[stuartrosen]

I almost hate to pose the question, but are there any owners of the TT2/M-Scaler combo who are happy with having upgraded their cables? I’m thinking of the Silver Dragons which represent the absolute ceiling in what I can (as a relatively new hobbyist) pay, but cannot get myself to click on the “purchase” button. Which is either my gut talking or the feeling I need to hear that others have found it worthwhile.

Not looking to relitigate the “are big dollar cables worth it” debate; more interested in anecdotal experiences.

My chain is Lumin U1 Mini —> M-Scaler —> TT2 —> (a) Parasound P6 preamp —> Parasound A21+ amp, or (b) ampsandsound Kenzie Ovation tube amp.

I have searched through this community and others but can’t quite find an answer to this particular question/option. Any help/advice/admonitions would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Gadget67]

I almost hate to pose the question, but are there any owners of the TT2/M-Scaler combo who are happy with having upgraded their cables? I’m thinking of the Silver Dragons which represent the absolute ceiling in what I can (as a relatively new hobbyist) pay, but cannot get myself to click on the “purchase” button. Which is either my gut talking or the feeling I need to hear that others have found it worthwhile.

Not looking to relitigate the “are big dollar cables worth it” debate; more interested in anecdotal experiences.

My chain is Lumin U1 Mini —> M-Scaler —> TT2 —> (a) Parasound P6 preamp —> Parasound A21+ amp, or (b) ampsandsound Kenzie Ovation tube amp.

I have searched through this community and others but can’t quite find an answer to this particular question/option. Any help/advice/admonitions would be appreciated. Thanks!

There are several different approaches here. Right after purchasing my Chord TT2 and M-Scaler, I purchased the Moon Audio Silver Dragons. I didn’t make any real sound comparisons, but they are far better quality than the stock cables and reviewers at the Moon Audio site liked them. I found the greatest improvement resulted from powering the M-Scaler with a battery and getting rid of the stock PSU; even my non audiophile wife noticed the difference. IMHO it virtually eliminated RFI and I could have saved the expense of the Moon Audio cables. Moving to optical instead of USB was another significant improvement to my ears. Quite a few here are fans of the WAVE BNC cables which use ferrites to minimize/eliminate RFI but they are very pricy.

 

[Ragnar-BY]

@stuartrosen don’t waste money on non-ferrited cables. M Scaler is not like other gear, get a good silver coaxial (which would be great for CD transport) instead of stock and you’ll just get more RFI into DAC.

DIY a pair of ferrited cables, or buy a pair. Otherwise you’ll just make sound more “digital” and harsh.

 

[Ragnar-BY]

Quite a few here are fans of the WAVE BNC cables which use ferrites to minimize/eliminate RFI but they are very pricy.

I’m one of those fans. Like almost everybody, who have heard these cables

I understand that it's hard to believe that such expensive cables make sense. But here is a safe receipt. Just go to Mouser.com, buy two 523-095-850-186M100 cables and at least ten (better twenty) 710-74271633 ferrites. No soldering required, no audiophile brands involved. Easy like Lego, sounds much better than stock pair. Wave Cables will have similar effect, just bigger.

 

[LarsMan]

I almost hate to pose the question, but are there any owners of the TT2/M-Scaler combo who are happy with having upgraded their cables? I’m thinking of the Silver Dragons which represent the absolute ceiling in what I can (as a relatively new hobbyist) pay, but cannot get myself to click on the “purchase” button. Which is either my gut talking or the feeling I need to hear that others have found it worthwhile.

Not looking to relitigate the “are big dollar cables worth it” debate; more interested in anecdotal experiences.

My chain is Lumin U1 Mini —> M-Scaler —> TT2 —> (a) Parasound P6 preamp —> Parasound A21+ amp, or (b) ampsandsound Kenzie Ovation tube amp.

I have searched through this community and others but can’t quite find an answer to this particular question/option. Any help/advice/admonitions would be appreciated. Thanks!

I just acquired a pair of BNC cables from Silnote, but have not had a chance to try them out yet. I am currently breaking them in, though...

 

[The Jester]

