[Rob Watts]

i think I'll go with the designers recommendation 9v or 12V

That advice was for PowerAdd battery, which is 9v,12v or 16. 16 is too much, and could destroy the protect diode.

I'm confused (again) - does this mean not using the power supply provided?

Absolutely not. 15v is fine. As to the exact value - everything gets converted to 5v internally, so thinking a higher voltage is better is incorrect.

Poweradd Pilot Pro 2 doesn’t do 15V. The jump is from 12V to 16V, in common with most battery packs I’ve seen.

Well done, correct post.

=


So no need for Rob Watts to quake in his boots? (Its an english expression)

Nope...

This made me smile. Rob Watts smiles too i think at this )

Absolutely...

 

[Vyyy]

Just got this individually made Dual BNC to H2. Will see if it gets dropouts or not:

 

[HeeBroG]

SR7 is the best one if your willing to wait a year... and again... I need to push this into your mind I don't care what anyone else tells you here... 9V or 12V message the creator himself if you need to and DO NOT use another power supply other than the one provided (mains) officially or you void your warranty....

The long waiting list for the original PH SR7's are for the custom build ones that are no longer available unless someone in the queue cancels.
Standard SR7's are being built to original specification https://www.paulhynesdesign.com/sr7 and I believe delivery is several weeks.
As an alternative, many members at AudiophileStyle have reported good results with the Farad Super 3.
Here is a review. https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...reaming/page/584/?tab=comments#comment-975720

G

 

[Triode User]

@racebit
WTA1 is in every chord DAC and the mscaler. It's the upsample to 16fs or 705.6/768.
It's a combination of mathematics and implementation. The math is straightforward ...but needs to be executed at high precision at high tap counts. RW has shown how high we need to go to cross over the uncanny valley where music begins to sound real. All mscaler owners know of what I am taking about.

Implementation on FPGA has its challenges and RW has overcome those. Implementation on CPUs has access to more cycles and compute resources so the burden is somewhat less. I run HQPlayer's poly-sinc-long-lp filter at 16fs PCM on my Core i7 at only 10%. Its has well over 1M taps, BTW.

My claim is that we've reached a cross roads. (Good for music lovers), where software upsampling produces an equivalent (or better) bit train to WTA1. To make them sound the same you need to provide equivalent signal paths and manage the source RF noise differences.

But isn't the devil in the detail as they say? And isn't the detail in this case the algorithm that Rob Watts has developed over decades, fine tuned and ultimately incorporated in the Mscaler? Rob has gone to great lengths to explain what he thinks is important to get an analogue output that sounds as close as possible to the original recorded analogue sound and without access to that algorithm it is difficult to see how HQPlayer can compete no matter how many taps it can use.

I have not been able to listen to it so far but when I look at what the HQPlayer developer says he does not seem to mention any of the things that Rob says are important to him. You say you think the HQPlayer is equivalent or better than WTA 1 but Rob is clearly not yet quaking in his boots.

But why are you pushing this? You said in an earlier post that you have staked your commercial reputation on it. Does that mean you have put money into it or have a related product you intend to launch?

 

[Progisus]

This thread is a discussion of the Chord M Scaler. One of it's claims is to accurately reproduce a 44.1 signal to original analog form and provide the associated increase in the accuracy of the reproduced sound. I feel it is entirely appropriate to discuss other approaches to the same problem and compare them to the Chord solution. If that can be shown by a measured quantity then that would be the end of it but I have never seen that approach. I do own both methods and to my ears they are VERY close in sound quality. As I have stated before I am not a golden ear so further comparisons are welcome and appropriate to the discussion. In my opinion the hardware (Chord) solution is more stable but costlier.

 

[GreenBow]

I

Just got this USB to optical adapter today:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0779S6NC6
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V2D1K3Z

Works perfect up to 192K/32, Windows 7-10, Linux, Mac. ASIO driver. I recommend to people missing an optical output to connect to Chord DAC or mscaler.
At this moment I am using it, together with Chord USB and motherboard optical, to have 3 apps (foobar, MPC-BE and HQPlayer playing simultaneously on my desktop, to 3 different DACs and 3 different headphones. Now I am searching on amazon for two more pairs of ears...

Nice gadget.

Please in Windows, do you need to set a path in Sound: Control Panel?

Like I set either digital out for the onboard sound card, to use the motherboard optical connection output. Or Digital Output: Chord Async USB, for USB out to Chord DAC.

