[Widell]

No, I didn't see any promotions posted. I asked my local Chord dealer what is the best price they could do given that I recently purchased the TT2 and had no plans for the M Scaler until next year. They came back with what I thought was a fair price, or to put it differently, a price that I think is lower than a better deal next year when custom fees will potentially inflate the price. They checked that the Belgian distributor has it in stock and I should have it next week.

Now that I think about it, maybe I would have had a better discount buying the TT2 and HMS together. But I didn't want to jump all in without first hearing the TT2 at home for a while.

 

[Widell]

So is TT2 worth more than double cost of a CH2? SQ wise ofc.....not taking form factor into account etc....

 

[Reactcore]

So is TT2 worth more than double cost of a CH2? SQ wise ofc.....not taking form factor into account etc....

It depends on the source u play how much 'better' it will sound. Imo on good quality analog mastered 44.1 redbook recordings the differences are most noticable. The higher the original sample rate.. the smaller the benefit is due to getting closer to the internal 'upscaling'

I settled for the Qutest since i couldnt justify the cost of a TT2, and even the H2 at its arrival. I have no regrets.
If u have a H2.. u should audition it with the Mscaler

 

[jarnopp]

It depends on the source u play how much 'better' it will sound. Imo on good quality analog mastered 44.1 redbook recordings the differences are most noticable. The higher the original sample rate.. the smaller the benefit is due to getting closer to the internal 'upscaling'

I settled for the Qutest since i couldnt justify the cost of a TT2, and even the H2 at its arrival. I have no regrets.
If u have a H2.. u should audition it with the Mscaler

Other considerations are how you want to use it in your system. What kind of power you need for headphones and if you want to drive speakers directly, which TT2 will do much better than H2.

 

[gnomen]

Interesting article in the Economist this week regarding audio research https://www.economist.com/science-a...eers-have-better-ways-to-trick-listeners-ears

To quote one sentence, which seems to reinforce Rob's attention to minute timing differences:

"The trick that the emulator must master is a process called phase modulation. This involves retarding a sound’s high, medium and low frequencies by the slight but varying fractions of a second by which those frequencies would be delayed by different parts of the ears and head in reality."

Presumably, the very precise timing of the Watts filter conveys those subtle timing variations more accurately than most reproduction systems.

 

[Ragnar-BY]

@Rob Watts

Hi Rob!

One friend of mine (and Hugo 2 owner) told me that he bought an old (10 or 15 years old) DAC and liked it a lot. I tried to google this DAC and it turned out that it is a Tube Technology Fullcrum DAC64.

I've started to read Tube Technology brochure and suddenly saw FPGA, Pulse Array, WTA filter and everything. It looks like a Chord with tubes and linear PSU Obviously, this is your technology. Would you like to share the Fulcrum story with us? How this happened and how did you like sound of a DAC with tubes? Have you ever thought about making tube version of your modern DACs?

Thank you.

 

[Rob Watts]

That's a blast from the past! Yes I was working with Zia of Tube Technology in the early 2000s.

Do tubes offer better performance than solid state? Certainly not in terms of measurements. Tubes or valves are however easier tech to sound good; but are limited in ultimate SQ and musical performance in that solid state can outperform valves - but you have to work a great deal harder with solid state.

 

[The Jester]

Maybe that elusive sound signature for those preferring valve amplification is just isolation,
no chance of any transmission of unwanted RFI through a vacuum tube maybe ?

 

[Triode User]

Maybe that elusive sound signature for those preferring valve amplification is just isolation,
no chance of any transmission of unwanted RFI through a vacuum tube maybe ?

Unfortunately for that theory quite a few of the audio valves we now use were originally built to transmit and/or amplify RF.

 

[The Jester]

Just thinking out loud ..
didn’t the old radio sets use audio bandwidth valves plus specialty valves to generate the carrier wave ?
maybe more to do with the output transformers ...
apart from OTL designs ...

 

[NYanakiev]

I hope you guys are having a great holiday! A question for @Rob Watts
What would you recommend- upgrading my Hugo 2+2Go to a TT2 and adding a Mscaler later or just getting a Mscaler to pair with the Hugo 2?

Which of the above two options would be a bigger "jump" in sound quality? I own a pair of Focal's Utopia so this would be a headphones only type setup.
Many thanks in advance.

 

[Rob Watts]

To me the M scaler would add a much bigger jump - with improvements in instrument separation, speed and warmth and more natural sense of flow.

But TT2 is considerably more refined and smoother than Hugo 2, so only you can decide which performance facet wins for you. So I suggest you try both at your local dealer.

 

[NYanakiev]

To me the M scaler would add a much bigger jump - with improvements in instrument separation, speed and warmth and more natural sense of flow.

But TT2 is considerably more refined and smoother than Hugo 2, so only you can decide which performance facet wins for you. So I suggest you try both at your local dealer.

