Hugo M Scaler by Chord Electronics - The Official Thread
Jan 22, 2019 at 8:21 PM Post #5,206 of 18,292
Did you not like that horrible colour change at the bottom, where the song playing is, it’s a horrible colour and totally distracts from the overall look.

At first I thought it was a bug but now I’m not so sure. They should of just left it as is as there was nothing wrong with it.

New color looks bad and out of place indeed, and not sure why they made everything so small.. plus the Now Playing screen is terribly formatted w/ the tiny album cover and giant artist banner.. hope they revamp this ASAP.
 
Jan 22, 2019 at 8:21 PM Post #5,207 of 18,292
Ah, OK, thanks. I don’t agree with you that the Qobuz app is useless. It has brought me an enormous amount of pleasure. But I am trying Roon because the integration with Qobuz looks sensible. As to whether Roon sounds better than Qobuz ... how is it you can hear that, yet couldn’t hear the difference between pass-through and 1M taps?

Roon works in mysterious ways and raat has always sounded good, thats something that roon got right. RAAT is roons advanced playback method. Whether it is actually better is unknown, I’m just happy to now be using something that isn’t a glitchy pile of schiit.

For me Qobuz was glitchy bad, songs would start, stop then start again, pop, clicks and snaps, the hires problem, sometimes the bloody songs wouldn’t load, same with the playlists. The entire thing was clunky. It’s that bad. And thats running from 2 dedicated ssd’s with i7 6700k cpu and 32GB ram. So there was no limitations hardware wise and everything else works ok. One ssd for qobuz app and another for it’s downloads.

Although I will admit, when qobuz works properly it sounds good, but it’s not tidal app good. Tidal walks all over it gui wise, and it’s smoothness. Qobuz feels like it’s still in alpha, nevermind beta.

As for the passthrough question. That was said when I only had my H2 and Mscaler and I still stand by it. On H2 for me and some others it’s nigh on impossible to hear the difference. Even now.

But I did notice a difference, the difference I noticed was that passthrough sounded nothing like Hugo 2 on it’s own, which passthrough is meant to be.

I mentioned me not being able to hear the differences in passthrough mode a few months ago, and off they all went. People who had their h2 + mscalers for a month or two before me started saying the same thing after I brought it up. What does that tell you ? It tells you that they sat for a couple of months before someone else bro.................. blah blah and my pm box does not lie.

But the good news is, I can reliably inform you that it’s very noticeable on TT2. All modes sound much better on TT2 than on H2. And I’m led to believe that on dave it’s even better.

I should also add that I went back to using Hugo 2 on it’s own the other day, and I was surprised at just how good Hugo 2 is. It feels like I just bought it for the first time all over again.
 
Last edited:
Jan 22, 2019 at 8:28 PM Post #5,208 of 18,292
High powered graphics cards, just arithmetic so can be copied on other platforms, no one knows the science of WTA algorithms, 1 box not 2, computer based programmable upscaling.......if anyone is clever enough let me see you design for real an upscaler identical to Rob's. do it then!:thinking:

Whether it is 100 or 1 million taps it is the same thing just more calculations per sample and it needs specialized hardware to do it in real time. In software and not in real time it is easy. At a million taps, the WTA is 99% a pure sinc function which is not a secret, it is basic sampling theory. Before Rob was a DAC guru, in the 80's when he first calculated you need a million taps, he could have coded that filter that same day during his lunch break.
 
Jan 22, 2019 at 8:40 PM Post #5,209 of 18,292
Then do it then.:thinking:

In the 80's..ummm..that's 30 years of research gone by.:sunglasses:
 
Last edited:
Jan 22, 2019 at 9:06 PM Post #5,211 of 18,292
in that case every digital designer under the sun would be making mscalers now the hardware is here. so why aren't they?

(lets forget about the wta which is the key to this).
 
Jan 22, 2019 at 9:06 PM Post #5,212 of 18,292
what does qobuz give me that tidal does not. if qobuz is more classical/jazz i'm very happy with tidal content in this regard and my tastes include those genres but many more too which tidal seems to be the natural choice ie it's more up to date? using tidal/roon i have over 2000 saved favourite artists/albums so if i switched to Qobuz can i migrate those over or is all lost?

https://soundiiz.com/tutorial/qobuz-to-tidal
 
Jan 22, 2019 at 9:13 PM Post #5,213 of 18,292
thanks max. im sticking with tidal/roon it gives me plenty of jazz/classical as a big sax fan but also keeps me in touch with what's new. qobuz sounds a little too yuppiish to me. ill see if im wrong.
 
Jan 22, 2019 at 9:32 PM Post #5,215 of 18,292
let me know how qobuz goes good luck. apparently albums have pdf booklets to accompany them so the roon mods told me.
 
Jan 22, 2019 at 9:37 PM Post #5,216 of 18,292
in that case every digital designer under the sun would be making mscalers now the hardware is here. so why aren't they?

(lets forget about the wta which is the key to this).

Only recently has the hardware been available, for most its easier to throw in a DS chip.
More importantly, having a million tap filter, you also need a DAC that can take advantage of that, pulse array, noise shapers, etc.
WTA is not the key btw, the ideal filter is a sinc with infinite taps, so truncate it to a million taps, massage the edges, do some listening tests, sounds good = WTA.
Maybe for few thousand taps it might be key, not a million.
 
Jan 22, 2019 at 9:51 PM Post #5,217 of 18,292
I'm gonna give Qobuz a shot I'm sick of Tidal pulling licensing agreements and making a quarter of my playlists unplayable.

Qobuz does the same.

I’ve woken upto my playlists on qobuz being destroyed and half the songs saying “unavailable” next to them.
 
Jan 22, 2019 at 10:02 PM Post #5,218 of 18,292
The wta algorithm took 30 yrs to develop following thousands of listening tests. If other hardware developers could develop dacs that utilise the full potential of mscalers with 1 million taps they would. The truth is all other audio manufacturers are using off the shelf dac chips because even though the hardware is here they cannot produce 1 million tap mscalers that work in real time and not because it's easier to throw in a DS chip. Secondly even if they could they could not back this up with suitable dacs that act as host for 1 million tap upscaler technology. There was no massaging around the edges rather 30 years of R&D. Ask yourself why is it easier for most to throw in a DS chip as you say if sound quality is the ultimate goal? The answer is because they know no other way otherwise they would be selling 1 million tap upscalers and accompanying dacs too. This is not an argument as all i'm doing is stating hard fact. The winner takes it all the looser has to fall as they say. That is how business works.
 
Last edited:
Jan 22, 2019 at 10:03 PM Post #5,219 of 18,292
Only recently has the hardware been available, for most its easier to throw in a DS chip.
More importantly, having a million tap filter, you also need a DAC that can take advantage of that, pulse array, noise shapers, etc.
WTA is not the key btw, the ideal filter is a sinc with infinite taps, so truncate it to a million taps, massage the edges, do some listening tests, sounds good = WTA.
Maybe for few thousand taps it might be key, not a million.

Poor Mr. Watts with his ~ million lines of code must not have understood how simple this is. Not saying other approaches aren't worth trying.considering, just that writing the code for such things and the nuances involved in filtering and ensuring synchronization across a broad range of frequencies.amplitudes is more difficult than merely conceptualizing. Having coded DSP for analyzing electrical signals in biological systems (different application entirely), I can assure you that this is anything but simple. The devil is in the details and the details can be myriad.
 
Last edited:
Jan 22, 2019 at 10:06 PM Post #5,220 of 18,292
It's all in the detail and those that grasp it succeed.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top