Chord Hugo M Scaler - Stereophile Review (measurements also)

[EdW]

The case for upsampling in order to create a smooth frequency response up to approaching the Nyquist limit with very little beyond that is unassailable. However the the Mscaler tries to get as close as possible to a true brick wall filter by the use of a near infinite sinc reconstruction similar to the reconstruction recommended by E.T. Whittaker back in 1915 (possibly he did not have DACs in mind ). I don’t see why a decent FIR filter couldn’t do the job just as well as regards audible artefacts with a slighly less sharp brickwall and a lot less computation. There is a case for a sharper filter than most DAC chips provide? Probably not done since the extra DSP adds more opportunities for contamination of the audio and the analog CMOS processes used for DACs aren’t particularly fine geometry so the resultant DSP could use significant die area.

 

[20396]

i use audirvana upsampling to my dac maximum support 768kHz 24bit ,

quesition : is that same sense of hearing between Mscaler + TT2

MacOS ---> audirvana(linked Tidal Master) --> Matrix X-sabre Pro MQA --> A90

 

[Veri]

i use audirvana upsampling to my dac maximum support 768kHz 24bit ,

quesition : is that same sense of hearing between Mscaler + TT2

You realise your Matrix DAC already oversamples to a way higher rate than 768kHz, at all times? Don't be fooled be numbers "higher must be better".

 

[20396]

You realise your Matrix DAC already oversamples to a way higher rate than 768kHz, at all times? Don't be fooled be numbers "higher must be better".

audirvana can upsampling, not sure its good or not ,not dac

 

[Veri]

audirvana can upsampling, not sure its good or not ,not dac

DAC always does oversampling. the upsampling that you're doing is relatively pointless. At best it won't hurt anything, at worst you decrease fidelity. Your Sabre DAC upsamples to MHz range (for example 8x oversampling at 192kHz = 1.536MHz). I'm not sure what rate your DAC is oversampling at (AK4499 does 128x rate oversampling for example, thats 44kHz > 5.588MHz !). But upsampling to 768kHz in software will achieve very little.
Read https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s-up-sampling-differ-from-over-sampling.3440/

 

[Cortes]

I've been reading this thread because I have curiosity by the TT2 and Scalar. A few reviewers (at headfonia, and CA) have bought it, so at least I guess it must be good. If worse than a random Chinese DAC at $100 or a game changing product Ive not clue. Someone quoted this comment from Chord

"The Hugo M Scaler . . . takes the digital file and repairs it, adding back the information lost between the samples, then it sends the repaired file to the DAC. . . . With 705,600 samples per second, a huge amount of important information that was lost when creating the 44.1 digital file is now recovered. The more samples, the closer you get to the original analog signal. . . . The Hugo M Scaler in essence places 15 additional new musical samples in between each original musical sample, resulting in an astounding improvement in the recreation of the original music signal."

I vote it for the top stupidity written on audio/mathematics/logic written during 2020.

 

[Veri]

"adding back the information lost between the samples" this statement is simply a scam, there's no way you can get back to the original hi-res file. Terrible..

A few reviewers (at headfonia, and CA) have bought it, so at least I guess it must be good.

Not the best metric, hehe.

 

[Cortes]

"adding back the information lost between the samples" this statement is simply a scam, there's no way you can get back to the original hi-res file. Terrible..


Not the best metric, hehe.

I can agree with that, but these guys know for sure much more on audio devices than me. They write well, so they are not stupid. Expend a huge bunch of their own money on the TT2/Scalar, after auditing many products. There's something I'm missing, what?.

 

[BDWoody]

I can agree with that, but these guys know for sure much more on audio devices than me. They write well, so they are not stupid. Expend a huge bunch of their own money on the TT2/Scalar, after auditing many products. There's something I'm missing, what?.

It's that standard mixture of very little science and a heaping helping of nonsense way too common out there.

What they are describing really isn't how sampling theory works. Adding more samples doesn't help you recreate a more accurate signal.

It isn't very intuitive...

If it was a game of connect the dots, that would be different, but it isn't. The originally sampled sound wave is already able to be recreated with no loss of information within it's limits.

 

[LTig]

It's that standard mixture of very little science and a heaping helping of nonsense way too common out there.

