People, feel free to buy this product, but each of you will do so based on the words of the manufacturer. You won't be satisfied either because he lies many times to sell a printed circuit board for 10 dollars for XXXX. Simple. Another case is if he is willing to at least look at the measurements of the other party. They don't want the same as PS AUDIO because they know that you can't just talk in front of a real expert like AMIR. A half-truth is enough for us ordinary people..... Everyone will face the points that AMIR nicely summarized..
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CHORD M-Scaler Review (Upsampler)
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
solderdude
Grand Contributor
My take on the review.
RW says he did not read the review at the start of the vid. He is lying though as further down when something in the comments and review itself was mentioned he knew directly what a specific measurement was about. This includes the hassle about the -300dB thingy.
About the -300dB thingy. What's funny is that RW explains the dither (which cannot be turned off) and is at 24 bit level (has to be for 24 bit capable DACs) so that noise will be far, far, far, far bigger than the 'computed -300dB signal level changes.
He still claims he can 'somehow and inexplicable' hear this. Not even counting the random noise in the electronics, (recording and reproduction as well as acoustic noise in a room and headphone). He can 'hear' it because he KNOWS what signal he is listening to.|
What RW or some golden eared listener should do is a blind test and get a really high score on that. Will never happen.
The -300dB matters claim by RW is bogus ... of course ... he or some of his followers should prove it (using DCA stealth obviously).
About tonality. I think RW is completely correct on this. Tonality is frequency response AND time response related.
Not only FR and not only time response.
What would be really interesting to see if RW's circuit is really that much better is the following setup.
requires the Hugo2 + M-scaler and regular DAC (which does not have the D70s incompatibility issue)
That D70s issue was NOT mentioned in the video which is odd. RW did clearly state that the M-scaler should only be used on Chord DACs (why mention this when he did not read the review and comments? Why not read such a review anyway as the designer ?)
Anyway... record the analog output with music and compare the output of the regular DAC vs upsampled using M-scaler vs upsampled using SW and have those files scrutinized by @pkane .
Maybe the A20d ?? would be great to test this with the M-scaler but sadly probably won't do much more than 192kHz at best with SPDIF or Toslink.
Too much work would be going into that so is probably not going to happen. It could clearly show the 'timing' thing difference. Thinking about this... phase shifts would be shown as amplitude differences ( @pkane ?)
Amir... you and all other ASR members (aside from Chord owners obviously).... you guys are not listening. You only look at plots. It must be so as RW tells you it is so.
Default line of thinking in the audiophool community.
It's funny how recordings in 44.1 are 'perfect' (despite real world ADC, filtering, DSP, mastering) and can only be correctly reproduced with a RWA filter and all other DACs can not. But... RW made a recording himself and witnessed first hand what the challenges of mic placement and listener position as well as 2 different room effects are.
So yeah... recording matters but just like the MQA story... it can be brought back to what originally was ..
In the end I agree about the tonality thing RW touched and suspect most ASR members know this.
That said.. this is more of a transducer/acoustics issue than the electronics IMHO.
Freely admitting that RW filter response despite the steep roll-off is very 'sharp' and arguably better than what most other DACs produce.
Audibility needs testing (possible with 192kHz and higher capable DACs or DSD) perhaps.
Would 'complete' the set of measurements if the impulse response (and or square waves) were measured by @amirm but requires a lot of extra effort ?
RW says he did not read the review at the start of the vid. He is lying though as further down when something in the comments and review itself was mentioned he knew directly what a specific measurement was about. This includes the hassle about the -300dB thingy.
About the -300dB thingy. What's funny is that RW explains the dither (which cannot be turned off) and is at 24 bit level (has to be for 24 bit capable DACs) so that noise will be far, far, far, far bigger than the 'computed -300dB signal level changes.
He still claims he can 'somehow and inexplicable' hear this. Not even counting the random noise in the electronics, (recording and reproduction as well as acoustic noise in a room and headphone). He can 'hear' it because he KNOWS what signal he is listening to.|
What RW or some golden eared listener should do is a blind test and get a really high score on that. Will never happen.
The -300dB matters claim by RW is bogus ... of course ... he or some of his followers should prove it (using DCA stealth obviously).
