Hugo M Scaler by Chord Electronics - The Official Thread

[varadero xl1000v]

Yes, this table from the manual confirms your assumption. There is no difference between single BNC and dual BNC until the 'white', full up-sampling level:

Mat helped me understand, I'm tired. Should both bnc, when tested separately, show the sampling, or should it only appear on bnc 1?

 

[varadero xl1000v]

You might also try turning off the crossfeed in Roon while you are trouble-shooting. (Do you prefer Roon’s crossfeed to TT2’s?)

Yes, I can skip it. But that is not the problem. I completely removed roon and Auralic from the chain and tried only with the Nuc i7 and the players of qobuz and Tidal. The result was the same ..

 

[OM hawk]

So I've been reading this thread, currently on page 583. Really great RFI thread, which surprisingly taught me a lot about the M Scaler! All joking aside, I recently bought a an xDuoo X10Tii and an audioquest Optilink Cinnamon to replace my previous USB DAP setup (after reading this thread, how could I not?), and even my tinnitus-ridden, inexperienced ears could easily hear an improvement vs USB. Not ambiguous, it's very obvious with some songs, particularly the ones that used to have irritating "treble hell" moments. I'm now enjoying the treble and upper mids significantly more, and it's a big relief to know that some of my favorite music was in fact not recorded with obnoxiously bright treble, it was really just some nasty ol RFI noise. So this shows that even though I was using a battery powered DAP, RFI was still having an audible negative effect due to USB. Now granted, I wasn't using the fanciest USB cable out there, it was a short 80 dollar or so one from Forza Audioworks. But then again, if I buy a fancier, longer optical cable, the sound might get even better than this. Man, for the longest time I thought my ears just get fatigued faster than other people due to my tinnitus, but it now seems it was just the RFI making the treble hellish. This also explains why some people try the Hugo 2 and then say "Oh no no, this Chord sound is too harsh, this treble is too bright." Now that I have my PhD in RFI thanks to this thread, I know what's really going on there.

 

[ZappaMan]

I failed to say that the sampling of the song I used from qobuz is the following:

Try turning off cross feed to facilitate bit perfect playback. You can enable cross feed via your tt2.

 

[ZappaMan]

So I've been reading this thread, currently on page 583. Really great RFI thread, which surprisingly taught me a lot about the M Scaler! All joking aside, I recently bought a an xDuoo X10Tii and an audioquest Optilink Cinnamon to replace my previous USB DAP setup (after reading this thread, how could I not?), and even my tinnitus-ridden, inexperienced ears could easily hear an improvement vs USB. Not ambiguous, it's very obvious with some songs, particularly the ones that used to have irritating "treble hell" moments. I'm now enjoying the treble and upper mids significantly more, and it's a big relief to know that some of my favorite music was in fact not recorded with obnoxiously bright treble, it was really just some nasty ol RFI noise. So this shows that even though I was using a battery powered DAP, RFI was still having an audible negative effect due to USB. Now granted, I wasn't using the fanciest USB cable out there, it was a short 80 dollar or so one from Forza Audioworks. But then again, if I buy a fancier, longer optical cable, the sound might get even better than this. Man, for the longest time I thought my ears just get fatigued faster than other people due to my tinnitus, but it now seems it was just the RFI making the treble hellish. This also explains why some people try the Hugo 2 and then say "Oh no no, this Chord sound is too harsh, this treble is too bright." Now that I have my PhD in RFI thanks to this thread, I know what's really going on there.

What optical cable are you thinking of?

 

[ecwl]

I did exactly the procedure you described, but it did not work.

The first screeshot shows the song I have selected. In the next two the wiring and the front panel of MScaler and tt2. And at the end a video. Do you see something wrong?

