CHORD M-Scaler Review (Upsampler)

[mansr]

Considering that sheep has hooves I’m not that convinced about them mauling you. Unless it’s very brutal indeed

That is Monty Python territory, I’d say. We all know about the killer rabbit but now we have to worry about the killer sheep as well?

Yes, they leap (or plummet) from trees like dropbears.

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

Yes, they leap (or plummet) from trees like dropbears.

Notice how they don’t so much fly as plummet…

 

[Jimster480]

If you could find the time to write numerous and lengthy posts here, and to publish videos, and Watts has time to be filmed and to write these days many posts at Head-Fi, some being lengthy, all of this to try defusing the debunking of the present expensive device,

then you will certainly be able to quickly provide the bibliographic data of the public, peer-reviewed research papers disclosing Watt's public "solid research".

I am sure that you will be delighted to do that, seeing how you nicely provided in one of your posts here the bibliographic data of three papers on group think psychology, although unsolicited and not really relevant to the present thread.

I am very much looking forward to reading Mr. Watts' solid research papers, please provide this data as quickly as you were writing your many posts.

I notice that they haven't "had the chance" to reply in the past days.

 

[srkbear]

Yes and no. Sure, SINAD values have improved spectacularly, but to what benefit? Can anyone hear the difference between a 105 dB SINAD DAC and and 120 dB one? I doubt it. The former figure was readily achievable even 15 years ago at a quite reasonable price. If it has the features one desires, there is no reason to snub a DAC based on parts from 8 years ago.


Delta-sigma has been king of audio DACs for at least 20 years. It took many audiophiles until recently to accept this, and some still haven't come around, but that's their problem.

No argument from me here—please note that I never said anything about whether these SINAD wars are anything other than a fun race to find the theoretical limit of ultra precise analog reconstruction. I think there’s a lot of hairs to split in a debate whether the TOTL DAC chip from 2014 sounds absolutely indistinguishable from this year’s model, but ultimately I support your point.

But I don’t think your point is a fair counterpoint to the one I have been making—the big picture of what I was saying got lost, again, in the de rigueur MO that often seems impossible to evade on this site, namely being instantly riddled with little gotchas picked from the granular details of how I said it. FFS can we please pause the didacticism, scientific oneupmanship and arguing for the sake of arguing for just one second here and choose to agree on just one principle that I was clearly emphasizing?

My issue from the word go has been how Chord still sells their eight year old behemoth at prices that suggest that it is somehow several orders of magnitude superior in quality AND sound than a Topping D90se—a contemporary DAC that costs 1/20th the price of the DAVE and 1/10th its cost if you throw in an a90 to make them more comparable in functionality.

Who gives a shit if they sound the same? The damn thing costs $14,000! And I do think it matters that the D90se reaches considerably beyond what it can do on the bench, whether the end results are audible or not. This loathsome company is committing downright larceny, and their exalted designer and marketing mouthpiece is not only the absolute nadir of business ethics, he’s an outright liar and scientific fraud to boot.

There, I’m done. By all means proceed to dismantle this post now, in the service of demonstrating your encyclopedic grasp of all things audio—my head hurts from having to state the same indefensible argument for the third time while fact checking every fourth word to guard against some pedant dragging me down an irrelevant rabbit hole. PEACE.

 

[Jimster480]

No argument from me here—please note that I never said anything about whether these SINAD wars are anything other than a fun race to find the theoretical limit of ultra precise analog reconstruction. I think there’s a lot of hairs to split in a debate whether the TOTL DAC chip from 2014 sounds absolutely indistinguishable from this year’s model, but ultimately I support your point.

But I don’t think your point is a fair counterpoint to the one I have been making—the big picture of what I was saying got lost, again, in the de rigueur MO that often seems impossible to evade on this site, namely being instantly riddled with little gotchas picked from the granular details of how I said it. FFS can we please pause the didacticism, scientific oneupmanship and arguing for the sake of arguing for just one second here and choose to agree on just one principle that I was clearly emphasizing?

My issue from the word go has been how Chord still sells their eight year old behemoth at prices that suggest that it is somehow several orders of magnitude superior in quality AND sound than a Topping D90se—a contemporary DAC that costs 1/20th the price of the DAVE and 1/10th its cost if you throw in an a90 to make them more comparable in functionality.

Who gives a shit if they sound the same? The damn thing costs $14,000! And I do think it matters that the D90se reaches considerably beyond what it can do on the bench, whether the end results are audible or not. This loathsome company is committing downright larceny, and their exalted designer and marketing mouthpiece is not only the absolute nadir of business ethics, he’s an outright liar and scientific fraud to boot.

There, I’m done. By all means proceed to dismantle this post now, in the service of demonstrating your encyclopedic grasp of all things audio—my head hurts from having to state the same indefensible argument for the third time while fact checking every fourth word to guard against some pedant dragging me down an irrelevant rabbit hole. PEACE.

