[ecwl]

I have a iBasso dap which provides optical out and that sounds fine, but isn't really useful for Qobuz which forms a large part of my listening these days.

My USB feed is isolated at the computer end to minimise noise out of the transport, using a dedicated USB Card fed by a LPSU, but that still ultimately provides a current path to and from the mains.

It’s hard to know whether your primary RF noise would be coming from
1) LPSU powering the USB card
2) PSU powering your computer
3) PSU powering your network router
4) PSU powering your cable modem
This is one of the reasons why network switches that isolates noise that can come from upstream Ethernet connected devices are getting more popular.
Maybe there are no RF noise in your system. Maybe there are lots. I know I’ve tried multiple mitigation methods on my system (LPSU, battery, grounding, etc.) And inevitably, Toslink still sounds better with my Chord DACs.
I debated whether to buy one of those network switches like EtherRegen and in the end, I just took out an old USB to Toslink converter and voila.
Obviously, different people with different systems will have different experience and different issues.

 

[LucyWu]

I'm not getting too hung up on the RF thing. Definitely a less "sharp" edge to the sound with the battery into MScaler. Maybe there is more to gain (e.g. fancified interconnects HMS->Dave), time will tell I guess.

My streaming is over wifi, local files are on M.2 ssd. Turning off wifi when local files are playing has no audible effect on the sound produced, so I am not fretting about that.

Computer runs on an LPSU feeding a PicoATX, USB Card runs on another similar PSU.

 

[Triode User]

Ultimately I think this points to the best approach - creating a galvanic "moat" around the DAC or DAC & MScaler, minimising the chance of nasty ingressing noise sources. Batteries are very helpful in this and I have in mind a replacement PSU for the DAVE which would incorporate batteries but that's not something for now as my Dave is less than three weeks old, so I'm not pulling it apart just yet! Optical signal paths are another worthwhile approach but I don't currently have optical out from my primary source. I have a iBasso dap which provides optical out and that sounds fine, but isn't really useful for Qobuz which forms a large part of my listening these days.rival

My USB feed is isolated at the computer end to minimise noise out of the transport, using a dedicated USB Card fed by a LPSU, but that still ultimately provides a current path to and from the mains.

Plenty to explore going forward for sure.

Optical is a bit of a buzz word but I still favour a well executed usb over optical. To me it just sounds better. Also especially with amps powering speakers as in my system there is the possibility of the optical isolation being defeated. But more importantly neither of my sources (Innuos and Antipodes) has an optical output because they have both decided that other outputs are better and so they left off optical. Make of that what you will.

Batteries are not for me because of the faff factor with three systems on for most of the day in the house/office.

 

[LucyWu]

Optical is a bit of a buzz word but I still favour a well executed usb over optical. To me it just sounds better. Also especially with amps powering speakers as in my system there is the possibility of the optical isolation being defeated. But more importantly neither of my sources (Innuos and Antipodes) has an optical output because they have both decided that other outputs are better and so they left off optical. Make of that what you will.

Batteries are not for me because of the faff factor with three systems on for most of the day in the house/office.

Batteries are indeed a bit of a rigmarole, but for now will do me fine. I rarely get more than a couple of hours straight listening time, so dropping a battery back onto its charger after a listening session is not too much of a problem.

I have favoured USB for its flexibility and ease of use, but have been surprised by what's possible with optical and spdif.

I am increasingly inclined to sit back for a while now, enjoy the Chord set up into my Raal SR1a's ( purchasing these led to me buying the TT2 last autumn and bumping up to the Dave/MScaler just now) and wait a while before trying to squeeze more performance out of what I have.

 

[Gadget67]

Batteries are indeed a bit of a rigmarole, but for now will do me fine. I rarely get more than a couple of hours straight listening time, so dropping a battery back onto its charger after a listening session is not too much of a problem.

I have favoured USB for its flexibility and ease of use, but have been surprised by what's possible with optical and spdif.

I am increasingly inclined to sit back for a while now, enjoy the Chord set up into my Raal SR1a's ( purchasing these led to me buying the TT2 last autumn and bumping up to the Dave/MScaler just now) and wait a while before trying to squeeze more performance out of what I have.