I bought one of these for my last mobo that did not have an optical out. It worked fine, but it didn't actually grab the cable like optical connections do. No click into place. The cable just sat in the optical output, but it worked. (It did coaxial too.)


I prefer your gadget though as it can be used on any PC. Like I was looking for a small fanless laptop as a DAC file source. I never decided on one in the end. However looking for one with optical made the search harder. I would buy one of those Douk Audio that you have now, if I was looking. Thank you for the heads up that it runs 192KHz.

Nice noiseless input to M-Scaler too.

 

[GreenBow]

By the way, as some folk are getting upset about all the RFI talk recently. Is it not a good idea to make a parallel thread about that. Then we can thrash it out in freedom.

I personally remember getting lost about it before, and John Franks stepped in a told folk to cool it. I think he was right, given what he said at the time. What I was upset about, was that I had no idea where the subject of RFI had started. I must have missed the start point. The suddenly there was post after post about ferrites, and I had no idea what folk were talking about. I was lost, and wondering what was evening happening. It was like the thread was no even about the M-Scaler, and it had turned into a pseudo-science thread.


Anyway, if someone were to make a new thread, purely for RFI fixes, that would be cool. It should start with post one being about why the M-Scaler has RFI. Like 1) it can get in via poorly shielded cables feeding the M-Scaler and DAC. 2) there was talk that the M-Scaler chip is large and creates its own noise. I can't remember if that came from the horse's mouth, Mr Watts, so don't quote me on that. (I certainly would not like to imply something that is not correct. Therefor I make no claim about the M-Scaler chip causing RFI.) However if so, it needs to go in #post 1, in any M-Scaler RFI thread. Then folk know exactly where the thread is coming from, and what to follow.

I do recall however John Franks being quite upright that the M-Scaler had no RFI issue. Excluding toroidal transformers as stated in the manual. Although that was recently suggested to me that it would toroidal transformers would cause hum. I thought they would induce currents in the M-Scaler and cause brightness. Like USB noise does in DACs.


Given it really does seem horses for courses in that some love the M-Scaler straight off the bat. While other claim hell on earth brightness and fatigue. It would be great to see all that freely dealt with in a new thread. Somewhere the techies can lay it all out.


Then this thread could be more about people's subjective love of the M-Scaler. That's the stuff I love to hear. Folk getting off on the beauty of new sound, and sharing why we should get the m-Scaler. (Like I simply can't explain enough why the TT2 driving speakers, is off the charts. The depth to sound. The detail. The TT2 knocks you flat on your back ease and smoothness, of music. This is one of the most interesting aspects. Like with music I have owned before, not only just rebought. I sort of expect music sound sort of poorly timed, as I remember it on lesser gear. Instead it just flows out of the speakers in true TT2 excellence.

Anyway, hope somehow folk are on board.

 

[racebit]

Nice gadget.
Please in Windows, do you need to set a path in Sound: Control Panel?
Like I set either digital out for the onboard sound card, to use the motherboard optical connection output. Or Digital Output: Chord Async USB, for USB out to Chord DAC.

Till now I had only used with ASIO for bit perfect, so had only configured it on Foobar2k and MPC-BE.
But tried it now for Windows use with youtube. I just have to go to Sound->Playback, right-click on the XMOS device and set it as Default Device, and sound is on. (To call Sound dialog I right click on the sound icon at the task bar right, raher than calling control panel)

I bought one of these for my last mobo that did not have an optical out. It worked fine, but it didn't actually grab the cable like optical connections do. No click into place. The cable just sat in the optical output, but it worked. (It did coaxial too.

The optical cable clicks into place (with both Chord supplied optical cable and KableDirekt cable), but it may be also dependent on the cable as the plugs have a small bump that likely clicks into a connector piece. If the plug does not have a bump it may not click. But the bump is not enough, the connector must have something where the bump to click into.

In fact I looked first for a PCIE adapter like yours but could not find anywhere, only DAC sound cards that included optical port. So ended with this USB adapter, but I am happy with it. It sits inside my desktop case anyway.

 

[GreenBow]

Till now I had only used with ASIO for bit perfect, so had only configured it on Foobar2k and MPC-BE.
But tried it now for Windows use with youtube. I just have to go to Sound->Playback, right-click on the XMOS device and set it as Default Device, and sound is on. (To call Sound dialog I right click on the sound icon at the task right, raher than calling control panel)


The optical cable clicks into place (with both Chord supplied optical cable and KableDirekt cable), but it may be also dependent on the cable as the plugs have a small bump that likely clicks into a connector piece. If the plug does not have a bump it may not click. But the bump is not enough, the connector must have something where the bump to click into.

