -- Red light on M Scaler OP button results in DAVE instantly displaying 44.1/48Khz input with matching Red colour background. Cycling through OP button results in instant changes between sample rates displayed on DAVE, just as expected.



TAD Micro Evolution One speakers, and
Amps are either Crayon CFA-1.2, Analog Domain M75D (both integrateds) or RWA Liliana monoblocks using DAVE as preamp. All three display fairly obvious differences in sonic presentation and each have their merits. With any of them the sonic scene is holographic and allows any ambient cues to be fairly obvious. Speaker cabling and RCA interconnects are both Tellurium Q Black Diamond and on the digital side is an UltraRendu / LPS-1 combo Roon front-end feeding USB via Curious cable. Changing just about anything around on the analogue side results in audible differences.

No amount of swapping or changing things around seems to allow a difference to be heard and I have also tried experimenting with HD800S phones, straight out of the DAVE. Same story, no difference ..

(interestingly when I first put the headphones on after not listening to them for months I thought they sounded dull but then I realised the detail was there, it was just presented differently to the speakers).

The main reason I want to mess around with it is that I was pretty certain I heard a difference when I first installed the M Scaler a few nights ago. Tighter sound, larger, more "free and open" presentation etc ..

Hence I am worried that something has stopped working properly. I am super confused. I wonder whether the M Scaler could stop inserting the 1M taps somehow, yet still output 705.6KHz ... I doubt it though.

I am thinking maybe I should just turn the HiFi off for a while and come back to it later with fresh ears.

I had a great listening session last night, really spectacular, fell asleep in the middle. After I woke up, I kept listening, but started multi tasking, it then seemed like the mscaler had worn off.
So I put on a song I knew had magic before, and it still had some, but not the same as before.
So I think being fatigued prevents the perception working optimally.
I also came across more music that appeared to receive no benefit - like portishead and Macy gray.
Hopefully tho it was just fatigue.

But the listening session was something else. I could have been high, my perception was altered so dramatically. A few Radiohead albums back to back. All the glare was gone (I’m presuming that what I was previously listening too was glare).
In retrospect, music had seemed very shouty. Now there is an intense darkness.
If there are 4 members in the band, they all just quietly work away, no one shouts, everything was so relaxed, this was the transformative part.
I had to shake myself a bit, and then thought, yes this is epic, but is it lifelike? Isn’t live music more chaotic, more challenging, I think so. But then, this is music replayed through a chain, but anyway, interesting times.

 

[Nik74]

@thePhones , that's a good point. I ve noticed same differences when streaming Tidal from Mac betwen system configured and built-in output options. On my mac both these options are through Chord Qutest but the sound quality is better when I m using the system configured option , I m guessing that this would be the bit perfect one. Sometimes when I reopen Tidal it automatically switches to built-in output and it usually takes me 2-3 tracks that sound a bit less engaging to realise and check my streaming preferences and switch to system configured. It would be my guess that the more resolving Chord DACs would expose these differencs even more.

 

[analogmusic]

Guys help me out here ..

God help me, but I've decided I can't detect the slightest difference between the full scaled output and the 44.1 kHz bypass on the M Scaler.

I have been A/B'ing for about 48 hours now (time off work) and although it was hard to admit it, I can't lie to myself. My comments a couple of days ago were before I started playing with the bypass button. Lo and behold what I thought I was writing about the upscaled presentation turns out to have been identical to the pass-through option.

Now I write this not to upset people or discourage people but as a plea for ideas as to any possible reasons.

I presume there is something wrong on my end and my comments should (please) be taken with that in mind.

Any ideas? Things to try?

Is there a way to "reset" the M Scaler in case it stopped working properly? (Or is it just not that kind of device?) .. powering on / off seems to make no difference.

After all I did think I heard a significant difference at first, a couple of days ago ...

Could something have gone wrong inside the M Scaler?

Something does not seem right here.

Having said that, please try to listen to Hans Zimmer live in prague album - track 3 Gladiator sountrack, with and without Mscaler

The difference is obvious in the first 3 seconds.

But on some other pop/rock tracks, for instance, "the weekend" I can't feel my face - well the recording is quite average, so even a million tap Mscaler cannot rescue it.... but then that track sounds quite plain on Dave alone too.

try some high quality recordings is my advice.

You should have a major improvement in the bass, and then slowly you might perceive that there is less blurring of notes where there are transients, hence less brain fatigue to enjoy the music. This is apparent with hi frequency notes, like cymbal crashes or quick rhythmic changes.

everything get more clear, more focus, and bigger soundstage....