About tonality. I think RW is completely correct on this. Tonality is frequency response AND time response related.
Not only FR and not only time response.
What would be really interesting to see if RW's circuit is really that much better is the following setup.
requires the Hugo2 + M-scaler and regular DAC (which does not have the D70s incompatibility issue)
That D70s issue was NOT mentioned in the video which is odd. RW did clearly state that the M-scaler should only be used on Chord DACs (why mention this when he did not read the review and comments? Why not read such a review anyway as the designer ?)
Anyway... record the analog output with music and compare the output of the regular DAC vs upsampled using M-scaler vs upsampled using SW and have those files scrutinized by @pkane .
Maybe the A20d ?? would be great to test this with the M-scaler but sadly probably won't do much more than 192kHz at best with SPDIF or Toslink.
Too much work would be going into that so is probably not going to happen. It could clearly show the 'timing' thing difference. Thinking about this... phase shifts would be shown as amplitude differences ( @pkane ?)
Amir... you and all other ASR members (aside from Chord owners obviously).... you guys are not listening. You only look at plots. It must be so as RW tells you it is so.
Default line of thinking in the audiophool community.
It's funny how recordings in 44.1 are 'perfect' (despite real world ADC, filtering, DSP, mastering) and can only be correctly reproduced with a RWA filter and all other DACs can not. But... RW made a recording himself and witnessed first hand what the challenges of mic placement and listener position as well as 2 different room effects are.
So yeah... recording matters but just like the MQA story... it can be brought back to what originally was ..
In the end I agree about the tonality thing RW touched and suspect most ASR members know this.
That said.. this is more of a transducer/acoustics issue than the electronics IMHO.
Freely admitting that RW filter response despite the steep roll-off is very 'sharp' and arguably better than what most other DACs produce.
Audibility needs testing (possible with 192kHz and higher capable DACs or DSD) perhaps.
Would 'complete' the set of measurements if the impulse response (and or square waves) were measured by @amirm but requires a lot of extra effort ?
Last edited:
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Paul's Deltawave software can correct for phase if you want it done. So if you do that and get an improvement you know within reason where the difference is between two captures of music.My take on the review.
RW says he did not read the review at the start of the vid. He is lying though as further down when something in the comments and review itself was mentioned he knew directly what a specific measurement was about. This includes the hassle about the -300dB thingy.
About the -300dB thingy. What's funny is that RW explains the dither (which cannot be turned off) and is at 24 bit level (has to be for 24 bit capable DACs) so that noise will be far, far, far, far bigger than the 'computed -300dB signal level changes.
He still claims he can 'somehow and inexplicable' hear this. Not even counting the random noise in the electronics, (recording and reproduction as well as acoustic noise in a room and headphone). He can 'hear' it because he KNOWS what signal he is listening to.|
What RW or some golden eared listener should do is a blind test and get a really high score on that. Will never happen.
The -300dB matters claim by RW is bogus ... of course ... he or some of his followers should prove it (using DCA stealth obviously).
About tonality. I think RW is completely correct on this. Tonality is frequency response AND time response related.
Not only FR and not only time response.
What would be really interesting to see if RW's circuit is really that much better is the following setup.
requires the Hugo2 + M-scaler and regular DAC (which does not have the D70 issue)
That D70 issue was NOT covered in the video which is odd. RW did clearly state that the M-scaler should only be used on Chord DACs (why mention this when he did not read the review and comments? Why not read such a review anyway as the designer ?)
Anyway... record the analog output with music and compare the output of the regular DAC vs upsampled using M-scaler vs upsampled using SW.
Too much work would be going into that so not going to happen. It could clearly show the 'timing' thing difference. Thinking about this... phase shifts would be shown as amplitude differences ( @pkane ?)
Amir... you and all other ASR members (aside from Chord owners).... you guys are not listening. You only look at plots. It must be so as RW tells you it is so.
Default line of thinking in the audiophool community.
It's funny how recordings in 44.1 are 'perfect' (despite real world ADC, filtering, DSP, mastering) and can only be correctly reproduced with a RWA filter and all other DACs can not. But... RW made a recording himself and witnessed first hand what the challenges of mic placement and listener position as well as 2 different room effects are.
