My focus is on making scalers work without worrying about the BNC cables at all.
Could a future MScaler have a bunch of built in optimized ferrites internally on the bnc inputs or something like that?
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My focus is on making scalers work without worrying about the BNC cables at all.
If I understand correctly you use the Dave + M Scaler with speakers and not with headphones.
So you use the Dave+M-Scaler as a DAC, how do you connect it to your amp? RCA or XLR? Which of the 2 do you think is better? What cable do you use?
Thank you very much
Could a future MScaler have a bunch of built in optimized ferrites internally on the bnc inputs or something like that?
Hi Rob,Yes but I drive small and efficient speakers direct from the headphone OP. When I am travelling I use small 5 inch cube speakers driven direct from Hugo 2. I am listening to Hildur Guðnadóttir now as I type - and with Hugo 2 I can listen in a large hotel room with lots of volume and with the volume control set to a relatively low blue setting. I just wish Qobuz would work without crashing every 3 hours!
My travelling passive 8 ohm speakers are generic - probably cost something like £20 - but actually sound pretty damn good, with very good depth and excellent lateral imagery. Of course you can forget about deep bass, but the overall tonal balance is fine. They sound acceptably good, unlike lap-top speakers (even the high-end gaming lap-top speakers that use well known audiophile branded speakers), which are all awful. And being 5" cubes, with solid plastic enclosures, and a total weight of 2kG means you can pack them in a suitcase and travel easily. I have been using them for about 5 years I guess.
Surprisingly, Google managed to find them here:
https://electromarket.co.uk/e-audio-b406a-black-4-inch-mini-box-hi-fi-speakers
Hugo2 can power a pair of 90db sensitivity speakers! That's great! This makes me thinking getting a pair of these e-audio b406a as my computer speakers, but they are closed to $100 in US. May be I should pay more for Auratone 5C Super Sound Cube or Avantone Mixcube.My travelling passive 8 ohm speakers are generic - probably cost something like £20 - but actually sound pretty damn good, with very good depth and excellent lateral imagery. Of course you can forget about deep bass, but the overall tonal balance is fine. They sound acceptably good, unlike lap-top speakers (even the high-end gaming lap-top speakers that use well known audiophile branded speakers), which are all awful. And being 5" cubes, with solid plastic enclosures, and a total weight of 2kG means you can pack them in a suitcase and travel easily. I have been using them for about 5 years I guess.
Surprisingly, Google managed to find them here:
https://electromarket.co.uk/e-audio-b406a-black-4-inch-mini-box-hi-fi-speakers
Very interesting, and thanks very much for that article. The raw resolution of the inter-aural delay that measures time differences between the ears is of the order of 10uS to (with one source) at 4uS. But I have often thought that if the neurons fire with some dither (which is entirely plausible) then by looking at the adjacent outputs would enable much improved resolution. It's a little like 16 bit (96dB raw resolution) having measurable signals at -140 dB with dither and the appropriate FFT resolution.Hi Rob. Thought you might be interested in this as it is relevant to the brain's detection of audio direction:
"oligodendrocytes use myelin to fine-tune the velocity of electric signals in axons. For example, axons carrying signals from the left and right ears to a particular part of the auditory cortex will differ in length, so those signals might be expected to take different amounts of time to arrive. Oligodendrocyte fine-tuning (achieved by adjusting the diameter of the axon and of the distances between the nodes of the myelin sheath) compensates for this, meaning any remaining difference reflects the actual interval between the times of a sound’s arrival at each ear. And it is that real difference which the brain uses to locate whence a sound has come."
The Economist Neurons are not the only brain cells that think, January 28, 2023
I know exactly what you mean. Every album has it’s own sound to it and every system has colorations to it. So after you have listend to enough different albums you start to notice the coloration which is added by the dac to every song. This then becomes more and more obvious and everything sounds more the same.When they change to a new system, the brain is fooled all over again, it sounds so "realistic", until the brain once more learns to make the distinction
I think the Dave/Mscaler combo probably have a limit but after two years I still hear each recording as the limiting factor. I have till now not heard the colorations Dave has. So this is by far the longest time I have not noticed the dac as the limiting factor. With Hugo 2-Mscaler combo it was like half a year and I started noticing the limits. So for me MDave with Utopia or Expanse is Endgame for me now. I am so satisfied with it I don’t even know if I would upgrade to the new M Scaler (yeah I probably willwill the final upgrade ever arrive?
I think that for some audiophiles and new gear/gadgets the 'thrill of the chase applies'.Thanks Rob. I think your insights into the critical nature of timing and depth perception, and the psychology of hearing more generally, represent a crucial breakthrough in achieving better sound.
I have listened to hi-fi for 50 years now and what strikes me is the propensity of enthusiasts to upgrade their systems regularly. I do think a contributing factor is that, with each new system, their brains learn to distinguish the reproduced sound from the real thing and the thrill gradually disappears. When they change to a new system, the brain is fooled all over again, it sounds so "realistic", until the brain once more learns to make the distinction. I guess being able to detect the sound of an unexpected presence nearby was (is) critical for survival, so the brain works quite hard to do it. All this is mere supposition of course -- I have no scientific data to support it. But it does explain why we are amazed all over again with each new upgrade. I have heard it said that original listeners to Edison's wax roll recordings were as amazed as we are today with your DACs -- it sounded to them like the person speaking was actually in the room. That must be where the upgrade process began.
Now, if we can eliminate all clues the brain can use to distinguish reproduced sound from the real thing, will we constantly be amazed because the brain cannot do this trick any more? ... will the final upgrade ever arrive?
This may be the most fascinating thing I've ever read about audio reproduction.95% of what makes music emotional is the midrange, depth, and getting transients right