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1 hour ago, joz said:

Oh dear, more cheese and beer at my place!

Though I would have liked to have spent more time with the Chord combo to hear more about what the pair can add.

Could it be system dependant?

 

Ha!  No, beer and cheese was awesome at yours too!

 

Could it be system dependant?  That's my conclusion.

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3 hours ago, legend said:

Like @ittaku I am surprised as I think I have a fairly high standard system that is very revealing/low distortion and the changes I heard

 

 

And no doubt the changes were there for you to hear.  I think, based on the two systems I heard yesterday, the impact of the M Scaler is dependent on the system it's in.  My opinion as to why this occurred can and will differ to others, but at the end of the day, the impact of the M Scaler differed between the two systems.  Both systems are no slouches either.  This is not a "his system is better than yours" comment.

 

The takeaway for me is - I don't think it improves everyone's system...

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2 hours ago, joz said:

Though I would have liked to have spent more time with the Chord combo to hear more about what the pair can add.

 

 

You heard it for 3 hours yesterday, what are your thoughts on what you heard?

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1 hour ago, powerav said:

Just wondering why the M Scaler doesn’t have USB out considering a lot of dacs will do 768 on USB but only 192 on optical and coaxial?

My perverse opinion about manufacturers leads me to look at what they gain out of it.  By not having USB out and using twin BNC cables to connect at the highest up-sampling rate you are locked into using Chord products to unlock its full potential.  IMHO they should have forgot the twin BNC cables and used USB - but hey - that would mean putting the customer before profits - not really the capitalist way is it?

 

Thanks

Bill

 

 

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13 hours ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

I guess that you could have a situation where the hard work is shared between a scaler and the DAC itself.

The point is that it isn't as simple as saying "turning off what is inside the DAC will be an improvement"  (no matter what you are putting in front of it) .... as what is happening inside the DAC can be intrinsic to it working properly.

 

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1 hour ago, Kaynin said:

 

And no doubt the changes were there for you to hear.  I think, based on the two systems I heard yesterday, the impact of the M Scaler is dependent on the system it's in.  My opinion as to why this occurred can and will differ to others, but at the end of the day, the impact of the M Scaler differed between the two systems.  Both systems are no slouches either.  This is not a "his system is better than yours" comment.

 

The takeaway for me is - I don't think it improves everyone's system...

Yes, different systems have different strengths and weaknesses.  However overall I think the audio reproduction chain is only as strong as its weakest link and for me the M-Scaler helps remove the source as a weakest link so I can concentrate on other parts of the system, particularly the loudspeakers.

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8 minutes ago, legend said:

Yes, different systems have different strengths and weaknesses.  However overall I think the audio reproduction chain is only as strong as its weakest link and for me the M-Scaler helps remove the source as a weakest link so I can concentrate on other parts of the system, particularly the loudspeakers.

 

Sounds like a winner for you then, which is awesome  :thumb: 

 

"However overall I think the audio reproduction chain is only as strong as its weakest link"   I agree 100%.  Of course, some weak links have a greater impact than others.  I guess that's where I'm coming from, the M Scaler isn't a great solution for every system (based on my limited experience with it).

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4 hours ago, Ittaku said:

.....Perhaps this should be my next project...

To me the mscaler is a bit like Tesla motors. There is tons written about Tesla motors. A lot of negativity is sponsored by competitors and short sellers (stock price, cash flow, no innovation, production woes). A lot of over the top stuff comes from fanboys. Car discussions end up in debates about Elon Musk.

 

But for people who actually have driven say the Model S their experiences are similar. Mostly they find the Model S really quick and fun to drive ( Ludicrous mode is well ...Ludicrous). The car puts a smile peoples faces.

 

I am glad Tesla and Musk are shaking up the industry. I hope that another manufacturer can reproduce the Model S experience at scale, and for a much lower price.

 

@Ittaku if you want to produce a 'msclaer killer', that is, something that makes music more enjoyable including redbook, has USB out and will work with any DAC (including my R2R) and ease of use, then I believe there is a big market out there. 