The connections and settings all seem to be correct. Since color accuracy is hard to achieve, I presume the TT2 is showing a purple light (705.4kHz) not a blue light (176kHz) since you're on dual BNC clearly.
It's possible the Roon crossfeed destroyed so much transient accuracy that it's harder for you to hear the improvement from TT2's 96000 taps to 1 million taps. But to me, it's more likely that you were expecting the immediate obvious improvement you got from the TT2 upgrade. I find that with M-Scaler, some people can hear the improvement immediately and others find the improvements subtle. It takes some time and various musical materials for some people to understand how 1 million taps actually improve the sound because to me, mostly it's in transient accuracy. I have definitely have some music where the improvement is subtle while others where the improvements are dramatic. I usually recommend music with lots of transients, e.g. drum strikes, hand clapping, guitar string plucks at first. And once you become more used to what accurate transients sound like, you'll start hearing it more in all sorts of other music. There are many improvements in M-Scaler but I think our ears are mostly trained to hear and ignore inaccurate transients and focus more on frequency responses because that's where the stereo industry has been stuck at for ages. I would just give it some time. Or if you really don't find any improvements at all, great and you save yourself some money.

 

[JTbbb]

I failed to say that the sampling of the song I used from qobuz is the following:

I might be barking up the wrong tree here, but shouldn’t the output be to MScaler?

 

[Reactcore]

This should've been asked before, but is there a way to utilize the Mscaler's DX up/down buttons?
I red they were reserved for a future DX Amp but must be function finished. Am i right to assume these buttons can change the volume information of the PCM signal which is feed into a DX (DAC/power amp combo)?
If this is true it should also be able to volume control my Qutest which drives my HP straight. (now i use my software player for that)
I guess the function must already be baked in but not activated. Or is it a embedded signal which is transmitted along with the PCM output signal that only the DX can pick up to change volume? Like Meta data in a Mpeg4 video stream?

Could Rob enlighten this?
Thanks, Rick

 

[varadero xl1000v]

I might be barking up the wrong tree here, but shouldn’t the output be to MScaler?

MScaler is seen by the streamer (photo). From there it is connected with a usb cable. The end point is Auralic G 1.

 

[JTbbb]

This is my signal path..then on to Dave.

 

[varadero xl1000v]

It's possible the Roon crossfeed destroyed so much transient accuracy that it's harder for you to hear the improvement from TT2's 96000 taps to 1 million taps.

I removed the crossfeed from the roon. In your opinion should I enable it on the Hugo tt2 if I understand correctly?

Since color accuracy is hard to achieve, I presume the TT2 is showing a purple light (705.4kHz) not a blue light (176kHz) since you're on dual BNC clearly.

Yes, the light in the porthole is the color that corresponds to the maximum resolution.

 

[varadero xl1000v]

This is my signal path..then on to Dave.

Question: Does roon recognize MScaler, or did you add the name? To me, as you can see in the photo above, he calls it usb output ..

 

[JTbbb]

Question: Does roon recognize MScaler, or did you add the name? To me, as you can see in the photo above, he calls it usb output ..

This is how Roon sorted it.

 

[griff500]

@varadero xl1000v

Have you tried using the G1 as the source instead of Roon? I mean sign into Qobuz using LDS.

 

[ecwl]

I removed the crossfeed from the roon. In your opinion should I enable it on the Hugo tt2 if I understand correctly?

Honestly, I doubt the Bauer binaural processing in Roon is making that much of a difference compared to it being done in TT2. However, I think suspect algorithm is 100% identical so you'll always get better performance enabling the crossfeed in TT2 instead of in Roon anyway. So:
1) Yes. Disable Roon crossfeed. Enable TT2 crossfeed if that's what you like.
2) I really think you have everything 100% setup correctly. You just need time to relax, enjoy the music at 1 million taps for a few hours and then you can put M-Scaler back into bypass mode and see if you hear a difference. Rapid comparisons looking for differences in sound is a terrible idea with M-Scaler when you start. Once your brain learns to pick up on those differences, it's really easy to hear when you do rapid A/B, because you know what you're looking for. Just relax and enjoy the music