CHORD M-Scaler Review (Upsampler)

[Doodski]

Its also worth mentioning that this is a device that's all digital, so here it doesn't really matter so much. Its mainly with analog stuff that you really care because its more susceptible to interference and mains noise pickup.

ASR needs a thread that explains the indecisive mode of operation of digital circuitry. So we can link peeps to that for easy reference.

 

[Cars-N-Cans]

ASR needs a thread that explains the indecisive mode of operation of digital circuitry. So we can link peeps to that for easy reference.

Would not hurt since digital and analog are both impacted in different ways by EMI and PSU noise

 

[Doodski]

ASR needs a thread that explains the indecisive mode of operation of digital circuitry. So we can link peeps to that for easy reference.

P.S.
I would make the new indecisive mode of operation of digital circuitry thread although at the discreet component level of the digital integrated circuitry I don't have a good enough handle on the comings and goings internally such that I could explain the situation.

 

[Chester]

@amirm apologies if you’ve stated this and I’ve missed it. Did you test this using dual BNC into the Hugo 2 RCAs in any of the tests?

 

[Jomungur]

Hey guys, I'm going to out myself on this one. I loaned these. I had my suspicions about the M Scaler; I use Chord DACs (main DAC is not the Hugo2) and it was hard to tell what it was doing to the sound, if anything. Still, it's disappointing that such an expensive product has such poor results. I'm not a technical person, but I think Amir is saying that the M Scaler does what it says it does but that the "improvement" is not discernible on an audible level?

Anecdotally, I've been listening to my audio system without the M Scaler the past week and I can't tell the difference. Anyway, hope ASR's review helps someone who was considering purchasing this item. There are some extremely glowing reviews of the M Scaler out there.

 

[Doodski]

There are some extremely glowing reviews of the M Scaler out there.

All from peeps that apparently cannot be trusted with your money.

 

[JSmith]

I loaned these.

Good on you, thanks for sending this unit in for testing.

$ 35 of parts? OMG!

Yeah, total rip-off... Chord exposed here selling snake oil.


JSmith

 

[Billy Budapest]

Strange product coming from an engineering-focused company.

 

[dc655321]

P.S.
I would make the new indecisive mode of operation of digital circuitry thread although at the discreet component level of the digital integrated circuitry I don't have a good enough handle on the comings and goings internally such that I could explain the situation.

Does much more really need to be said then is expressed in this image?

 

[Doodski]

Strange product coming from an engineering-focused company.

Well... they apparently engineered the craP outta this one and made it from near nothing. Heck they even did it without switches and controls and a display for operation and even a onboard power supply.

 

[Doodski]

Does much more really need to be said then is expressed in this image?

View attachment 216719

Thanks... Yes, I think more is req'd but for us in the know this is more than enough.

 

[raif71]

Hey guys, I'm going to out myself on this one. I loaned these. I had my suspicions about the M Scaler; I use Chord DACs (main DAC is not the Hugo2) and it was hard to tell what it was doing to the sound, if anything. Still, it's disappointing that such an expensive product has such poor results. I'm not a technical person, but I think Amir is saying that the M Scaler does what it says it does but that the "improvement" is not discernible on an audible level?

Anecdotally, I've been listening to my audio system without the M Scaler the past week and I can't tell the difference. Anyway, hope ASR's review helps someone who was considering purchasing this item. There are some extremely glowing reviews of the M Scaler out there.

Any chance your unit is defective?

 

[Curvature]

Chord Electronics Hugo M Scaler upsampling digital processor Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

Is this the same model?

 

[TOR]

$ 35 of parts? OMG!

Yes, $35 of electronic parts.
The case, however, will cost $350 to make. (machined out of solid aluminum)

If you strip out the electronics. Buy four of this. Then refit each one with a load cell. Couple them to a weigh scale control box.

You can drive your car onto it and becomes a much more useful vehicle weighing system.

 

[gvl]

$ 35 of parts? OMG!

Check how much experienced FPGA programmers are making. Custom filter implementation on FPGA must be worth something. Which is not to say it’s not overpriced or has any practical merit, especially considering stock filters on Chord DAC are already better than anything that DAC chip makers are including.