 

Better still, a better-than-mscaler program that I can run over my files and treat them once and a ultra lightweight player. Rather than paying a Teraflop calculation tax every time I play a song like I do at the moment.

Edited by Cruncher
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On the official Head-Fi thread (where most people who own M scalers seem to be) the general consensus of owners also seem to agree on one particular point... that the M scaler only really comes into it’s own at 1 million taps so as a product the M scaler is largely irrelevant to anyone who can’t access its top upsample capability (which is every existing dac owner out there except for the owners of Chord Hugo 2, Qutest, TT2 and Dave).

 

This isn’t an apology for the M scaler but I certainly feel a USB output version would be very relevant to the dac market and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t eventuate.

 

Another point that comes through very clearly in the experiences of M scaler owners (who are in their greatest numbers on the official Chord M Scaler thread at Head-Fi) is that most all of them it seems... and there would be dozens over there... after having used an m scaler for some time wouldn’t then listen without it. I figure that time required is about as long as it takes for someone to stop thinking about what they are hearing and instead just kick back and listening to the music. 

 

Notably though a few of these new owners were very clearly unsure about the ultimate benefit after their initial audition of the m scaler.

 

I feel its more about what you are listening for (particularly in a brief audition) as to whether the m scaler hooks in or not straight away. If you are listening specifically for sonic differences (which is what we tend to do for the first couple of hours when first auditioning a bit of gear) you may not appreciate what it may then be actually doing.

 

When the real value/appreciation/addiction seems to come in is when we regularly start to feel more engaged or connected (or even lost in) the experience of listening to the music. If you are listening for differences I’d suggest you that you are only listening in part rather than whole eg. analysing for tone, resolution, quality of bass etc.

 

But when you stop trying to analyse your experience of this component but just plug it in and play for music and just listen without objective other than listening to the music, that is when you give yourself over to the whole of experience which is also where the emotional connection happens... and this for me is where the m scaler creates an easier and deeper point of engagement.

 

Analysing sound doesn’t feed us dopamine... listening to music can. That is where the pleasure comes from when the Music kicks in and for me the M scaler is a bit of a dopaMine mining Machine.

 

I believe this connection in experience and engagement of music is actually where the m scale does deliver rather than just purely in individual sonic attributes. It’s the way the sounds are organised better rather than just the individual sonic traits themselves... more metadata than data.

 

If you are trying to audition and especially to also then discuss with others what you are hearing then reasonably it is likely you may tend to focus on understanding through specific sonic analysis of elements and parts of sound rather than just being relaxed and passively open to listening to and appreciating the music... which is where I feel the M scale is... I think the M just actually stands for Music.

 

 

 

 

Edited by the sound of Tao
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Guest Eggcup The Daft
3 hours ago, Kaynin said:

I think, based on the two systems I heard yesterday, the impact of the M Scaler is dependent on the system it's in.

I may have misunderstood, but I think you heard the results of two different tests as well. In one test, the scaler was placed ahead of the existing DAC. In that setup you heard only changes from the presence of the scaler in the system. In the second, you replaced the entire DAC... that leaves open the question of all the analogue domain issues that could result from a different DAC.

 

Being with different people, in a different environment, with a different system layout, at a different time of day and after travelling, may also have changed your interpretation of any sonic changes. I know that happens with me.

4 hours ago, Kaynin said:

The takeaway for me is - I don't think it improves everyone's system...

Same for most stuff, really. Especially as we can't all agree on what an improvement is, anyway!

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Guest Eggcup The Daft
5 hours ago, Ittaku said:

USB out also carries with a certain degree of complexity to do with the fact you're running a USB controller on your device, which is different to the USB receiving device. That doesn't make it impossible of course, just different. Given that a miniPC is an excellent USB controller, the logical cheap way to create competition is to create a miniPC that does the upscaling in software on a proper CPU (or perhaps GPU) instead of an FPGA. Whether a PC doing a super long filter without Watt's Transient Aligned will equal or rival the mscaler though is anyone's guess (though some would insist it's guaranteed to). Perhaps this should be my next project...

You will need a lot of time and patience when going down that road.