Well said, some people on this site love to throw "gatcha's" into any argument just because they can. Especially when they don't have much else to say in the argument itself but wish to argue for the sake of arguing.

 

[srkbear]

Well said, some people on this site love to throw "gatcha's" into any argument just because they can. Especially when they don't have much else to say in the argument itself but wish to argue for the sake of arguing.

Mean Girls.

 

[sprellemannen]

I was expecting a wash, but to my surprise the Topping D90SE was superior to the DAVE in every scenario.

Not many people owning extremely expensive gear (like the DAVE) are willing to tell that its performance is inferior to gear costing a fraction of the price (and that also that this difference may be audible).

And spend most of your budget on speakers, as opposed to 50% which is what most dealers will try to tell you.

In most cases, I think that your recommendation here is correct.

@Jomungur has here shown a kind of self insight that I think is far from common among persons owning ultra-expensive components.
Furthermore, I again want to applaud him for sending the Chord-units to Amir.

It would be great if other members of this forum owning an expensive component also sent it to Amir, for instance would it be great to read reviews of products from companies like dCS, Gryphon, Burmester, Boulder, Soulution, darTZeel, EMM Labs, McIntosh, Dan D' Agostino, Audio Research etc.

 

[srkbear]

My point in that response in the comments was that Rob Watts offers solid researched (and publicly available) principles to explain why he is making the design decisions he makes. I lieu of actual evidence (not a lack of evidence) that he is wrong, I will trust what I have heard and question the claims coming from this forum that it doesn't do what it is claimed to do. I am very open to being shown otherwise.

Dude, knock off the cute patronizing—you’re pickled in Watts’ propaganda and the only thing open about you is your wallet.

 

[srkbear]

It would be great if other members of this forum owning an expensive component also sent it to Amir, for instance would it be great to read reviews of products from companies like dCS, Gryphon, Burmester, Boulder, Soulution, darTZeel, EMM Labs, McIntosh, Dan D' Agostino, Audio Research etc.

Thanks to Amir I don’t own any expensive gear except my headphones, and he’s already reviewed ‘em

 

[srkbear]

I'd respedctfully suggest we might, as most headphones go all over the place at those frequencies (either design or auditory system reflections?) and simply cranking up 15k so you can perceive it with no level checking? The plots the audiologists kindly copied and gave me show something like a 40dB drop in the mid kHz region (no wonder most speakers tended to sound sucked-out with tinsel on top to me) and only very partial recovery above. I put it down to Rhinitis but sadly that's not the case here although the latter doesn't help obviousy. The way our/my brain reacted though, was to the loss of sensitivity to reflected sounds as they're at a much lower level generally. I'll hopefully get the chance to listen to different things 'for fun' still, but critically? No chance unless there's a well known (to me) reference to directly compare.

No need to chalk it up to rhinitis—as a physician I can confidently assure you that if you’re a mammal over the age of 40, especially if you’ve been an audio enthusiast for any length of time, what cochlear hair cells you have left would disintegrate in a poof if you attempted to expose them to the decibels required for them to detect over 15,000 hz. That ship has sailed, my friend!

 

[sam_adams]

No need to chalk it up to rhinitis—as a physician I can confidently assure you that if you’re a mammal over the age of 40, especially if you’ve been an audio enthusiast for any length of time, what cochlear hair cells you have left would disintegrate in a poof if you attempted to expose them to the decibels required for them to detect over 15,000 hz. That ship has sailed, my friend!

There may yet be a lifeline to that very problem. One can only hope it arrives in time.

 

[Jimster480]

There may yet be a lifeline to that very problem. One can only hope it arrives in time.

oof, a real gamechanger to the audio world. I wonder if the treatment will cost more or less than a DAVE and this mScaler.

 

[sam_adams]

oof, a real gamechanger to the audio world. I wonder if the treatment will cost more or less than a DAVE and this mScaler.

Yes we would all have the 'golden ears' that we desire, along with the age appropriate wisdom to know what we are hearing.

 

[Marc v E]

Long post, so bear with me. I’ve had the Topping DSE90 for a week now and compared it to the DAVE. Here are my subjective impressions. I think they'll be helpful for someone following this thread and wondering “how could all the glowing Chord reviews” be wrong.

Aside on blind testing since it's so often mentioned here. Blind would be ideal but I don’t think standardized blind testing will ever be the norm in audio except by the manufacturers. It’s too impractical for a consumer. (How can you really blind test headphones anyway, all of which feel different on your head? You can only really make a mock Utopia if you’re Focal). And I can’t imagine how you would do double blind testing on audio components. I don’t think subjective tests are pointless, though. The point of blind testing is to isolate causal factors to get rid of confounders (bias being the chief one here), but there are many areas in science where you cannot blind test. You get around this by increasing your data set. You measure the tested variable under many different circumstances and then use linear regression to determine whether the “causal” influence or weight to the tested variable. The idea being that with a large enough data set, the statistical noise added by possible confounders washes out.