So yeah... recording matters.
In the end I agree about the tonality thing RW touched and suspect most ASR members know this.
That said.. this is more of a transducer/acoustics issue than the electronics IMHO.
Freely admitting that RW filter response despite the steep roll-off is very 'sharp' and arguably better than what most other DACs produce.
Audibility needs testing (possible with 192kHz and higher capable DACs or DSD) perhaps.
Would 'complete' the set of measurements if the impulse response (and or square waves) were measured by @amirm but requires a lot of extra effort ?
There is long running thread at Gear space showing Diffmaker nulls and ranking the results. It is misguided as being done at 44.1 khz what mostly causes a device to rank poorly is phase differences due to filtering. All the files ever turned in for this are available. Paul has a list on his website for Deltawave where he has corrected for that in all the available devices in that thread which has run for years. I think over a decade.
Gearspace.com AD/DA data analysis using DeltaWave | DeltaWave documentation
DeltaWave Analysis of Gearspace AD/DA results
deltaw.org
Gearslutz changed it name to Gear Space due to wokeness.
It’s just a strawman. He doesn’t explain how his upscaler improves transients.
solderdude
Grand Contributor
I think he does. Judging by the impulse response plot that is out there this looks great.
Of course it is a strawman when he is talking about bass harmonics (he used as an example) as these do not reach half Nyquist anyway.
The tonality thing, in general, he is correct but do not believe it is an issue in DACs and electronics but is in transducers. So for the DAC it appears to be a strawman but not so in general about sound reproduction. (my take on this)
As will any other SOTA DAC. Besides, that is not what he describes as "transients" as you point out:
Exactly!
But he was talking about his M-Scaler macguffin specifically, not about anything else. Why would he otherwise have brought it up? Don't try to justify what he said by broadening the scope.
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Exactly. Of course they read /watch. But that would mean dealing with specific points raised in the reviews rather than the hand waving and misdirection usually deployed.
Like politicians. Never accepting the premise of a question they don't want to answer and instead answering a question of their own devising.
Frequency response and time response are directly couples through the impulse response of the filter. They are NOT separate subjects.My take on the review.
RW says he did not read the review at the start of the vid. He is lying though as further down when something in the comments and review itself was mentioned he knew directly what a specific measurement was about. This includes the hassle about the -300dB thingy.
About the -300dB thingy. What's funny is that RW explains the dither (which cannot be turned off) and is at 24 bit level (has to be for 24 bit capable DACs) so that noise will be far, far, far, far bigger than the 'computed -300dB signal level changes.
He still claims he can 'somehow and inexplicable' hear this. Not even counting the random noise in the electronics, (recording and reproduction as well as acoustic noise in a room and headphone). He can 'hear' it because he KNOWS what signal he is listening to.|
What RW or some golden eared listener should do is a blind test and get a really high score on that. Will never happen.
The -300dB matters claim by RW is bogus ... of course ... he or some of his followers should prove it (using DCA stealth obviously).
About tonality. I think RW is completely correct on this. Tonality is frequency response AND time response related.
Not only FR and not only time response.
What would be really interesting to see if RW's circuit is really that much better is the following setup.
requires the Hugo2 + M-scaler and regular DAC (which does not have the D70s incompatibility issue)
That D70s issue was NOT mentioned in the video which is odd. RW did clearly state that the M-scaler should only be used on Chord DACs (why mention this when he did not read the review and comments? Why not read such a review anyway as the designer ?)
Anyway... record the analog output with music and compare the output of the regular DAC vs upsampled using M-scaler vs upsampled using SW and have those files scrutinized by @pkane .
Maybe the A20d ?? would be great to test this with the M-scaler but sadly probably won't do much more than 192kHz at best with SPDIF or Toslink.
Too much work would be going into that so is probably not going to happen. It could clearly show the 'timing' thing difference. Thinking about this... phase shifts would be shown as amplitude differences ( @pkane ?)
Amir... you and all other ASR members (aside from Chord owners obviously).... you guys are not listening. You only look at plots. It must be so as RW tells you it is so.