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27 minutes ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

 

Being with different people, in a different environment, with a different system layout, at a different time of day and after travelling, may also have changed your interpretation of any sonic changes. I know that happens with me.

 

 

Yeah it's clearly stated that they're two completely different systems - but here's the thing, the second system had the DAC changed to a Chord DAC and we were hearing the best possible up-sampling that the M Scaler could do, yet I heard no improvement.  Secondly, the base for comparison was within the same system - that is, 44.1 then A/B against the best possible scaling that the system could provide.  The difference between the base and the up-scaling was what was noted and commented on at the time.  I wasn't comparing the two systems against each other, I'm comparing the change within the same system when the M-Scaler is utilised.

 

But as for traveling, different time of day etc. accounting for the differences I heard?  Nope, absolutely not.  The difference the M-Scaler made to the first system was very significant and much improved.  It was clear to hear.  The base line is the M-Scaler at 44.1 in the same system, then flicked to the highest possible upscale in that set-up.  The only change made is the M-Scaler, so it's a straight A/B test of the impact of that device. 

 

When we did this in the second system, no improvement was noticed by me, just a different sound (that's after listening to different genres of material for 3 hours).  The context of my comments are that the M-Scaler made a significant improvement within one system, but not within the other.  I'm not comparing the two systems here.  It was very obvious to me, having been there and heard it myself.  ;)

 

Anyway, we can all speculate on why I heard what I heard, or how I could be mistaken, but it stands as is.  People can accept it or reject it.  :)

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6 hours ago, bhobba said:

My perverse opinion about manufacturers leads me to look at what they gain out of it.

Me too.... Although USB is a bit more complex/problematic.    I could understand the reasons they might not want it .... although does that trump 'convenience' and 'compatibility', it's a difficult call.

 

I can also see two sides to the "bolster sales" argument.   They may gain some DAC sales, but will they lose some scaler sales?    It's a bold call if they are saying "lock people in so they buy our DAC".

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So then   For those that don’t  know my system here’s a run down.

SGR Luminators, a 4 way active system with 11 drivers / side (including 4x12” subs each). 

SGR 4 way active/analogue crossover with eq.

Elektra amplification/ 6 channels via a new HD Theatre providing in excess of 350/4ohms and a HD Reference providing 2channels in excess of 600/4ohms.

Logitech Squeezebox as a source providing Flac via Ethernet from the puter at the other end of the house.

Cabling, nothing exxy.

 

Firstly a big thanks to @Sime V2 for his monumental effort of coming to Melbourne with his case of goodies.Thanks heaps.

And @Kaynin for just being kaynin and eating cheese and drinking beer with me.

When I had first setup everything the room was measured and initially tuned quite flat through the frequency response. Now I have it with the bass running a few dB warmer to the point even an extra dB may ruin it for me.

The room is not the best acoustically but has quite a few panels to reduce slap echo and some temporary panels moved into place as first point absorption.

 

After the guys arrived Sime quickly went about setting up the two Chord units and I disconnected  my Dac from the Squeezy Transporter. Then connected it directly with a coax of suitably length just so that all of the conversion was left to the dynamic duo.

 

 

 

First impression was that it was different and not my usual flavour. It was different!

Ok l thought let’s go on an play with the different settings and see what happens.

Syme flicked from one resolution to another which each change altering the sound stage, presentation and ambience of the sound in the room.

Depending on tracks playing the changes were sometimes very subtle at others more pronounced.

Syme was obviously a little more familiar with what changes were happening and could identify and describe what he was hearing better than me but I’ll keep trying even if by now I can’t remember everything that I heard.

Overall imo the highest conversion rate was the winner even though on one track I chose a simple 44.1 sample rate.

But at its highest I found more separation,detail and possibly transparency,well most of the time.

 

Now it seems the duo made less of an impact on my setup compared to  @Ittaku setup and I’m not sure why and what made such a difference?

That word synergy?

 

But! There is always a but!

The bass, if these units add or find any extra bass that my previous components couldn’t I think it became bass heavy (for me at least) if anyone knows me they are probably calling BS on me but it’s true, there comes a time when bass can become over bearing and it was even if only a little it was to much.