 

[respice finem]

This is a review, listening tests and measurements of the CHORD M-scaler upsampling digital transport. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $5,295 (some show it as $5,650).

View attachment 216660

We have the usual lightshow of buttons as other CHORD digital products but here, due to less overloading of the buttons, it is not hard to navigate. Still, it is annoying to have to keep looking up the color coding in the manual until you memorize them. Here is the back panel:
View attachment 216661

The unit accepts digital audio over either USB or S/PDIF inputs (coax and optical). Very oddly for a device in this class, a large PC laptop type power supply is provided, needlessly causing anxiety for most of their customers buying this tweak. An internal power supply should have been provided. Output is in the form of S/PDIF again or dual BNC outputs which is proprietary to CHORD. Fortunately the member kindly provided a Hugo 2 and all the necessary (high-end Nordost) cabling to make the system work.

If you are unfamiliar with the marketing of this product, it takes an input and upsamples it to higher rate using incredibly high number of taps. High taps allows sharper transition from pass-band to ultrasonic. Company claims that one needs huge number of taps for better fidelity, literally going to millions of them. This has a side-effect of creating fair amount of latency so there is a "video" mode where if it detects 48 kHz sampling, it will shut off the upsampling (or lowers its taps?). While 48 kHz is a common sampling rate for video, many other rates are used so this is not a full fix. Fortunately a "bypass" mode is also provided which basically disables the filter. However, it still lowers the levels to make it match the level when upsampling is used (needed for headroom as to avoid overflow). Company rightly realizes that if the volume is higher in bypass mode, customer may think that sounds better and reject the whole notion of the unit. If so, I wonder then why company doesn't believe in going the next step and providing level matched, controlled blind test to show the efficacy of the unit.

Back to upsampling, the rates provided are 2X, 4X and 16X with the latter needing dual BNC connection at 768 kHz.

CHORD M-Scaler Measurements
My first test was to examine the quality of the Coax output with respect to jitter. Results were disappointing and depended in how you output bits to the unit. Let's start with USB connection:

View attachment 216665

The green line is the Audio Precision analyzer measuring jitter spectrum of its own Coax signal. The red, green and orange lines are what we get when we send the same digital signal through M-Scaler, i.e. USB In/Coax out to the analyzer. We see a large increase (in relative terms) of the baseline noise indicating random jitter. The correlated spikes are elevated much higher as well.

Turns out the above was the "good case." Here is the bad case when we use Audio Precision's coax output to feed the M-scaler:

View attachment 216667

Good grief. What is going on here? Not only do we have the same baseline (higher) noise floor but now have distinct deterministic spikes coming out of the unit. I captured the AP and M-Scaler's computed jitter level and it is embarrassingly bad:
View attachment 216668

It is so bad that you can see the problem just looking at the waveform of jitter:

View attachment 216669

On the left we see AP analyzer's benign, very low level noise. On the right we see clearly, somewhat sinusoidal of M-scaler. I have tested $100 digital bridges that far outperform the M-Scalar on this front! As a way of reference, 500 picosecond/0.5 nanosecond is enough jitter to equal one bit of 16 bit digital audio sample. M-Scalar is outputting 8X that amount!

Fortunately any half-respecting DAC will filter this and not let it in the output but still, what is the claim to fame of M-scaler if it is not precision of its digital transformation? Let's save our frustration for other test results.

Next I connected a Topping D70S to the analyzer and captured its output by itself:
View attachment 216670

We see the great performance that we expect from this DAC. Now let's put the M-scaler in the loop:

View attachment 216671

What the heck happened here? Even in pass through mode performance of D70s is heavily degraded. We have spikes at oddball frequencies which I can't explain. I see reviewers with company blessing using M-scaler with third-party DACs. I would say be cautious, very cautious doing so.

Fortunately there was no problem using M-scaler with Hugo 2:
View attachment 216672

Then again there was no benefit to upscaling either:
View attachment 216673

And here is the response with dual Coax:
View attachment 216676

Still the same.

I should note that the Hugo 2 was running on battery for all of these tests per suggestion from the owner.