Default line of thinking in the audiophool community.
It's funny how recordings in 44.1 are 'perfect' (despite real world ADC, filtering, DSP, mastering) and can only be correctly reproduced with a RWA filter and all other DACs can not. But... RW made a recording himself and witnessed first hand what the challenges of mic placement and listener position as well as 2 different room effects are.
So yeah... recording matters but just like the MQA story... it can be brought back to what originally was ..
In the end I agree about the tonality thing RW touched and suspect most ASR members know this.
That said.. this is more of a transducer/acoustics issue than the electronics IMHO.
Freely admitting that RW filter response despite the steep roll-off is very 'sharp' and arguably better than what most other DACs produce.
Audibility needs testing (possible with 192kHz and higher capable DACs or DSD) perhaps.
Would 'complete' the set of measurements if the impulse response (and or square waves) were measured by @amirm but requires a lot of extra effort ?
Frequency response and time response are directly couples through the impulse response of the filter. They are NOT operate topics. Unless he has introduced some non-linear processing interventions - never referred to.My take on the review.
RW says he did not read the review at the start of the vid. He is lying though as further down when something in the comments and review itself was mentioned he knew directly what a specific measurement was about. This includes the hassle about the -300dB thingy.
About the -300dB thingy. What's funny is that RW explains the dither (which cannot be turned off) and is at 24 bit level (has to be for 24 bit capable DACs) so that noise will be far, far, far, far bigger than the 'computed -300dB signal level changes.
He still claims he can 'somehow and inexplicable' hear this. Not even counting the random noise in the electronics, (recording and reproduction as well as acoustic noise in a room and headphone). He can 'hear' it because he KNOWS what signal he is listening to.|
What RW or some golden eared listener should do is a blind test and get a really high score on that. Will never happen.
The -300dB matters claim by RW is bogus ... of course ... he or some of his followers should prove it (using DCA stealth obviously).
About tonality. I think RW is completely correct on this. Tonality is frequency response AND time response related.
Not only FR and not only time response.
What would be really interesting to see if RW's circuit is really that much better is the following setup.
requires the Hugo2 + M-scaler and regular DAC (which does not have the D70s incompatibility issue)
That D70s issue was NOT mentioned in the video which is odd. RW did clearly state that the M-scaler should only be used on Chord DACs (why mention this when he did not read the review and comments? Why not read such a review anyway as the designer ?)
Anyway... record the analog output with music and compare the output of the regular DAC vs upsampled using M-scaler vs upsampled using SW and have those files scrutinized by @pkane .
Maybe the A20d ?? would be great to test this with the M-scaler but sadly probably won't do much more than 192kHz at best with SPDIF or Toslink.
Too much work would be going into that so is probably not going to happen. It could clearly show the 'timing' thing difference. Thinking about this... phase shifts would be shown as amplitude differences ( @pkane ?)
Amir... you and all other ASR members (aside from Chord owners obviously).... you guys are not listening. You only look at plots. It must be so as RW tells you it is so.
Default line of thinking in the audiophool community.
It's funny how recordings in 44.1 are 'perfect' (despite real world ADC, filtering, DSP, mastering) and can only be correctly reproduced with a RWA filter and all other DACs can not. But... RW made a recording himself and witnessed first hand what the challenges of mic placement and listener position as well as 2 different room effects are.
So yeah... recording matters but just like the MQA story... it can be brought back to what originally was ..
In the end I agree about the tonality thing RW touched and suspect most ASR members know this.
That said.. this is more of a transducer/acoustics issue than the electronics IMHO.
Freely admitting that RW filter response despite the steep roll-off is very 'sharp' and arguably better than what most other DACs produce.
Audibility needs testing (possible with 192kHz and higher capable DACs or DSD) perhaps.
Would 'complete' the set of measurements if the impulse response (and or square waves) were measured by @amirm but requires a lot of extra effort ?
Only if you burn them in the correct direction. Otherwise the electrons don't line up properly (yes, I've heard that too!)
What about quantum coupling?
bidn
Active Member
I agree with those who said that Rob Watts lied when he stated that he hadn't read the review.
Also he quite knowingly rehash a lot of bogus in that awful video.
