Ive found another article on this Russian site:
https://next-hifi.ru/obzory/new-4-million-taps-digital-processor-m-scaler-quartet/
And put it through a translator.
Rob Watts is raising the bar
Four million equations in the new M Scaler Quartet processor.
At the Munich exhibition, Chord Electronics showed the first sample of a second-generation digital based signal resolution device which in the near future will join the Choral high-end component series
Dave and CD transport
Blu Mk II as well as enhancers Prima, Etude, Foscoller Symphonic.
Link to the by Speaker Shack taken
Interview.
The main digital developer is Chord Electronics Rob Watts, the creator of this new device that should change our idea of what a digital processed track is capable of at playing music. We give some of the transcript of this interview. You can find a full translation in Russian on our telegram channel.
Rob Watts:
Welcome to our stand, in front of you M Scaler Quartet.
The speaker shack:
Quartet?
Rob Watts:
Yes, it's a quartet. Because the digital signal reconstruction processor is based on a 4 million count-long filter.
The speaker shack:
Please tell us more about this development.
Rob Watts:
This project was a challenge for me, a solution to difficult problems, but also a scientific study. It began immediately after the release of Hugo M Scaler and went on for about six years. One reason the process was so long is technical complexity, a lot of difficult but solvable obstacles that had to be overcome to understand the different, previously not-to-have been, subtleties of working with interpolation filters.
The weighting factors (filter outputs, taps) change the pulse characteristic of the digital filter so that the analog signal can be recovered. I wondered how many equations were needed to allow the original form of the sound wave to be perfectly reconstructed.
Get a continuous analog signal that is identical to the original one, before discretization. The difficulty is that as a result of the processing in the output signal, the transition processes are stuck in time: they start a little earlier, and our hearing notices this. The brain and hearing processes information temporary and from that it understands the timbre, tone, character of the sound of the instruments, their spatial location. If the information in time contains errors, we do not get the full perception. The height of the tone, the timbre, the attack and the fainting of the notes are the most important information, without it there is no music. And my work is aimed at playing music.
The speaker shack:
Yes, Rob, I did a little experiment two to three weeks ago. I had a Hugo M Scaler processor in the audio system, along with the Hugo TT2, and I took out the M Scaler to understand what the role of the CPU is before the CAP. The impressions are as if some of the information was missing, especially from the spatial picture. The sound scene was narrowing a little, but that's enough to see how the tools that were on the left edge of the scene seemed to have pushed up to the center. So I listen to you and understand what it's about. Your processor makes exactly the sound image that was originally written.
Rob Watts:
It is! Ideally, the task of an interpolation filter is not to add new information. We must keep the information content that was originally there. Without information distortion. In practice, however, all interpolation filters are distorted in one way or another. Our algorithm WTA, which works with the signal in the timing area, can be configured. Make it possible that the signal loss is hardly noticed by the hearing.
So I'm conducting thousands of auditions to set it up to restore the signal as accurately as possible.
The speaker shack:
Yes, as I said at home I felt it all. It's amazing how much your processor's presence changes things. I can only imagine what four FPGAs in Quartet are doing against one in Hugo M Scaler.
Rob Watts:
In fact, there are five.
The speaker shack:
Ah in total 5, 4 more than in the previous M Scaler. Thats super-high end level.
Rob Watts:
So far, the price has not been determined, it is too early. But it has a lot of achievements. Five FPGA's (with programmable logical integrated circuits), 2 million lines of microcode in them. The power unit supports currents up to 75A. The external power unit is of my own development with the most intensive filtering, interference suppression and more.