I've ordered a Topping D90SE DAC and get it on Saturday. I want to compare it side by side with the DAVE now after more research in my audio systems since it's less than 1/10 of the price. This is just subjective listening tests for myself, but it shows how much I am getting disturbed by Chord's marketing claims.
I revisited the official Chord white paper, which really reads more like a marketing brochure. I've included some quotes from it, and then below them why they seem problematic. Please correct me if I'm not understanding the concepts correctly, as this stuff is new to me (I'm a lawyer, not an engineer).
1. Thirty-five years after the introduction of the CD, some would think that huge leaps forward would be improbable at this point. The Chord Hugo M Scaler proves without doubt that is not the case. It may in fact be the single greatest advancement in digital sound reproduction ever. The Hugo M Scaler offers the world’s most advanced upscaling technology, taking digital files from any source and transforming them into audio that’s virtually indistinguishable from the original analog performance.
This is impossible, right? Through upscaling or upsampling (not sure what the correct term is so I'll use them interchangeably), you cannot recreate the original analog performance from a digital file that was sampled at 44.1hz/16 bit. That is, the best you can do is remove (through sampling, filters, etc.) audible artifacts that are an inevitable byproduct of the analog to digital conversion.
2. At 44,100 samples per second, there’s a gap between samples—22 microseconds to be exact. The problem is musical timing and transient information also occurs in these gaps and whatever information that exists in the gaps is lost when creating the digital file. DACs can’t recover missing timing information—they simply miss the start of the transient. Blurring of transients is the result. That gets confusing for the ear and the brain. Which means we won’t perceive timbre or soundstage or the pitch of bass instruments properly.
This might be true, but not for the reasons stated? That is, the problem with sampling at 44,100khz is that you introduce aliasing from the folding in of frequencies above (.5 * 44,100khz), which distorts the recreated analog waveform. But the distortion is not created by the gaps between samples, the gaps are mathematically filled in by reconstructing the wave form through the inverse Fourier transform? And you can address the aliasing to a large degree through filters and perhaps upsampling.
3. The Hugo M Scaler acts like a “pre-DAC”. It takes the digital file and repairs it, adding back the information lost between the samples, then it sends the repaired file to the DAC. The M Scaler increases the sampling rate from 44,100 times per second (44.1 KHZ) by a multiple of 16, to 705,600 times per second (706.6 KHz). 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. In essence the Hugo M Scaler 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.
This is impossible? You cannot "repair" a digital file and add back information that was never there; what you can do through upscaling is mitigate sonic artifacts by shifting the Nyquist threshold to higher frequencies.
4. Rob Watts, Chord’s Digital Design Consultant, has developed his exclusive WTA (Watts Transient Alignment) technology, which incorporates the most advanced interpolation filter of its kind in the world. That mammoth processing power allows for a huge breakthrough in what’s known as tap length of the filter—to a previously unimaginable 1,015,808 taps.
Perhaps a little unfair because this was written a few years ago, but HQ Player can match or exceed the number of taps listed here? More importantly, this implies that the *way* the interpolation filter works matters more than the simple number of taps, and yet it boasts about the number of taps, not sure which factor is meaningful (or both). That is, can filter "quality" matter vs. filter quantity?
5. Simply put, taps are a measure of device’s capacity to reproduce the original waveform. The longer the tap length of the filter, the closer it gets to the original analog signal.
This is incorrect, right? Tap lengths help to a point but they yield diminishing or no returns on reconstruction of the analog waveform?
6. With this ingenious technology, the M Scaler doesn’t do a crude interpolation like all other filters or “guess” to fill in the dots between each step. It peers deep into the actual data itself, as if looking under a microscope, and reconstructs the missing waveform in its exact original form thus creating an almost perfect new digital version of the original analog performance.
This is simply false, and perhaps absurd?
7. The Hugo M Scaler quite literally represents the realization of a lifelong dream for Rob Watts. Half a million lines of code and hundreds of listening tests later, listeners can now experience something they never could before— a huge difference in resolution, bass definition, sound staging, instrument separation and focus and more varied instrument timbre.
Perhaps (it's a subjective claim), but it seems the hundreds of listening tests where done on one (or a few) persons who have an interest in promoting the device?
8. Works With Everything. The Hugo M Scaler is inserted in your system ahead of the DAC— it is not a DAC and it does not replace your DAC. The M Scaler improves the sound of all digital audio systems. It works with all digital files and streaming services and all digital source components; streamers, smart devices, computers, CD/DVD players and video systems. The M Scaler works with all DAC brands so you don’t need a Chord Electronics DAC to get the benefits of upscaling. Even if you have an older DAC that only accommodates 4 or 8 times upscaling, you will still get a very worthwhile improvement in sound quality when adding the M Scaler to your audio system.
This is just plain false, based on testing but also Rob's own posts in the Headfi forums.
I was going to include the testimonials in the white paper but decided not to because it feels like kicking a dog at this point. They are pretty outrageous though.
That will definitely not be done the traditional way.
hydrogenaud.io
troll-audio.com