There was a discussion (I think it was in the Hugo 2 thread?) and a consensus coming down to two possibilities :
1. Either he is a a willful liar and deceiver
2. Or he is truly self-deluded, believing his own technical nonsense about his products.
This video may surely be helpful for his uncritical fanbase,
but for me it sadly showed that possibility 1 is the reality, showing him to be a willful liar and deceiver, knowingly abusing customers with a lot of unfounded, pseudo technical hocus pocus, allowing the Chord company to extort huge amounts of money from them.
Luckily his vastly overpriced devices work fine and are quite superior to big scams like the TotalDAC.
Also he quite knowingly rehash a lot of bogus in that awful video.
There was a discussion (I think it was in the Hugo 2 thread?) and a consensus coming down to two possibilities :
1. Either he is a a willful liar and deceiver
2. Or he is truly self-deluded, believing his own technical nonsense about his products.
This video may surely be helpful for his uncritical fanbase,
but for me it sadly showed that possibility 1 is the reality, showing him to be a willful liar and deceiver, knowingly abusing customers with a lot of unfounded, pseudo technical hocus pocus, allowing the Chord company to extort huge amounts of money from them.
Luckily his vastly overpriced devices work fine and are quite superior to big scams like the TotalDAC.
solderdude
Grand Contributor
Filters and electronics yes couples, transducers not so. In that sense it is correct.
Of course in the case of filters the type of filter and how this is done can change a lot.
Let's be honest... the reconstruction filters in Chord DACs are exemplary and near 'ideal' when looking at the sampling theorem.
The real question is how good of a filter is needed to get good sound and when is it transparent.
Overkill is not always needed.
solderdude
Grand Contributor
Consider he is believing his own technical views and sometimes uses some 'lies' that go down well with his fanbase (Chord believers/buyers).
The latter is easy... listen and let RW do the technical things for you
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But how much of that is Rob Watts trying to create something that is complex so most people will not feel up to questioning him on any of it? It is not just good, it is not just a heroic way of filtering, it is something special that few people could understand like Rob Watts does or so the tale goes.Consider he is believing his own technical views and sometimes uses some 'lies' that go down well with his fanbase (Chord believers/buyers).
The latter is easy... listen and let RW do the technical things for you
Or maybe it is more like the story of the Norden Bomb Sight from WWII.
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solderdude
Grand Contributor
Tales are just that. Engineering excellence is just that. Let's all agree that the Chord filters are exemplary. Regardless of the marketing bit and delusional thinking around those products.
The audibility of this 'over engineering' is a different matter though.
I could not detect a sonic difference between the Mojo I had and my UMC204HD when level matched (not using DCA Stealth though
)
solderdude
Grand Contributor
That does not mean that tonality is only frequency response related and not time domain which are related but not always go hand in hand.
Tranducers are non-linear and therefore time and frequency could become decoupled - but that's not relevant to the MScaler-DAC discussion is it? Unless Watts is claiming his kit corrects downstream transducer problems??
solderdude
Grand Contributor
You are talking about the filter only, I am talking about tonality of an entire reproduction system in general.
Besides... it should be clear that the Chord filter does this 'technically' better than your average DAC chip.
Only to be rivaled by using sharp filters in software with plenty of upsampling and then used with 'regular' DACs.
The audibility of this 'closer to perfection' filtering/upsampling is another matter. I could not tell Chord apart from a cheap DAC when level matched and blind tested.
That does not mean someone with much younger ears than me and training as to what to listen for could not tell the difference in a well performed blind test.
One thing is evident... RW's hearing does not reach Nyguist at 44.4kHz any more.
Besides... it should be clear that the Chord filter does this 'technically' better than your average DAC chip.
Only to be rivaled by using sharp filters in software with plenty of upsampling and then used with 'regular' DACs.
The audibility of this 'closer to perfection' filtering/upsampling is another matter. I could not tell Chord apart from a cheap DAC when level matched and blind tested.
That does not mean someone with much younger ears than me and training as to what to listen for could not tell the difference in a well performed blind test.
One thing is evident... RW's hearing does not reach Nyguist at 44.4kHz any more.
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