 

[dmance]

@thePhones , that's a good point. I ve noticed same differences when streaming Tidal from Mac betwen system configured and built-in output options. On my mac both these options are through Chord Qutest but the sound quality is better when I m using the system configured option , I m guessing that this would be the bit perfect one. Sometimes when I reopen Tidal it automatically switches to built-in output and it usually takes me 2-3 tracks that sound a bit less engaging to realise and check my streaming preferences and switch to system configured. It would be my guess that the more resolving Chord DACs would expose these differencs even more.

Nik,
No, that's not the reason. All sources you mention are bit perfect. What's happening is the one that sounds 'better' is throwing less RF noise into you USB stream. The DAC is affected by analog RF noise riding on the bit perfect USB data ...riding on the data pins, power+ground.
So whatever streaming service you are using (or system or OS) that is generating least RF noise by virtue of the CPU, memory, client software, etc ... is the one that sounds less muddled and thus more engaging.
Dan

 

[Triode User]

Nik,
No, that's not the reason. All sources you mention are bit perfect. What's happening is the one that sounds 'better' is throwing less RF noise into you USB stream. The DAC is affected by analog RF noise riding on the bit perfect USB data ...riding on the data pins, power+ground.
So whatever streaming service you are using (or system or OS) that is generating least RF noise by virtue of the CPU, memory, client software, etc ... is the one that sounds less muddled and thus more engaging.
Dan

Yes to this. Search out the least bright, darkest option and that will have the most real detail no longer hidden by RF noise artifacts.

 

[dawktah2]

Yes to this. Search out the least bright, darkest option and that will have the most real detail no longer hidden by RF noise artifacts.

Would Henry Mancini, Hatari soundtrack 1962 fit this description? Especially track "The Sounds of Hatari?" A lot of single tones and silence at beginning. It's on YouTube but I have the flac version

 

[marcmccalmont]

Yep -- Red light on M Scaler OP button results in DAVE instantly displaying 44.1/48Khz input with matching Red colour background. Cycling through OP button results in instant changes between sample rates displayed on DAVE, just as expected.



TAD Micro Evolution One speakers, and
Amps are either Crayon CFA-1.2, Analog Domain M75D (both integrateds) or RWA Liliana monoblocks using DAVE as preamp. All three display fairly obvious differences in sonic presentation and each have their merits. With any of them the sonic scene is holographic and allows any ambient cues to be fairly obvious. Speaker cabling and RCA interconnects are both Tellurium Q Black Diamond and on the digital side is an UltraRendu / LPS-1 combo Roon front-end feeding USB via Curious cable. Changing just about anything around on the analogue side results in audible differences.

No amount of swapping or changing things around seems to allow a difference to be heard and I have also tried experimenting with HD800S phones, straight out of the DAVE. Same story, no difference ..

(interestingly when I first put the headphones on after not listening to them for months I thought they sounded dull but then I realised the detail was there, it was just presented differently to the speakers).

The main reason I want to mess around with it is that I was pretty certain I heard a difference when I first installed the M Scaler a few nights ago. Tighter sound, larger, more "free and open" presentation etc ..

Hence I am worried that something has stopped working properly. I am super confused. I wonder whether the M Scaler could stop inserting the 1M taps somehow, yet still output 705.6KHz ... I doubt it though.

I am thinking maybe I should just turn the HiFi off for a while and come back to it later with fresh ears.

Or just relax enjoy the mscaler for 2 weeks then take it out of your system and see what what you hear.
Do you have diffusion in front and behind you, absorption ceiling and floor? Perhaps your room in getting in the way of nuances?

 

[threeweeksatf8]

I hope that I understand (despite I'm speaking german) your configuration you have mentioned. But you did not seem to mention your source and selected sample rate. One thing I have noticed is that it is crucial for the wta filter in any chord dac to work you need bitperfekt data especially regarding sample rate. I did not notice any loss in quality when using (good) software eq yet. But I notice a big change in the ability to hear timbre variation and bass when I use the "audio-midi-setup" on my mac to change the sample rate that is used for Hugo1. Youtube for example seems to have all videos formatted in 48khz and it is like it locks in when I change the sample rate to the right one. But then there is also the sample rate used in production that matters, so one video can sound amazing and the other one just ok. If the sample rate that is used in production is not a multiple of the one that is used in streaming to the Hugo it also messes things up because the reduction is then technically bad. (oh man that was a lot of translation, I hope you can understand )
This phenomenon of things sounding better in an instant by changing the sample rate gets even more noticeable as the taps of of your chord dac gets higher. When doing the same thing with Hugo2 instead of Hugo1 it's not just "klick" it's rather "bang". And i assume with the M scaler it should be like
With the wrong sample rate you still have the differences between the dacs regarding resolution, distortion levels and so on, but the wta magic is gone.