Now this could possibly be just something I prefer or this this case I didn’t. I found the vocals became forward in the mix much more than I’m used to and the aural image of the vocalist had become big with a huge  mouth rather than fitting in on the stage with the band around him, again this was on some tracks only.

Now I’m not the type to buy the lastest and greatest and am very cynical about hype so very rarely will I get caught up in the FOMO moment.

But every now and then I’ll try something and yep I gotta have it!

 

So would I buy one?

Ummmm?

No, not without being able to spend more time with one even if it was to adjust the gain in my bass and ofcourse I’d like to do some back to back comparisons with what I already have and compare it to other items on the market out there. For me 3 hours was just not enough time with one.

 

But if you are contemplating?

And are shopping in this market do yourself a favour a try it.

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22 hours ago, Ittaku said:

By the way, my only regret about today was that Sime doesn't eat cheese or drink beer or wine!

And @Kaynin for just being kaynin and eating cheese and drinking beer with me

 

Story of my life, and I find it a bit of a head scratcher to be honest ?

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Okay I've done a bit of hacking and I did some benchmarking with my existing resampler on PC to see how fast it was. This program runs single threaded, meaning there is zero advantage to multiple cores, and it was running on a sole 3.6Ghz CPU core. I upsampled a 4 minute 11 second 44100 file to 705600 with a 1 million tap sinc filter and it took 20.3 seconds. This isn't an application designed to even use multiple cores to their advantage so that should give people an idea of the power of a modern CPU. Upsampling it to 705600 with a 10 million tap sinc filter it took 33.2 seconds. Upsampling it to just 88200, but STILL with a 10 million tap filter, it took just 4.9 seconds. After 10 million, at least with the current code, ram becomes a rate limiting step. So at the very least, you can see you can do 10 million taps in real time on a modern PC just with this code. Further optimised code for ram, and multithreading could probably do more. Tomorrow I'll do some auditioning of the 10 million tap upsample (note I can only really check the 88200). Note that it calculated the rejection as being 210dB at the Nyquist frequency, and 0dB bandwidth as being 99.7% of the frequency.

 

Edit: I found that I can get about 78 million taps with 99.99996% of the frequency response and 210dB rejection, so I'll be using that for my comparisons as I suspect that's as close to the theoretical ideal brick wall as I can currently get.

Edited by Ittaku
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21 hours ago, the sound of Tao said:

On the official Head-Fi thread (where most people who own M scalers seem to be) the general consensus of owners also seem to agree on one particular point... that the M scaler only really comes into it’s own at 1 million taps so as a product the M scaler is largely irrelevant to anyone who can’t access its top upsample capability (which is every existing dac owner out there except for the owners of Chord Hugo 2, Qutest, TT2 and Dave).

 

This isn’t an apology for the M scaler but I certainly feel a USB output version would be very relevant to the dac market and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t eventuate.

 

Another point that comes through very clearly in the experiences of M scaler owners (who are in their greatest numbers on the official Chord M Scaler thread at Head-Fi) is that most all of them it seems... and there would be dozens over there... after having used an m scaler for some time wouldn’t then listen without it. I figure that time required is about as long as it takes for someone to stop thinking about what they are hearing and instead just kick back and listening to the music. 

 

Notably though a few of these new owners were very clearly unsure about the ultimate benefit after their initial audition of the m scaler.

 

I feel its more about what you are listening for (particularly in a brief audition) as to whether the m scaler hooks in or not straight away. If you are listening specifically for sonic differences (which is what we tend to do for the first couple of hours when first auditioning a bit of gear) you may not appreciate what it may then be actually doing.

 

When the real value/appreciation/addiction seems to come in is when we regularly start to feel more engaged or connected (or even lost in) the experience of listening to the music. If you are listening for differences I’d suggest you that you are only listening in part rather than whole eg. analysing for tone, resolution, quality of bass etc.

 

But when you stop trying to analyse your experience of this component but just plug it in and play for music and just listen without objective other than listening to the music, that is when you give yourself over to the whole of experience which is also where the emotional connection happens... and this for me is where the m scaler creates an easier and deeper point of engagement.

