Hugo M Scaler by Chord Electronics - The Official Thread

[Tarttett]

I cannot judge (yet) how Susvara will sound on Viva Egoista 845 as it is stuck at customs (I hoped to receive it today, will most likely be next week). BUT, this being said, Susvara sounds fantastic on Bartok already. The soundstage is smaller that of AB-1266, the bass quality is VERY good (inner detail and layering), but it the quantity is not as much as AB-1266. As you can see, these aspects could be because of AB-1266 vs Susvara fundemental differences, OR the fact that I am underpowering Susvara. Mind you, Bartok outputs 2.8 W into 66 Ohm as long as driven off its XLR outs. Not even close to what Viva puts out (or some other amps for that matter), but decent in my personal opinion (at least I am not lusting for anything more with AB-1266 than Bartok can already provide, for which I had before Hugo TT2 rear XLR outs with a special adapter made, which should output like 6-7W into AB-1266, and it did not sound “more powerful” or “bigger soundstage” than Bartok, actually quite opposite). I will update you once I get Viva, of how much difference I hear from Bartok and Viva when using Susvara.


Thanks for mentioning me!

You are welcome.

Thank you, for sharing those impressions for us, for those pieces of equipment, that you had been utilising, within those previous months.

 

[Bard Rich]

I cannot judge (yet) how Susvara will sound on Viva Egoista 845 as it is stuck at customs (I hoped to receive it today, will most likely be next week). BUT, this being said, Susvara sounds fantastic on Bartok already. The soundstage is smaller that of AB-1266, the bass quality is VERY good (inner detail and layering), but it the quantity is not as much as AB-1266. As you can see, these aspects could be because of AB-1266 vs Susvara fundemental differences, OR the fact that I am underpowering Susvara. Mind you, Bartok outputs 2.8 W into 66 Ohm as long as driven off its XLR outs. Not even close to what Viva puts out (or some other amps for that matter), but decent in my personal opinion (at least I am not lusting for anything more with AB-1266 than Bartok can already provide, for which I had before Hugo TT2 rear XLR outs with a special adapter made, which should output like 6-7W into AB-1266, and it did not sound “more powerful” or “bigger soundstage” than Bartok, actually quite opposite). I will update you once I get Viva, of how much difference I hear from Bartok and Viva when using Susvara.


Thanks for mentioning me!

means tt2 and 1266 don't sound good using xlr?

 

[mammal]

means tt2 and 1266 don't sound good using xlr?

They do, but to my ears Bartok sounds much better. I went into more detail in my review and comparison here.

 

[TDinCali]

Gentlemen I need your advice.

I’m looking for a recommendation for a new source. Here are my needs…able to stream Tidal, Apple Music, Qubaz. Form factor no bigger than a M-scaler, great sounding a given. Currently using a Auralic Aries G1 which I am about to put my foot through, I mean sell. The remote connectivity between it and my iPhone sucks so bad that I refuse to deal with it any longer.

 

[kelly200269]

Gentlemen I need your advice.

I’m looking for a recommendation for a new source. Here are my needs…able to stream Tidal, Apple Music, Qubaz. Form factor no bigger than a M-scaler, great sounding a given. Currently using a Auralic Aries G1 which I am about to put my foot through, I mean sell. The remote connectivity between it and my iPhone sucks so bad that I refuse to deal with it any longer.

I use Stack Audio’s LINK, with great results:

https://www.the-ear.net/review-hardware/stack-audio-link-ii-streaming-bridgereclocker

 

[burbster]

Gentlemen I need your advice.

I’m looking for a recommendation for a new source. Here are my needs…able to stream Tidal, Apple Music, Qubaz. Form factor no bigger than a M-scaler, great sounding a given. Currently using a Auralic Aries G1 which I am about to put my foot through, I mean sell. The remote connectivity between it and my iPhone sucks so bad that I refuse to deal with it any longer.

Yes, I use to own both the original Aries and the G1. I did upgrade my router on Auralic’s recommendation, they listed a number of models on their website. That did improve reliability, but I too got frustrated and sold on. To be fair though, I would say that for streaming, I think the G1 was best I heard at the time at its price point.
You have many options, but my recommendations would be innuos zen Mini? Or a bit bigger than Mscaler, at least deeper, is the antipodes EX, now superseded but available cheap as a result.
This area tends to move very quickly, but when I was auditioning a new server/streamer setup a year or so ago, I thought antipodes were the best bang for you buck, followed very closely by innuos.

 

[OrenT]

Hi
Regarding thread rules- is it permitted to post an M Scaler for sale here? (before posting in classifieds)
Thanks.