Finally I have one more example: In Germany we have different subscriptions for Netflix regarding quality, don't know if it's the same everywhere... but with the 1080p sub I always felt like blu rays had so much more musicality and I was almost loosing the fun of watching. But then I wanted to try 4k to test the picture with my IMac. Picture was better but the first thing I noticed was that the always missing musicality was finally there, but not on every track. So I changed from german 5.1 to english 5.1 and it's like... "boom" there it is. Sometimes both tracks sound the same except one is german language of course, and I think this is because some studios mess with the sampling frequency when dubbing the movie and others don't.

I had a great listening session last night, really spectacular, fell asleep in the middle. After I woke up, I kept listening, but started multi tasking, it then seemed like the mscaler had worn off.
So I put on a song I knew had magic before, and it still had some, but not the same as before.
So I think being fatigued prevents the perception working optimally.
I also came across more music that appeared to receive no benefit - like portishead and Macy gray.
Hopefully tho it was just fatigue.

But the listening session was something else. I could have been high, my perception was altered so dramatically. A few Radiohead albums back to back. All the glare was gone (I’m presuming that what I was previously listening too was glare).
In retrospect, music had seemed very shouty. Now there is an intense darkness.
If there are 4 members in the band, they all just quietly work away, no one shouts, everything was so relaxed, this was the transformative part.
I had to shake myself a bit, and then thought, yes this is epic, but is it lifelike? Isn’t live music more chaotic, more challenging, I think so. But then, this is music replayed through a chain, but anyway, interesting times.

Or just relax enjoy the mscaler for 2 weeks then take it out of your system and see what what you hear.
Do you have diffusion in front and behind you, absorption ceiling and floor? Perhaps your room in getting in the way of nuances?

Guys, thank you all for your posts.

Rather than reply to each one, let me just say that a few hours ago I changed from going through an UltraRendu on the network to going directly into the M Scaler's USB port from my NUC which usually acts as the Roon server .... i.e. straight out of the computer using Chord's Windows 10 driver .... which I never do ...

And ..... .. ...

..

Theeeerrrrre it is ... absolutely _MAGIC_.

I have no idea why but I don't rallyr care right now. I am greatly relieved. I would have assumed everything was bit-perfect via the network adaptor, but with computers who knows what goes on sometimes. I think there was maybe something wrong with the UltraRendu since I was getting odd hissing noises instead of music occasionally and the USB port feels super loose. (I am not suggesting this is an UltraRendu problem per se, but rather that mine may be damaged .. when I first purchased it I noticed a definite sonic benefit).

I have no explanation why I was getting audio but seemingly without M Scaler benefit (apart from maybe something similar to what thePhones was saying above) but all I know is it's there now. Maybe less complexity?

Anyway this explains why I was so impressed with the TV audio but noticed nothing much with music.

On top of this, it has had the added benefit of making Roon _vastly_ more responsive and less buggy. I am much happier going directly out of the computer and into the M Scaler if there is no sonic penalty and oddly enough in my case the result has been the exact opposite! Super weird.

I am so glad I was honest with myself and decided there was a problem otherwise I might have kept lying to myself and not reached the level of performance I am now hearing.

(And before anyone says it: No, I don't think I'm hearing extra RF noise now giving the illusion of detail .. this is super calm and smooth despite being ultra detailed).

It's not like every song is completely and utterly transformed; just that things are noticably tighter, cleaner, deeper, calmer, bigger, etc. Even plenty of studio tracks I'm noticing greater depth and layering. Bass is noticably cleaner. I am going through my list of tracks that I have "done to death" and they are all sounding better, especially with regards to layering and depth.

I'm not even in a music mood at the moment, but definitely my audiophile senses are tingling.

Yay.

Even as a simple example I just listened to "Pixies - Hey" and at the start when he says "hey .. been tryin' to meet you" it's like he's standing way back in a recording booth, and I'm shown way more depth than that song has any right to ... and I've heard it many times lately. On top of that it's not harsh at all. Obviously not an audiophile quality recording (lol, hell no) but just a simple example.

Usually voices or instruments which are recorded deep in the sound field just sound like they are playing at a lower volume, whereas now they sound like they are lower volume because they are further away and the sound has dropped over distance. There is way more depth portrayed naturally when it's there on a recording.

There is more space between elements of the sound field and it makes it easier to relax somehow, and listen to without fatigue.

 

[dac64]

Guys, thank you all for your posts. And ..... .. ...

Yeah boy! I always keep my setup simple!