Ah, interesting. This would also make it possible to keep the 2Go and use it with the Mscaler through the now mythical 2Yu, I presume?

If only demoing gear was as easy as it once was!

 

[ecwl]

So in the past few months, I added a convolution filter to my speaker system for room correction (frequency response & phase) which significantly improved the sound over the parametric EQ corrections I was using before. And then yesterday, I realized I never added any subsonic filter to the convolution filter and adding that for the subwoofers (and speakers when playing them alone) also dramatically improved the clarity of the sound.

What I realized (even for myself) is that how easy it is for us to start ignoring sonic distortions.

I used to think that I have tuned my stereo system as close to the Focal Utopia headphones via parametric EQ alone but in reality, I have just trained my ears to ignore the bass frequency and phase distortions or the low bass rumbling I’m getting from my subwoofers or speaker woofers that is causing loss of clarity in the higher bass frequencies. Now that I had both fixed, I find that I can hear the difference between Focal Utopia headphones much more than my speakers in terms of these aspects.

The reason why I’m posting this in the Watts Up forum is that I remember seeing lots of posts saying they don’t find Chord DACs special or they don’t hear any improvements from M-Scaler. I used to chalk it to poor hearing or people have such terriblly recorded music sources that their systems need lots of euphonic distortions.
But in reality, I’m more and more convinced that our brain accommodates to all the sonic distortions from most music systems that they are easily capable of ignoring:
1) Noise floor modulation (which sounds very harsh to me and IMHO is what makes digital sound digital)
2) High noise floor (which reduces transparency and soundstage depth)
3) Poor transient accuracy (which is why poor, short-tap-length filters are widely accepted)
4) Harmonic distortions (which can sometimes be euphonic but causes loss of details and transparency)

I think the whole situation is made worse since most of us don’t listen to live unamplified music that often. So it’s easy to forget what undistorted music sounds like.
I think I have mentioned before that I think the reason why Chord DACs are much more popular with the Head-Fi crowd than high-end stereo crowd is because of the lack of additional components (preamp, amp, speakers, subwoofers, room acoustics) distorting the sound. But I sometimes wonder if Chord has already reached the maximum number of people it can reach because it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that our ears are learning to ignore or even prefer distortions.

 

[miketlse]

So in the past few months, I added a convolution filter to my speaker system for room correction (frequency response & phase) which significantly improved the sound over the parametric EQ corrections I was using before. And then yesterday, I realized I never added any subsonic filter to the convolution filter and adding that for the subwoofers (and speakers when playing them alone) also dramatically improved the clarity of the sound.

What I realized (even for myself) is that how easy it is for us to start ignoring sonic distortions.

I used to think that I have tuned my stereo system as close to the Focal Utopia headphones via parametric EQ alone but in reality, I have just trained my ears to ignore the bass frequency and phase distortions or the low bass rumbling I’m getting from my subwoofers or speaker woofers that is causing loss of clarity in the higher bass frequencies. Now that I had both fixed, I find that I can hear the difference between Focal Utopia headphones much more than my speakers in terms of these aspects.

The reason why I’m posting this in the Watts Up forum is that I remember seeing lots of posts saying they don’t find Chord DACs special or they don’t hear any improvements from M-Scaler. I used to chalk it to poor hearing or people have such terriblly recorded music sources that their systems need lots of euphonic distortions.
But in reality, I’m more and more convinced that our brain accommodates to all the sonic distortions from most music systems that they are easily capable of ignoring:
1) Noise floor modulation (which sounds very harsh to me and IMHO is what makes digital sound digital)
2) High noise floor (which reduces transparency and soundstage depth)
3) Poor transient accuracy (which is why poor, short-tap-length filters are widely accepted)
4) Harmonic distortions (which can sometimes be euphonic but causes loss of details and transparency)

I think the whole situation is made worse since most of us don’t listen to live unamplified music that often. So it’s easy to forget what undistorted music sounds like.
I think I have mentioned before that I think the reason why Chord DACs are much more popular with the Head-Fi crowd than high-end stereo crowd is because of the lack of additional components (preamp, amp, speakers, subwoofers, room acoustics) distorting the sound. But I sometimes wonder if Chord has already reached the maximum number of people it can reach because it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that our ears are learning to ignore or even prefer distortions.

I differ in that I don't think that Rob/Chord have reached the limit yet.
I agree that Chord cannot ever hope to convert 100% of the mobile phone users to using an external dac for their music listening.
Similarly Chord cannot ever hope to convert 100% of R2R dac users, to the improved Chord dac sound signature that is available via Robs dacs.

That is not an expression of defeat - rather a recognition that Chord are fighting for that tranche of music lovers, who want a better experience than legacy dacs can provide.
Chord already have a product line of successful dacs, but they need to consider incremental developments to ensure the continual flow of new owners to Mojo, Hugo2, etc.
These are the seedcorn for future upgrades to TT2, MScaler, DAVE etc.