Let's go back to basics and see if the M-scaler is doing what it is supposed to be doing by running our filter test with the D70s:
View attachment 216674

It is indeed. Both 2X and 4X modes provide an ultra sharp response. However they do so at the cost of higher noise floor/lower attenuation.

I ran a very high resolution frequency response test focusing on the end of the spectrum and results are basically the same in all modes:
View attachment 216675

The bypass mode has the sharp filter and the others do not because the DAC is operating at higher sample rate. With respect to audible band up to nearly 22 kHz though, the frequency response is essentially the same. So anyone saying tonality has changed with upscaling modes needs to re-think that.

CHORD M-scaler and Hugo 2 Listening Tests
Conveniently, the switch between bypass and 2X upsampling was seamless. So I used that to perform listening tests. I say some because the button cycles to higher rates and there, it causes a glitch/pause which completely throws off your mind. Going by forward mode of bypass to 2X, I detected no difference at all. Nothing changes as far as tonality, soundstage, etc. I captured a couple of samples for you to listen as well:

Chord M-Scalar Sample 1.wav

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Chord M-Scalar Sample 2.wav

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

You can listen right in the dropbox or download them. If you are sure there is a difference, go ahead and say which one is M-scaler bypass and which is 2X.

FYI I could not run a null test with DeltaWave as there is too much clock drift and clips are not lined up. The difference shown was the same as two consecutive captures without changing anything.

Conclusions
I was very disappointed to see high noise levels and jitter on Coax outputs of such an expensive digital products. And one where its designer claims you can hear problems at 300 dBFS. Well, if you can hear that well, then maybe you can hear this jitter too so I suggest not releasing a product that performs this bad. Second, there is a serious compatibility issue with third-part DAC that I tested. Maybe it is OK with other DACs, I don't know. But grabbing a sample DAC and having such serious degradation in its performance with M-scaler is very concerning.

Putting design issues aside, I found no audible difference in upsampling with company's own DAC. As it should be. The differences in the filter are above audible band so they should not be audible. Is it nice to have a sharper filter? Sure. But I sure as heck wouldn't pay nearly $6,000 to get that.

Bottom line, I don't see a reason to own M-Scaler. It can damage the audio signal in some cases and in others, provide no audible benefit. If people think otherwise, I highly suggest performing a blind test with enough repetition to provide statistically valid results. Otherwise, the M-scaler remains as a product with no purpose.

Needless to say, I can't recommend the CHORD M-Scaler.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Q.E.D. (considering price vs. "performance"): audiophile sadomasochism exists.

 

[pavuol]

manufacturer:
"The Hugo M Scaler brings the unrivalled advantages of our ground-breaking FPGA-based WTA (Watts Transient Alignment) filtering technology to digitally connected audio devices, dramatically improving sound quality."

Audio park ranger on duty again:

 

[wwenze]

Any chance your unit is defective?

You touched on a good point. "As a key notion in the separation of science from non-science and pseudo-science, falsifiability has featured prominently in many scientific controversies and applications, even being used as legal precedent."

Falsifiability - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Or in this context, if something like a power conditioner actually does something, the manufacturer and distributor must have a team that deals with the return and repair of faulty parts that stopped doing what they are supposed to.

And the fact that instead of "you have a faulty unit", manufacturers seem to only reply with "you are measuring it incorrectly", says something about the failure rate.

 

[respice finem]

manufacturer:
"The Hugo M Scaler brings the unrivalled advantages of our ground-breaking FPGA-based WTA (Watts Transient Alignment) filtering technology to digitally connected audio devices, dramatically improving sound quality."

Audio park ranger on duty again:
View attachment 216725

The WTA (Watts Transient Alignment filtering) shortcut seems shortened- the real one would be: WTAF

 

[pavuol]

The WTA (Watts Transient Alignment filtering) shortcut seems shortened- the real one would be: WTAF

Let's just all stay calm, undramatic, rational and polite .

One important thing to point out is that 5300$ is not at all bad price. You can buy only limited amount of hi-res music for that money, whereas with this device you are equipped for life