[Rob Watts]

@Rob Watts
I have a hissing noise when watching TV through my Satellite receiver which will go away if i power off M Scaler at the mains.
When the M Scaler is powered on depending on which OP SR button is selected the hiss sound will alter ie red less audible white more.
I do not have the M Scaler linked to my Satellite receiver i am only using it at the moment for music although it is positioned next to the receiver for convenience purpose could this be the cause?

Thank you.

Oh. Much scratching of head. I have never seen an EMC issue with the M scaler; even with naked prototypes (just PCB's floating about). What is more puzzling is that red setting is low power. Very odd.

You might like to try re-positioning it - and/or the PSU too. Also, try earthing it (you can use one of the BNC inputs as an earth), and try adjusting how the cables are positioned.

 

[naynay]

Oh. Much scratching of head. I have never seen an EMC issue with the M scaler; even with naked prototypes (just PCB's floating about). What is more puzzling is that red setting is low power. Very odd.

You might like to try re-positioning it - and/or the PSU too. Also, try earthing it (you can use one of the BNC inputs as an earth), and try adjusting how the cables are positioned.

Thank you Rob,

I will try a few of those suggestions however it is manageable having it on the red setting it is just inconvenient when i go back to M Scaler to listen to music that i have to set it back to white setting on the OP SR.

 

[Siz.]

A question for those HMS users who have noticed big differences in the effect of HMS depending on what music is played:

One would HMS to improve Red Book more than it would improve High Res, and in general this is what users have reported on this forum

But one would also expect that HMS might give very little improvement when the source file was a native 44.1 that has been upsampled by the record label for subsequent re-release as ‘High Res’. If the method they used for this upsampling was poor (compared to the WTI filter), then effectively they will have lost information from the file in the process and one would expect the M Scaler to struggle to produce its magic.
Is this something that any M Scalar owners have looked into?

 

[JaZZ]

Yes, it's obvious that the M Scaler is partly «bypassed» with an upsampled standard-resolution recording, hence it won't provide its full magic. However, even with a «true» 352.8 kHz (DXD) recording the M-Scaler effect is still very clear to my ears, although less pronounced than with a 44.1 kHz recording.

I just did the test with a 44.1 kHz track upsampled to 192 kHz (using WaveLab). To my surprise the M Scaler showed at least half of its magic even under this unfavorable condition.

 

[Siz.]

I just did the test with a 44.1 kHz track upsampled to 192 kHz (using WaveLab). To my surprise the M Scaler showed at least half of its magic even under this unfavorable condition.

Thanks JaZZ. To be clear - what you found was that while HMS did best with the 'raw' 44.1 track, it still did well with the upsampled version (implying that WaveLab's upsampling is not too bad but not as good as the WTA)?

 

[JaZZ]

Yes, exactly.

 

[Siz.]

Yes, exactly.

Thanks. So assuming your findings are borne out by others, the conclusions would appear to be:
1) when assessing the M scaler's performance, we need to be careful about what we are feeding it; and
2) having bought it, we need to be careful about what music we buy, and how it was produced.

 

[GreenBow]

I guess because if it's good enough such that Rob Watts himself absolutely requires having this system on 12 hour flights, it's good enough for me.

Heh haha!

 

[Amberlamps]

Thanks JaZZ. To be clear - what you found was that while HMS did best with the 'raw' 44.1 track, it still did well with the upsampled version (implying that WaveLab's upsampling is not too bad but not as good as the WTA)?

When testing, I noticed the upscaler making 192khz tracks sound better, even though that sample rate only gets upsampled 4 times instead of the 16 times for 44.1khz tracks.

 

[Siz.]

When testing, I noticed the upscaler making 192khz tracks sound better, even though that sample rate only gets upsampled 4 times instead of the 16 times for 44.1khz tracks.

Hi Amberlamps

Good to hear - and as it should be, suggesting that the 192khz track was properly sampled (rather than carelessly upsampled / resampled from some lower resolution source, in order to jump on the hi rez bandwagon).

Any tracks you have tried that don't seem to show a big improvement with M scaler? If so, they might be worth investigating.

Siz

 

[Triode User]

When testing, I noticed the upscaler making 192khz tracks sound better, even though that sample rate only gets upsampled 4 times instead of the 16 times for 44.1khz tracks.

I’m with amber on this. I have tried 44.1 tracks compared to ‘proper’ hi res versions of the same album and with both through MScaler and the hi res ones win every time.

 

[Triode User]

Any tracks you have tried that don't seem to show a big improvement with M scaler?
Siz

One word answer, NO.

 

[Amberlamps]

Hi Amberlamps

Good to hear - and as it should be, suggesting that the 192khz track was properly sampled (rather than carelessly upsampled / resampled from some lower resolution source, in order to jump on the hi rez bandwagon).

Any tracks you have tried that don't seem to show a big improvement with M scaler? If so, they might be worth investigating.

Siz

As triode says, once you hear and get used to robs mscaler, although it might not be apparent at first, the more you listen the more you will hear things that you didn!t hear previously, timing and seperation is the thing I noticed most.

Everything seems to have it’s own space instead of being all jumbled together.

If you are thinking about buying one, go for it, as it’s something that will be around for many years to come. dacs can come and go, but the mscaler will still be relevant 5+ years from now.

Top tip for any mscaler and headphone user, Look for the Chesky label.

The Chesky brothers are probably the main people who are making hires binaural / meant for headphone users, recordings.

I have a few Chesky made albums from HDtracks, Amber Rubarth, Macy Gray stripped. Those albums can be bought from hdtracks.

 

[musickid]

For Rob and anyone who can answer this.

I have a strange question i was hoping for an answer. if the latency is reduced for video with mscaler with the video filter then how come we don't hear a delay with 1M taps processing just audio? How is this compensated for? i understand the delay for audio is 0.71 seconds and for video 0.65 seconds.

"Yes it creates a lot of delay as its using 1.42 S of music (44.1) to do the interpolation, giving a 0.71 S of delay. The delay for 48k (video) is 0.65 seconds, hence the need for low latency (low delay) filter option".

 

[supervisor]

Disclaimer: I support artists by paying for all my music, either streamed or downloaded from HD Tracks, NativeDSD, Qobuz or Tidal.

don't forget Bandcamp !