[darkless]

Oh, yes, the possibilities are endless and obviously there is much more to come. Just how many more ways can you dream up to bankrupt me?

Whelp, there goes my future savings

 

[Rob Watts]

Taking into account home practicalities is there a certain recommended distance for laptop source to TT2/H2?? Also how do you connect your digital source to TT2 if they are on opposite ends of the room? many thanks. My useage is purely headphone listening at my desk no speaker system. So everything is close to each other is that an issue/problem?

Actually opposite sides of the room, and they meet in the middle...

 

[musickid]

Hi Rob,

With chord dacs and timing FPGA is master with usb and DPLL is used with optical. Does the mscaler employ an identical mechanism with regards to timing digital audio or is something completely different going on here?

When a chord dac receives digital audio from the mscaler does the dac automatically reclock/time it using the DPLL (dual coax)? I find this hard to understand as it would assume the digital audio is not timed/clocked to completion and perfectly by the mscaler. Or does the FPGA 'master clock' (with the DPLL) in a chord dac effectively become redundant as far as timing is concerned with dual bnc from the mscaler?

 

[jayz]

Hi Rob, Sorry for piling on the questions...

The question I have is, why is optical spdif limited to 192/24 in most DACs and streamers out there ? Did a quick scan of the standard and what I understand is that the main challenge with TOSLINK when we try increase sample rate, is reducing jitter during clock recovery at receiver end. But your DPLL design would eliminate jitter - that is my understanding.

For example, the QED reference cable is being advertised at a bandwidth of over 150MHz so I would have thought that is an ideal connection to go from MScaler to DAC.

 

[Rob Watts]

It's down to the quality of the Toslink tx and rx devices; they are simply not fast enough. There is nothing in principle using glass fibre to run at 768 kHz if the tx and rx were fast enough.

 

[Tims Fong]

Hi,Mr Bob Watts,
Do you want to update the firmware that supports MQA for chord Mojo? If so, his sales will increase greatly.Thanks.

 

[audio_1]

Hi,Mr Bob Watts,
Do you want to update the firmware that supports MQA for chord Mojo? If so, his sales will increase greatly.Thanks.

MQA is technically flawed and not necessary as file storage is now cheap and broadband speeds have improved. Why add it to the Mojo as it would increase the cost and bring no benefit. It would actually make it sound worse. The Mojo sounds great as it is. (unfortunately not as good as the Dave & Blu 2 though)

 

[514077]

Hi,Mr Bob Watts,
Do you want to update the firmware that supports MQA for chord Mojo? If so, his sales will increase greatly.Thanks.

Welcome aboard. The firmware for Chord's DACs aren't upgradeable. Also, RW stated that MQA is not as good as claimed. And he'd prefer not to use it. If you use the search function of the forum on its various threads for Chord products, you should find your answers. Good luck and enjoy Head-fi.

 

[Deftone]

Hi,Mr Bob Watts,
Do you want to update the firmware that supports MQA for chord Mojo? If so, his sales will increase greatly.Thanks.

Im happy to skip MQA

 

[Triode User]

Im happy to skip MQA

+1
I ditched Tidal to escape MQA.

 

[Rob Watts]

Hi,Mr Bob Watts,
Do you want to update the firmware that supports MQA for chord Mojo? If so, his sales will increase greatly.Thanks.

There are two elements to MQA - firstly the conversion back to 88.2/96 from 44.1/48 - the so called unfold - and the the second part the low tap length minimum phase interpolation filter. Let's deal with the second issue first, the interpolation filter - I have compared the MQA interpolation filter to my WTA filter and it sounds very much worse than the WTA - soft, fat bloated bass, poor instrument separation and focus, with a flat ill defined sound-stage. So there is no way I would ever offer this as an option.

As to the compression from 88.2/96 to 44.1/48 this is seriously flawed with major sound quality and measurement issues. For one, it has a massive notch at 22.05 kHz or 24 kHz that is introduced, which will have transient timing repercussions; secondly the system has completely unacceptable aliasing issues, which means distortion at 20kHz is a massive 1% - and aliasing has a huge consequence to the sound quality too, as again it degrades transient timing; thirdly the system is lossy, and converts a 24 bit signal into something like 17 bits. This is again unacceptable.

My advice is to ignore MQA and always go for the unchanged original file as the WTA filter will do a much better job of reconstructing the transient timing information to a much higher ability than MQA can.

 

[DjBobby]

There are two elements to MQA - firstly the conversion back to 88.2/96 from 44.1/48 - the so called unfold - and the the second part the low tap length minimum phase interpolation filter. Let's deal with the second issue first, the interpolation filter - I have compared the MQA interpolation filter to my WTA filter and it sounds very much worse than the WTA - soft, fat bloated bass, poor instrument separation and focus, with a flat ill defined sound-stage. So there is no way I would ever offer this as an option.
.

Is the "soft, fat bloated bass, poor instrument separation and focus, a flat ill defined sound-stage", a result mainly of the low tap length or rather of the minimum phase in general?

 

[Rob Watts]

I am on holiday in Florida - taking the kids to the theme parks.

Yesterday we were going to Animal Kingdom, to do the new Avatar ride (the 2 hour wait was worth it!) and see the light show afterwards. Anyway, a thunder storm interrupted us; so rather than drive in the rain, I sat on the balcony watching the approaching storm, and waiting for it to pass. I thought I would spend half an hour relaxing and listening to it.

It was a cracker of a storm; huge lightning strikes, and aural explosions as the thunder cracked.

But the sound was incredible - and the placement accuracy that human hearing and perception is simply immense. As the thunder cracked, you could hear exactly where the thunder originated, as it rippled and moved through the sky - you could perceive exactly where it was coming from to simply extraordinary accuracy - height and depth. Also, each thunder crack sounded completely different, with remarkable low frequency pitch and texture. Sat on the balcony of the seventh floor one can hear pool sounds, the hotel's music system, and place them to pinpoint accuracy; then this usual ambient sound was punctuated by the huge dynamics of the thunder, with a simply immense soundstage extending for many miles.

I was left with two feelings; on the one hand thinking that considerable progress has been made in reproduced sound - but that there is still a long way to go, to mach the visceral beauty and tangibility of live unamplified sound.

And I will need to come back to Florida to record this with the new ADC....

 

[Rob Watts]

Is the "soft, fat bloated bass, poor instrument separation and focus, a flat ill defined sound-stage", a result mainly of the low tap length or rather of the minimum phase in general?

Both; certainly low tap length linear phase also sounds soft and bloated in the bass, with poor bass pitch discrimination.

 

[JaZZ]

And I will need to come back to Florida to record this with the new ADC....

...which now is close to maturity phase (?).