What they are describing really isn't how sampling theory works. Adding more samples doesn't help you recreate a more accurate signal.

It isn't very intuitive...

If it was a game of connect the dots, that would be different, but it isn't. The originally sampled sound wave is already able to be recreated with no loss of information within it's limits.

Very true. They seem to claim that adding missing samples is better than the standard upscaling process which usually just inserts zero-value samples in between the real samples and then uses lowpass filtering to smooth it. The latter looks like a very strange approach but looking at this process in the frequency domain instead of the time domain makes it easier to understand. The former is an erroneous process since the value of the "missing" samples is not known (because they are lost). Therefore inserting samples with wrong values and then not performing a low pass filter results in erroneous output samples.

 

[Pritaudio]

There is a filter on the rme adi 2 dac called nos filter.
as I understand it does some sort of interpolation.
I think the m scaler does something similar but more advanced and more frequently.

 

[LTig]

There is a filter on the rme adi 2 dac called nos filter.
as I understand it does some sort of interpolation.
I think the m scaler does something similar but more advanced and more frequently.

On the ADI-2 PRO the NOS filter does neither oversampling nor any filtering at all. It's great for emitting a square pulse with fast rise time and no Gibbs effect (remember RME made it to measure its own products) but not suited for music.

 

[Veri]

There is a filter on the rme adi 2 dac called nos filter.
as I understand it does some sort of interpolation.
I think the m scaler does something similar but more advanced and more frequently.

No no no. The NOS filter stands for "NO oversampling". Whereas the m-scaler upscales at a very high-tap mathematical filter, NOS does nothing whatsoever allowing ultrasonic noise and rolling off treble by significant degree. The latter might be a reason why people might like it. RME has some EQ on their forum to correct the Slow and NOS filters back to flat FR though.

 

[mansr]

They seem to claim that adding missing samples is better than the standard upscaling process which usually just inserts zero-value samples in between the real samples and then uses lowpass filtering to smooth it.

That's how any upsampling works, Chord's included. The difference is that they use a sharper low-pass filter than most.

 

[HDavidson]

DSP software oversampling 44.1 / 16 at 176.4 / 24 or 352.8 / 24 and use the super slow roll off filter NOS (ak4497). Good result.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Again, the mathematics back up the M-Scaler.

I think that both Chord and HQ player are doing something technically interesting, but using what we in motor racing call "hairy-arsed engineering" to get a ball-park figure of what is (could be?) actually audible I played some music here and then reduced the volume until I could only just hear a sound if I concentrated hard.
It was at about -80dB.
The idea, therefore, that anybody could actually hear detail or distortion at a -80dB level whilst music is playing at normal volume at the time is completely delusional IMO. Ridiculous even.
So anybody claiming better is necessary is dreaming, and anybody claiming to hear differences between bits of kit well better than this are imagining it.
Placebo is the only credible explanation.
It is like making a new wooden gate and thinking it has to be made to within 0.001" accuracy when it and the gateposts move 1" between a wet winter and dry summer.
Bonkers.

 

[Varaderoxl1000v]

Good morning.

I read everything you write. I have the Chord tt2, and I am waiting to receive the MScaler at the end of the month. I will find out if everything you say is true, or not. I will write the results with absolute sincerity in this topic ..

 

[budje]

I don't think I've seen anyone mention this video yet. There are some others like it. What do you make of it? I believe I can hear an audible difference between the Hugo M Scalar in passthrough vs active mode. I could also be falling for sighted test bias too.

I don't see any reason for this from the perspective of "upsampling" because YouTube compresses down to 192kbps anyway. It's also hard to tell if the switches are level matched, the "engaged" segments sound a bit louder to me, but there's more to it than that too.

I'm trying to find principled reasoning as to why there's a sound difference. The whole video could be faked too, but I don't see a reason to suspect fake vs real either way.

 

[SIY]

I don't think I've seen anyone mention this video yet. There are some others like it. What do you make of it?...
I'm trying to find principled reasoning as to why there's a sound difference. The whole video could be faked too, but I don't see a reason to suspect fake vs real either way.

They're in the fashion audio market segment, so there's your reason to default to fraud and fakery- that's the core of this business.

 

[mansr]

Online videos purporting to demonstrate differences using extremely expensive audio products are _always_ faked one way or another.