 

[Lgn3]

I use Stack Audio’s LINK, with great results:

https://www.the-ear.net/review-hardware/stack-audio-link-ii-streaming-bridgereclocker

Likewise. Thoroughly recommended

 

[griff500]

Hi
Regarding thread rules- is it permitted to post an M Scaler for sale here? (before posting in classifieds)
Thanks.

My understanding is that you cannot do this but you can put a link to your sales thread in your signature. I could be wrong though...

 

[griff500]

Gentlemen I need your advice.

I’m looking for a recommendation for a new source. Here are my needs…able to stream Tidal, Apple Music, Qubaz. Form factor no bigger than a M-scaler, great sounding a given. Currently using a Auralic Aries G1 which I am about to put my foot through, I mean sell. The remote connectivity between it and my iPhone sucks so bad that I refuse to deal with it any longer.

This is usually a network issue and I think there is also a setting on the iPhone that can interfere with this. It's worth persisting and checking on the Auralic forum where you can get help with this.

If I was looking for a streamer now then I would also consider the Innuos Zenith Mk3 - it has an excellent reputation and they have now released a new app that is supposed to be very good, plus the power supply is designed by Sean Jacobs, which is a very good thing.

 

[AndrewOld]

Likewise. Thoroughly recommended

There’s a new, not dissimilar but cheaper, thing from iFIAudio called the ZEN Stream, which might be worth a look. No noisy disc drives, low-noise low-power processor, minimal software, allegedly quiet power supplies and USB RF suppression.

https://ifi-audio.com/products/zen-stream/

(Sure, I know, I know, you can put a Raspberry pi together in the dark in 5 minutes .. but maybe you don’t want to!)

 

[ecwl]

Gentlemen I need your advice.

Currently using a Auralic Aries G1 which I am about to put my foot through, I mean sell. The remote connectivity between it and my iPhone sucks so bad that I refuse to deal with it any longer.

sounds like I’m the third person to say you have a network or wifi issue. The problem with buying a new device is that you’re likely to encounter the same network wifi issues and be unsatisfied with the connectivity.

is your Auralic on Ethernet or wifi?
Do you run just a 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wifi network or is it combined under the same SSID? How is the signal strength at the Auralic and iPhone? Do you have neighbours whose wifi is interfering with you?
Before you say my iPhone and other devices run fine on my wifi (which I hear all the time) you have to remember even for streaming video, you’re caching the data so if your wifi is up and down the phone would just download as much data as possible and then stop when wifi is down and be back up again and video streaming allows you to downgrade from 1080p to 240p whereas streaming remote for Auralic is real time so no caching is possible and nor is choosing a slower stream. Moreover people say but when I run a speed test my phone is fast on the wifi. The problem there is that you can’t run a speed test unless you’re connected so if your phone is logging on and off to the wifi, your phone will download fast when connected but drop frequently when not.
that said if you have troubleshooted every aspect of this and the Auralic system is still slow, then go for the upgrade.

 

[TDinCali]

Appreciate the response and post but it’s a lost cause for me. Just like you said, everything else on my WiFi works great. If the Auralic developers are so good they should have taken WiFi concerns into account when they developed their product. So if the Auralic streamer and app on my phone need to communicate in order to have a seamless experience then they should have developed a more robust solution. I know I sound like an ass but this experience is so frustrating to me that I just don’t want to deal with it, nor do I want to spend anymore of my time troubleshooting.

Apologies for the rant. Back to Chord and M-scaler topics. I will look into the other products mentioned above to pair with my m-scaler and Hugo TT2.

 

[AndrewOld]

Appreciate the response and post but it’s a lost cause for me. Just like you said, everything else on my WiFi works great. If the Auralic developers are so good they should have taken WiFi concerns into account when they developed their product. So if the Auralic streamer and app on my phone need to communicate in order to have a seamless experience then they should have developed a more robust solution. I know I sound like an ass but this experience is so frustrating to me that I just don’t want to deal with it, nor do I want to spend anymore of my time troubleshooting.

Apologies for the rant. Back to Chord and M-scaler topics. I will look into the other products mentioned above to pair with my m-scaler and Hugo TT2.

You are quite right to rant. Nothing worse than getting told its your network when everything else on it works fine.

 

[griff500]

You are quite right to rant. Nothing worse than getting told its your network when everything else on it works fine.

That doesn't mean it's not his network though.

I have known people change a setting on their iPhone and it's solved the issue and I seem to recall someone finding that a water meter that had been fitted interfered with their network but only for very specific devices.

There's a lot going on with a streamer compared to most other devices that you might put on your network.

I was playing around with this sort of thing when home networks were first possible and setting any device up on a network required some effort, so perhaps I've just got more patience with it.

Oh, and I have to disagree - there really are far worse things in life than being told it's your network when everything else on it works fine... If you think there is nothing that could be worse than that then you have led a very sheltered life.