I honestly thought using batteries would get real old in a hurry. Thanks to @ra990 i found out about the Rav power battery sold on Amazon. It powers my M-Scaler for about 20 hours and I can use the on-off switch on the battery to shut the M-Scaler off and then turn it back on when I power up the battery. I live in an area with occasional power outages so it has other uses as you can see from the Amazon description should you follow the link. I purchased a second so all I need to do is just plug into the second one and put the first one on the charger. The sound improvement was well worth the very minor inconvenience.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085PYYX2B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Heres a picture shamelessly borrowed from Amazon:


Here’s a picture of my current set up and you can see the battery sitting on my sub next to the desk. It’s not small but blends right in.

 

[The Jester]

Good to have some sort of reference for comparison when changing things ... say you’re setup as source/USB/MScaler/chord DAC, with all the supplied cables ... listen to some selected favourites with the Mscaler at halfway ... 192khz .. for a while, then replace the BNC cables between MScaler and DAC with an optical cable to break that ground loop and listen for a while again, then replace the source to MScaler cable with optical and listen again, I did that while playing similar tracks on vinyl, noticed a definite improvement when using optical between MScaler and DAC, so an issue there, I run a power conditioner feeding two seperate matching noise cancelling power boards each with a 2 metre cable, so Mscaler PSU on one board and DAC on the other ... couple more listening tests and that issue had disappeared so BNC cables back in then re listen between optical and BNC from a CD transport, noticably “harsher“ treble via BNC so left that with optical and then compared that with a dedicated PC server via USB, server seemed to sound better so move on from there, after that slowly upgraded BNC cables between MScaler and DAC, then USB cable, then DAC to preamp interconnects etc .... finally went back to the transport and used an upgraded BNC cable and slightly preferred that over optical, maybe that cable, the upgrade to a shielded power cable to the transport or other system changes made a difference but I’m hesitant to swap things back to find out, final test was to power the MScaler via an 18A/H SLA battery and couldn’t detect any improvement ...
Really happy with the end result but one little “tweak” was surprising, in my extensive “spares” collection I had a brand new alloy power amp heatsink ... 80mm x 80mm x250mm ... have the MScaler and Qutest DAC side by side about 100mm apart .. plonked the heatsink between the two and thought I noticed an improvement ... surely not .. left it there anyway ... couple of weeks later thought it was mere placebo and took it away while dusting ... next day thought things sounded a little different so put it back again and thought there was a subtle improvement so left it there just in case ....

 

[Ratephi]

Optical is a bit of a buzz word but I still favour a well executed usb over optical. To me it just sounds better. Also especially with amps powering speakers as in my system there is the possibility of the optical isolation being defeated. But more importantly neither of my sources (Innuos and Antipodes) has an optical output because they have both decided that other outputs are better and so they left off optical. Make of that what you will.

Batteries are not for me because of the faff factor with three systems on for most of the day in the house/office.

I tend to believe that optical is being more and more dropped more because of the limitation in resolution that connection can handle (24bit/192kHz) . In my view though, that limitation becomes less relevant when you upsample anyway your source..

Since a couple of weeks, I've actually replaced my USB with a good quality optical cable so now my streamer is connected to the M-Scaler via Toslink and I'm quite happy with the result. I haven't had the chance to do accurate A/B testing yet but the impression is that in several of my reference tracks I get better separation and staging. I like to think that's because of better isolation guaranteed by reduced RF noise. But maybe it's just placebo...

 

[Ratephi]

I honestly thought using batteries would get real old in a hurry. Thanks to @ra990 i found out about the Rav power battery sold on Amazon. It powers my M-Scaler for about 20 hours and I can use the on-off switch on the battery to shut the M-Scaler off and then turn it back on when I power up the battery. I live in an area with occasional power outages so it has other uses as you can see from the Amazon description should you follow the link. I purchased a second so all I need to do is just plug into the second one and put the first one on the charger. The sound improvement was well worth the very minor inconvenience.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085PYYX2B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Heres a picture shamelessly borrowed from Amazon:


Here’s a picture of my current set up and you can see the battery sitting on my sub next to the desk. It’s not small but blends right in.

I'm also big into batteries

20 hours is quite an impressive result! Do you use AC or DC with the MScaler?

 

[Gadget67]

I'm also big into batteries

20 hours is quite an impressive result! Do you use AC or DC with the MScaler?

The battery has a 12 volt DC out which is perfect for the M-Scaler.