I used the stock cables for a few weeks to allow for any real or imaginary “burn in” of both components cables and listener, after that I tried powering the M Scaler from a battery with inconclusive results, maybe because the stock PSU’s were each plugged into 2 identical power filtration boards around 2 metres apart, who knows ?
Then accidentally touched one BNC cable with the system playing and “tick” a dropout for a split second, with the system off I noticed some “wiggle” in the correctly fitted cable so ended up buying a pair of Nordost Blue Heaven cables and found the connections much more secure and a cleaner clearer sound as well, Nordost for no other reasons than they are a quality cable and they match the rest of the cables in my system,
Finished the system off with a Nordost Blue Heaven USB cable from a dedicated PC server and slightly prefer the sound of it compared to my CD transport via optical,
There’s an interesting review over at Audiobacon comparing digital cables between the Dave and Blue Mk2 the CD transport forerunner to the M Scaler for a few different choices, more than a few here have had good results with DIY ferrite cables and the relatively pricey Wave cables which uses ferrites and a high quality cable and connectors, relatively pricey compared to stock cables but not to some in the review that get as high as $3,000 per cable, not knocking those who can afford using them but I try to keep within the “10% of component cost” when buying cables and so far more than happy with the end result, it’s quite easy to keep going further down the rabbit hole pursuing the ultimate in transparency but as it stands I can listen to my system either speakers or headphones for hours on end just enjoying the music, which in the end is what really matters.

 

[Ragnar-BY]

accidentally touched one BNC cable with the system playing and “tick” a dropout for a split second, with the system off I noticed some “wiggle” in the correctly fitted cable

My stock pair had same problems. And one even broke completely after few reconnections.

 

[The Jester]

Cheap cables are cheap for a reason,
It’s interesting looking at components, especially preamps which by design need multiple RCA socket pairs, and look how far up the price chain you have to go to get dedicated sockets instead of a plastic block soldered to the PCB … ..

 

[LarsMan]

Cheap cables are cheap for a reason,
It’s interesting looking at components, especially preamps which by design need multiple RCA socket pairs, and look how far up the price chain you have to go to get dedicated sockets instead of a plastic block soldered to the PCB … ..

But expensive cables are sometimes expensive for no reason (except paying for marketing/advertising)... But yes, I do believe there is difference in sound between good cables and not-so-good cables.

 

[audio_1]

I almost hate to pose the question, but are there any owners of the TT2/M-Scaler combo who are happy with having upgraded their cables? I’m thinking of the Silver Dragons which represent the absolute ceiling in what I can (as a relatively new hobbyist) pay, but cannot get myself to click on the “purchase” button. Which is either my gut talking or the feeling I need to hear that others have found it worthwhile.

Not looking to relitigate the “are big dollar cables worth it” debate; more interested in anecdotal experiences.

My chain is Lumin U1 Mini —> M-Scaler —> TT2 —> (a) Parasound P6 preamp —> Parasound A21+ amp, or (b) ampsandsound Kenzie Ovation tube amp.

I have searched through this community and others but can’t quite find an answer to this particular question/option. Any help/advice/admonitions would be appreciated. Thanks!

I use the Opto-dx to connect them. No RFI. You can also separate digital and analogue components. In this way you can use a cheap server. I use a diy intel NUC running Roon Rock. The only disadvantage is multiple boxes and power supplies. It still works out better value than an expensive server though.

 

[ecwl]

I use the Opto-dx to connect them. No RFI.

I have seen this comment made so many times, I’m sometimes surprised more people don’t comment.
On the receiving end of Opto-DX where you’re feeding your DAVE, the dual BNC signal from the Opto-DX comes from the DC power that you used to feed the Oppo-DX receiver and the converter that converts the Optical to BNC. So actually you can get RFI coming from with the power supply to the Opto-DX Receiver and you can theoretically get RFI depending on the design of the optical to BNC conversion. Try using a poorly designed switching power supply to power the Opto-DX receiver, you’ll get RFI. I just went to the Audiowise sales page and you’ll notice they recommend using batteries or linear power supplies mostly to avoid RFIs.

Otherwise, yes, I agree this is definitely one good solution where you don’t have to worry as much about the upstream components effects into DAVE.

 

[The Jester]

As long as it sounds “better” than a single optical cable you know there’s minimal RFI issues …
Found a quick check to hear what RFI can do by accident while testing out an older DAC … take a stock BNC cable from the M Scaler single output to any old dac with its own AC power supply..
Instant glare and harshness in the rest of the system,

 

[Progisus]

Is the mscaler the major source of the rfi issue?

 

[The Jester]

One of them, FPGA is no more than an externally programmed CPU with the M Scaler being the most powerful …but all the Chord DAC’s have one too, maybe too much being made out of RFI issues came from the Blu Mk2 which apparently really benefitted from ferrited cables like the wave, reading some of the earlier posts in this thread a lot of work was done on galvanic isolation for the newer M Scaler to the extent that Rob Watts said something like eliminating any residual RFI was like the finish on the icing on the cake … not word for word but that sort of impression …
In the quite in depth Audiobacon review of cables the wave cables initially had a non ferrited model for the M Scaler but maybe there was enough difference in using the ferrited cables that they never went into production ..
Triode User would be able to enlighten us on that ?

 

[Progisus]

Surely there must be a way to measure (sorry) the amount of rfi added when an mscaler is inserted into the system. And if that is possible how about a measure of rfi after different mitigation devices have been inserted.