In fact I looked first for a PCIE adapter like yours but could not found anywhere, only DAC sound cards that included optical port. So ended with this USB adapter, but I am happy with it. It sits inside my desktop case anyway.

Nice.

I actually have an icon for Sound Control on my desktop. I swap between TT2 and Qutest sometimes.

 

[racebit]

Nice.

I actually have an icon for Sound Control on my desktop. I swap between TT2 and Qutest sometimes.

That is Windows sound, so not bit perfect. So not best option for Chord DACs. I only use Windows sound for youtube and webrowsing. All music and video playback is throught ASIO drivers to bypass Windows. And ASIO is selected inside the apps (foobar2k, MPC-BE, HQPlayer).
So, I also switch between TT2 and Mojo, but do it inside the apps.
This XMOS adapter comes with ASIO driver. My motherboard optical does not have ASIO driver, so I use ASIO4ALL for that optical port.

 

[racebit]

This thread is a discussion of the Chord M Scaler. One of it's claims is to accurately reproduce a 44.1 signal to original analog form and provide the associated increase in the accuracy of the reproduced sound. I feel it is entirely appropriate to discuss other approaches to the same problem and compare them to the Chord solution. If that can be shown by a measured quantity then that would be the end of it but I have never seen that approach. I do own both methods and to my ears they are VERY close in sound quality. As I have stated before I am not a golden ear so further comparisons are welcome and appropriate to the discussion. In my opinion the hardware (Chord) solution is more stable but costlier.

Tbh I am not able yet to find a difference between HQPlayer 44.1K and 352.8K. That does not mean there is no difference or that it is not clear. Only that I can not find it yet. Only 1 day of use though.
Also several people do not find a difference between mscaler on and off. So several factors may be at play.
And tbh again, I don't find much difference if any at all on 95% of clear improvements claimed on head-fi forums. I sure don't have golden ears.
But I am always interested in hearing further comparisons and reading discussions on this topic.

 

[GreenBow]

That is Windows sound, so not bit perfect. So not best option for Chord DACs. I only use Windows sound for youtube and webrowsing. All music and video playback is throught ASIO drivers to bypass Windows. And ASIO is selected inside the apps (foobar2k, MPC-BE, HQPlayer).
So, I also switch between TT2 and Mojo, but do it inside the apps.
This XMOS adapter comes with ASIO driver. My motherboard optical does not have ASIO driver, so I use ASIO4ALL for that optical port.

No. Only Windows sound when using YouTube. Music is played via JRiver and bit-perfect. Sound Control only selects PC audio output. Like I said above, E.g. Digital Output: Chord Async USB, for USB out to Chord DAC.

 

[riverred105]

Just got this individually made Dual BNC to H2. Will see if it gets dropouts or not:

where did you get this? Any impressions yet?

 

[racebit]

No. Only Windows sound when using YouTube. Music is played via JRiver and bit-perfect. Sound Control only selects PC audio output. Like I said above, E.g. Digital Output: Chord Async USB, for USB out to Chord DAC.

Well, i didn't even know what JRiver is. A quick search, it seems basically a SW player that runs on windows (and other OS).
So I have no further knowledge about it, but I would think that anything that goes through windows Sound will get resampled to the sample rate defined in the device Properties->Advanced. In theory you could set the same rate as the file you are playing to avoid resampling, but would need to change it each time you play a different sample rate file.
Am I missing something?
In any case that is easy to check, as Chord Dacs give us that beautiful color scheme telling us the sample rate being fed. Does the color change when you play different sample rate files?

 

[GreenBow]

Well, i didn't even know what JRiver is. A quick search, it seems basically a SW player that runs on windows (and other OS).
So I have no further knowledge about it, but I would think that anything that goes through windows Sound will get resampled to the sample rate defined in the device Properties->Advanced. In theory you could set the same rate as the file you are playing to avoid resampling, but would need to change it each time you play a different sample rate file.
Am I missing something?
In any case that is easy to check, as Chord Dacs give us that beautiful color scheme telling us the sample rate being fed. Does the color change when you play different sample rate files?

I have no idea what you are talking about. Since when did windows affect or resample bit perfect playback? It's off topic so I am done.