I paired an mscaler with my TT1. There is an improvement with the TT1 but not as great as using HQPlayer. There is a free trial you may like to try. I’m not sure what your chain is though.
Hugo M Scaler by Chord Electronics - The Official Thread
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Were it not for the 'bypass' button, I'd probably still own the MScaler
I think it is important to be realistic with one's abilities to detect audible changes, let alone describe differences in sound quality.
Repeated blind tests helped me stop fooling myself. All it took was masking tape over the OP light of the scaler and the qutest.
Then clicking the bypass button on the remote several times so I didn't know what position it was on. No expectation bias, no fooling myself.
I'd go through cycles and cycles in RBCD and Hi-Rez files and for the life of me couldn't tell which one was which. Could not even settle on which one was clearly preferable before looking at the colour of the scaler output.
I've been an audio enthusiast for over 40 years, so that brought my ego down a notch or two.
Of course a mixing engineer would tell immediately which level is which, but I have to admit I cannot.
I can tell tiny little changes in speaker placement, but not the mscaler effect through the QuTest.
I envy those who can
I think it is important to be realistic with one's abilities to detect audible changes, let alone describe differences in sound quality.
Repeated blind tests helped me stop fooling myself. All it took was masking tape over the OP light of the scaler and the qutest.
Then clicking the bypass button on the remote several times so I didn't know what position it was on. No expectation bias, no fooling myself.
I'd go through cycles and cycles in RBCD and Hi-Rez files and for the life of me couldn't tell which one was which. Could not even settle on which one was clearly preferable before looking at the colour of the scaler output.
I've been an audio enthusiast for over 40 years, so that brought my ego down a notch or two.
Of course a mixing engineer would tell immediately which level is which, but I have to admit I cannot.
I can tell tiny little changes in speaker placement, but not the mscaler effect through the QuTest.
I envy those who can
Of course a mixing engineer would tell immediately which level is which, but I have to admit I cannot.
I can tell tiny little changes in speaker placement, but not the mscaler effect through the QuTest.
I envy those who can
There will be those who envy you
I do believe that it's better to allow sufficient time to adjust to the sound before any critical listening and before trying to compare. Jumping around between different songs and test files and constantly jumping between upsampled and bypassed isn't the best way to assess differences in my opinion.
Getting rid of the M-Scaler would seem to be exactly the right thing for you to do and having a DAVE instead of the M-Scaler/Quest combo is absolutely a good move.
Enjoy!
Ah, but it is not meant to assess differences, that would indeed take time (like assessing the 'red' filter vs the 'white' filter)
Quick A/B is good for discovering if there is a difference in the first place.
If there *is* a difference, then time is needed to decide which state is preferable
I may retry the mscaler effect at some point in the future, after I get used to the Dave.
But next time the scaler will go back next day if there is no perceived difference.
J.Sternegård AB
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Ok, will check HQPlayer, -new to me…
I have Final D8000, Rogue RH-5, Lumin U1 Mini, Vertere, Keces, Stillpoints…
Clearly not, as you couldn't detect a difference but your pianist friend could.
Just make sure you have powerful enough PC, otherwise you may get sound glitches with different upsampling filters. For example output to DSD >64 maybe an issue. Another option is to use Audirvana, which provides fraction of HQP settings but also can be more gentle to CPU from my experience.
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I do not think it is worth trying if you are going to give it one day of jumping back and forth between upscaled and bypassed. Many people have said that the differences become more apparent after living with it for some time.
HeeBroG
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Does M-scaler account for the 2.7dB drop in output volume using the bypass button?
I know on Blu2 I have to compensate for this with the volume control.
Yeah it does. There is just a 2-second gap between full scaling and bypass.
Makes A/B very easy and convenient.
Gadget67
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This seems like “anxiety bias” (my misapplied term) because you are anxious to hear differences and you aren’t relaxed. Think about your worst job interview and all the things you wish you’d said after the fact.Were it not for the 'bypass' button, I'd probably still own the MScaler
I think it is important to be realistic with one's abilities to detect audible changes, let alone describe differences in sound quality.
Repeated blind tests helped me stop fooling myself. All it took was masking tape over the OP light of the scaler and the qutest.
Then clicking the bypass button on the remote several times so I didn't know what position it was on. No expectation bias, no fooling myself.
I'd go through cycles and cycles in RBCD and Hi-Rez files and for the life of me couldn't tell which one was which. Could not even settle on which one was clearly preferable before looking at the colour of the scaler output.
I've been an audio enthusiast for over 40 years, so that brought my ego down a notch or two.
Of course a mixing engineer would tell immediately which level is which, but I have to admit I cannot.
I can tell tiny little changes in speaker placement, but not the mscaler effect through the QuTest.
I envy those who can
I have (fortunately or unfortunately) super sensitive hearing, while my wife is at the other end of the scale which can be quite comedic at times. She thinks I am imagining things until I take her to the source of a random sound and then she looks at me like I couldn’t possibly have heard that. It is not “audiophile hearing” however. It took me several days to adjust to the M-Scaler and then to tinker further with BNC cables, batteries, and Toslink until I reached my latest satisfaction point.
My wife became my validation for ”improvements” and I would usually make a point of not telling her when I made a change. All of her listening is through speakers (hates headphones) so we are both hearing the same music and source; after I added the M-Scaler my wife immediately commented that the music was cleared and she could distinguish the lyrics more easily. I’d just added Leonard Cohen “Live in London” and on the first listen (pre-M-Scaler) she needed to follow the lyrics on the internet; on the second listen a few days later (M-Scaler installed) she immediately commented that she could now follow the lyrics and didn’t need to read them as well. She also noticed an improvement when I began powering the M-Scaler with a battery. This is hardly scientific but it was all the validation I needed! My sequence is MacBook Pro>Saved FLAC files>Audirvana>M-Scaler>TT2>Chord 2650>Totem Forest speakers.
There was an element of that, yes.
During the 5-6 weeks I had it tried all I could think of, including listening scaled for a few days and then taking it off to see how I felt.
Nada
I'd certainly keep it if I had such evidence...
Wait... so pushing the bypass button should lead to a drop in volume? No such thing in my setup... What happens is this: in full upscaling mode the Dave shows the input as 'DBnc1 705.6 kHz'. When I push the button to bypass, I lose the sound on the right hand side for a second as it switches to 'Bnc1 44.1 kHz'. In that second it temporarily shows 'DBnc1 88.2 kHz'. Is this normal behavior or not?
The same thing happens with my Dave but didn’t happen with my TT2.
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