I've been reading ASR for the last few days, checking out their reviews and tests.
The story goes, that millions of taps are not needed and that much cheaper dacs, example Topping dacs at a fraction of the price measure better than Chord dacs.
In one of their reviews, mojo got slated for having bad measurements
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-measurements-of-chord-mojo-dac-and-amp.5120/
I'm not going to pick a side, but if I can get the same quality or better sound for much cheaper, then it's a no brainer. If said test above is correct, then mojo is not as good as chords marketing dept is, and what hifi reviews can be ignored, which I knew already that what hifi is useless as a review site.
Although I've included mojo as an example, it's Taps that is the main thing I'm speaking about, and more taps, supposedly if ASR is correct, we don't need, and it would be better to focus on other aspects of a dac's design, and what better forum to post this post in than Chords ultimate tap length filter, the mscaler thread, and to be honest with you, I'm going to agree with ASR and I will tell you why.
As you all know, I have an MScaler and a TT2, from day 1 I was unimpressed by the mscaler, even now, I don't think hear a difference with and without the mscaler being in the mix.
I wanted to like it and I kept telling myself, it must just be me as everyone is raving about it, so I assumed it was just me, then I tried passthrough mode and realised it sounded the exact same with and without it being set to pass through mode. I mentioned my confusion of not hearing a difference between the two modes on the forums and, lo and behold so did many others notice the same thing, but they were quiet up until that point.
I've done testing and I don't hear a bloody difference with and without the mscaler being attached to TT2, and I've had roughly a year of using it day in and day out and I kept saying to myself, it has to be me, as everyone is saying the difference is like day and night, but, and I won't mention any names, but privately those people who were saying on the forums, the mscaler is a total transformation, they were privately saying that they too were unimpressed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the mscaler is crap, and I'm fighting myself to try and explain how I feel. On one hand I can't hear any difference when the mscaler is in the loop, but I've been influenced by marketing and blu mk ii and mscaler owners into thinking more taps mean something and, that I should hear a clear difference when I use the mscaler, but I don't and now I don't think millions of taps matter, if they did, then the difference between Hugo 2, or TT2 with and without the mscaler attached would be extreme, since both those devices have less than 100k taps, and the mscaler having over 1 million.
Personally, Rob makes excellent DAC's, no two ways about it, Chord dacs are good, but, and this goes back to a post I made a while ago, I don't think huge numbers of taps and chasing more is the way forward, if it was, TT2 and MScaler or especially the Hugo 2 and mscaler due to using batteries would make dave look bad, but it doesn't, and I think it's because of the 20 element psu that dave has, I think that is the area to focus on instead of ever increasing tap numbers.
I think that the better psu implementation in dave is the sole reason dave sounds better than other chord dacs, I doubt very much that it's tap count matters as much as people think and I will go on record saying that for me, the mscaler was a bad purchase and that I would of been overjoyed to of just owned TT2 on it's own. Plus it would of saved me 3 grand.
Now, I'm not too stupid to realise that others will say I'm wrong and that the mscaler is truly wonderful, thats their opinion and I'm not going to argue with them, but I will say this, before I mentioned that passthrough sounded the same as 1 million taps, some folk were adamant that 1 million taps sounded crazy good compared to passthrough, but when I mentioned I couldn't hear the difference between both modes, suddenly their minds changed and they too couldn't hear the difference.
I'm either very good at changing folks minds on the fly or they too were fooled into thinking they were hearing a night and day difference, fooled by peer pressure and marketing departments and dodgy unscientific review sites, ones who don't measure what goes in to the dac and how it comes out, and if there is any added distortion etc, and as ASR points out, some chord dacs meassure totally different to specified figures given by Chord, some by a long way off, now I'm not suggesting anything, ASR states that he does not know under what conditions those figures were obtained, thus he can only do real world usage testing/measurements.
Now before you all jump on me, let me make it clear, I love my mojo, poly I'm not too keen on, but thats only because of it's protracted birth, Hugo 2 I was over the moon with and the same with TT2, and I couldn't be more happier. Pricey though, but I really like them.
But I've come to the realisation that it's not tap count that matters, well not in the huge numbers given, especially when those taps are meant to produce a more smoothly defined sinewave, but when the devices mentioned are measured by a third party with no dubious intentions, the sinewave produced is not as good as some competitors products that cost thousands less, but we are led to believe that more taps gives us more points of measurement thus making it easier to reproduce the original signal (audio file) but if thats correct, then the ouput signal should not be worse than competitors products, it should be better.
I'm not going to pretend to know all the in's and out's of dac design, but I do know what my ears are telling me, and even though I have just been diagnosed with very mild high frequency hearing loss, I still have very good hearing for my age group, the 40s.
This post is not a dig at Rob, Chord or any of their other products, it's just me saying that their dacs sound good, but the mscaler in my opinion is not nearly as good as what people here say it is and, that peer pressure, dodgy review sites, and marketing departments all have a hand in making us think that some product is worth buying, and also folk don't want to think that an expensive purchase they have made was a bad one.
It may also affect Rob and Chord in to keep chasing a higher tap length number when other aspects of a dac may be part that should be focused on, example 20+ element psu.
If folk keep praising rob or chord, either rightly or wrongly with respect to tap length, thats not going to deter them from stopping and focusing on other aspect of dac design that may be the part that could bring more substantial audio benefits.
Again, don't take this post as Anti Rob or Chord, it's not, as I like their dacs, it's just that I don't think crazy tap lengths should be the main focus anymore, the mscaler in my opinion is like a car that has a 6000bhp engine that in theory can do 500 mph, but it can only drive on side streets with speed bumps and a 20mph speed limit.
I love my TT2 though, but thought the lesser tapped Hugo 2 had better detail retrieval, go figure, as TT2 has double the taps of Hugo 2.
This post took me some time to write up and took me a year to really figure out that the mscaler was probably my most expensive purchasing mistake, so don't write it off as being an anti chord schit post please. Take it for what it is, a post from someone who owns an mscaler but can't hear the miraculous difference it supposedly makes to music.
This is the site that I was reading, don't presume it's like the sound science sub forum thats here, as the one here is dumb.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php
EDIT
I forgot to add, maybe it's due to me solely being a headphone user ? Maybe if I used speakers instead things would be different ???