 

Analysing sound doesn’t feed us dopamine... listening to music can. That is where the pleasure comes from when the Music kicks in and for me the M scaler is a bit of a dopaMine mining Machine.

 

I believe this connection in experience and engagement of music is actually where the m scale does deliver rather than just purely in individual sonic attributes. It’s the way the sounds are organised better rather than just the individual sonic traits themselves... more metadata than data.

 

If you are trying to audition and especially to also then discuss with others what you are hearing then reasonably it is likely you may tend to focus on understanding through specific sonic analysis of elements and parts of sound rather than just being relaxed and passively open to listening to and appreciating the music... which is where I feel the M scale is... I think the M just actually stands for Music.

 

 

 

 

I think you are right that audiophiles can get hung up about individual sonic characteristics and forget about the emotional involvement which is what music is all about.  However both can be done together with practice - professional musicians  etc do it all the time.

 

When I listened to Sime's M-Scaler I certainly noticed that it ticked all the audiophile boxes - tighter bass, more fleshed out midband, less brittle treble, better imaging, particularly depth etc.  But I also noticed I was better connected to the performance - it seemed more real/live - so it had more emotional impact, including foot-tapping etc.

 

More generally I have noticed that the more transparent a system the more emotional impact it has for me because I am closer to the performers.  Hence my obsession with lowering distortion - where distortion is the difference between output and input - in both the frequency and time domains.  IMHO the M-Scaler , both theoretically and in practice, is a very significant step forward in the source part of the audio reproduction system.

Edited by legend
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I've been trying to figure out what Watts means when he says he needs 1 million taps to reconstruct 16 bit impulse transients at full 16 bits (can't remember exactly how he worded it) and the best I can figure out is how close an impulse amplitude is after upsampling to its original amplitude. In that regard, 1 million taps works out to be required to maintain 99.997% amplitude response, which is exactly 1 - 1/(2^16), so it's entirely my conjecture that's what he means. With my experimental 78 million taps, and 99.99996% it works out to over 22 bits.

Edited by Ittaku
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Okay, this software one's definitely a winner, compared to my previous upscaling attempts :) Using the 78 million taps there's a clear improvement in the sound without any noticeable drawback, even without the proprietary WTA. In addition to the improvements I described with the mscaler, there is also an added bloom to the top end, with what almost sounds like more top end extension, and detail in things like vibrato on strings as though they're doing it more vigorously. It's enough of an improvement for me to run a batch job through all my 44/48 recordings and upscale them for playback. If any of you have a short reference flac or wav file at 44 or 48kHz and would like to experiment for yourselves, and have a way to send it to me, I can upscale it for you. The only downside I've seen is the necessity to make it 2dB quieter to prevent clipping on loud tracks, which means you have to match output volume for a fair comparison.

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54 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

Okay, this software one's definitely a winner, compared to my previous upscaling attempts :) Using the 78 million taps there's a clear improvement in the sound without any noticeable drawback, even without the proprietary WTA. In addition to the improvements I described with the mscaler, there is also an added bloom to the top end, with what almost sounds like more top end extension, and detail in things like vibrato on strings as though they're doing it more vigorously. It's enough of an improvement for me to run a batch job through all my 44/48 recordings and upscale them for playback. If any of you have a short reference flac or wav file at 44 or 48kHz and would like to experiment for yourselves, and have a way to send it to me, I can upscale it for you. The only downside I've seen is the necessity to make it 2dB quieter to prevent clipping on loud tracks, which means you have to match output volume for a fair comparison.

Just a suggestion, but maybe you could start another thread on something like eg. "software up-scaling" and keep this thread for the m scaler?

 

By the way, I too would be interested in reading about it.

Edited by rocky500
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50 minutes ago, rocky500 said:

Just a suggestion, but maybe you could start another thread on something like eg. "software up-scaling" and keep this thread for the m scaler?

 

By the way, I too would be interested in reading about it.

Yes I was thinking about it. Sime had said he doesn't mind all upscaling discussion, but probably best I move to my own thread since any further discussion would be focused on that.

 

EDIT: Done. See below:

 

Edited by Ittaku
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