 

[The Jester]

Final thought and a “to do” for later would be cover caps on all the unused inlet and outlet sockets,
some out there swear by putting caps on all the unused preamp sockets ? snake oil ? For a couple of $$ it can’t hurt to try ..

 

[muski]

Can you recommend a particular release of - Rite of Spring.

I found the M Scaler really helped me enjoy this novel and compelling choreography for the Rite of Spring

(Apologies, a little off-topic, but it's so out there I couldn't resist).

 

[lumdicks]

I am a newcomer and just completed my setup finally with the arrival of M Scaler. Time to stop buying and enjoy.

Roon → Lumin U1 Mini (transport) → Chord M Scaler (upsampling) → Chord Hugo TT2 (DAC) → Audio-technica AT-BHA 100 (Amp)

 

[Vyyy]

Hi all,

Yesterday i have tested Hugo2 MScaler into Proac D30RS, Sugden IA4 ClassA and Auralic G1 source. And i was blown of with my brother. MScaler effect with 1M taps was sooo evident even more than with headphones. Sound stage so massively increased both horizontaly and verticaly that there are no words.
The feeling that we felt both was nothing we have experienced.
Sound stage become so big and large, even we felt over ears and head that its everythere you cant just speak with each other becouse stage dominates. It was the feeling that center and deph has so much power to sink and pull you to soundstage bottom , and it holds with so much force , and at the same time soundstage is all around everythere 360 degrees. Then going to passthrough (or even then new song switches)
stage and deph releases you and your head, whats intersting at that point even head feels better (or like it was before without HMS- music just in front of you at speaker placement level). Its strange becouse you even feel better with ears and head. But again turning on 1M taps just suddenly grabs you and forces with so tention to listen to bottom of recording and provides laaaarge scale soundstage where instruments appear everythere in that 360field.

Currently we have strange thought that it affected head and ears and at some point due this large stage and force to listen to bottom of recording made us first feel not that very comfortable becouse music really has hands on you...
Maybe due to increased soundstage we have to move back listening position, becouse it felt like in nightmare , that someone is draging you into music and hypnotizes with enormous stage..
Wondering how to relax a bit head , do mind adjust to such experience or its time really to move back listening position a meter back?

Thanks on your thoughs!
@Rob Watts few word on that too. Thank you.

 

[HeeBroG]

Seems like the two of you "plugged" in more than an M-scaler!
That must be some setup.
Don't change a thing.

 

[The Jester]

Hi all,

Yesterday i have tested Hugo2 MScaler into Proac D30RS, Sugden IA4 ClassA and Auralic G1 source. And i was blown of with my brother. MScaler effect with 1M taps was sooo evident even more than with headphones. Sound stage so massively increased both horizontaly and verticaly that there are no words.
The feeling that we felt both was nothing we have experienced.
Sound stage become so big and large, even we felt over ears and head that its everythere you cant just speak with each other becouse stage dominates. It was the feeling that center and deph has so much power to sink and pull you to soundstage bottom , and it holds with so much force , and at the same time soundstage is all around everythere 360 degrees. Then going to passthrough (or even then new song switches)
stage and deph releases you and your head, whats intersting at that point even head feels better (or like it was before without HMS- music just in front of you at speaker placement level). Its strange becouse you even feel better with ears and head. But again turning on 1M taps just suddenly grabs you and forces with so tention to listen to bottom of recording and provides laaaarge scale soundstage where instruments appear everythere in that 360field.

Currently we have strange thought that it affected head and ears and at some point due this large stage and force to listen to bottom of recording made us first feel not that very comfortable becouse music really has hands on you...
Maybe due to increased soundstage we have to move back listening position, becouse it felt like in nightmare , that someone is draging you into music and hypnotizes with enormous stage..
Wondering how to relax a bit head , do mind adjust to such experience or its time really to move back listening position a meter back?

Thanks on your thoughs!
@Rob Watts few word on that too. Thank you.

Know what you mean, I went through an intricate and well documented setup routine with my Sonus Faber speakers, even the last inch gave more focus to the image and then finally cabinet rake .... when I got the Mscaler/Qutest duo a few months back the soundstage became bigger and deeper, so I went through the whole routine again and both speakers were moved several inches .... soundstage with good recordings is now simply stunning ....