Ok, I didn’t do quite that, just an amateur imitation of it. I tested the Topping vs. DAVE on multiple systems using 3 headphones and 2 loudspeakers. I also got my teenage age son to help me, which was partially a blind test because he doesn’t know the value difference of the DACs. I also tried tube amps and solid states. I tried on multiple days to minimize the “new toy” factor. I even tried in different rooms because my loudspeakers are in different locations. I used balanced XLR interconnects as well as unbalanced interconnects, although one of my amps only takes RCA interconnects. I tried CDs as well as Qobuz Flacs and Tidal MQA on Roon.

I was expecting a wash, but to my surprise the Topping D90SE was superior to the DAVE in every scenario. And the more expensive the speaker, the more the difference was noticeable for both me and my son. I have no idea about quality control or build quality of the Topping, I’ve only had it a week. But sonically, no contest for me.

I was shocked. I’m not even upset about the money factor, because my sound system, which I thought already sounded great, sounds even better. I was even thinking about letting anyone who is in NYC come check it out, but perhaps a better direction is: if you can afford the DAVE, the Topping is a less than 1/10 of the cost. So buy it, and compare honestly and see what you think. Take the DAVE out for a couple of days and see if you miss them. Meanwhile, I sent the DAVE in for measurements and let's see what they say.

I list the components below. As you can see, I have more tube amps right now than solid state so maybe that was a factor.

Rather than say all the usual things about sound quality, let me just say that I’m starting to think the point of a DAC is to simply to get out of the way as cleanly as possible. I feel like the Topping DE90 does that better than the DAVE. It allows my speakers and amp to do what they’re supposed to. If you like euphonic distortions, get a nice tube amp rather than go through the the DAC to get it.

And spend most of your budget on speakers, as opposed to 50% which is what most dealers will try to tell you.

I don’t want to bash Chord. The DAVE is a great sounding DAC. But it was released in 2015. I think it has been left in the dust with some of the newer products coming out now at a much cheaper price point.

Speakers used: BW 802D4 tower, BW 805D bookshelf, Hifiman Shangrila, Hifiman Susvara, Focal Utopia
Amps: Airtight ATM-300, Primaluna EVO 400, Danatone Headspace, Peachtree Nova 500

Thank you for sharing and sending the Dave for review.

I've had a similar experience with a Topping dx7pro that I tried in my main system. I too came to the conclusion the Topping was better. However, I've noticed I've been wrong on several occasions too. Notably one that involved testing the allo digione streamer vs the chromecast where I prefered the latter because it sounded 'warmer'/slightly fuzzier. And on a second occasion where I thought music that was louder, better mastered and clearer than the original. Thinking about this led me to the conclusion that I either need to rely 100% on measurements or do testing with a switch box. Our mind is a box of tricks that easily fools us. And does this constantly, with food, sounds, sights etc based on preconceived ideas or preference of one sense above the other. Nobody is immune to it. Anyway, that's my experience so far.

Gear involved
Speakers: Beolab 9
Dac/preamp: NAD C510 (same as M51 but with a rotary volume dial afaik)

 

[voodooless]

Yes, they leap (or plummet) from trees like dropbears.

 

[Lukino]

Thank you for sharing and sending the Dave for review.

I've had a similar experience with a Topping dx7pro that I tried in my main system. I too came to the conclusion the Topping was better. However, I've noticed I've been wrong on several occasions too. Notably one that involved testing the allo digione streamer vs the chromecast where I prefered the latter because it sounded 'warmer'/slightly fuzzier. And on a second occasion where I thought music that was louder better mastered and clearer than the original. Thinking about this led me to the conclusion that I either need to rely 100% on measurements or do testing with a switch box. Our mind is a box of tricks that easily fools us. And does this constantly, with food, sounds, sights etc based on preconceived ideas or preference of one sense above the other. Nobody is immune to it. Anyway, that's my experience so far.

Nicely summed up. I have a similar experience. The more you try, the more you get involved in the placebo effects of the mind. This fact is used by companies and reviewers who tell the story of hearing some sweet smooth 3D sounds in big words. The high price will convince some of the ignorant.....Of course it's a lie....

 

[Jimster480]

Nicely summed up. I have a similar experience. The more you try, the more you get involved in the placebo effects of the mind. This fact is used by companies and reviewers who tell the story of hearing some sweet smooth 3D sounds in big words. The high price will convince some of the ignorant.....Of course it's a lie....

I have also had similar experiences but with "tour" items that my friends would get and bring to my house quite regularly.
We had amps and DAC's that cost $1000-8000 on "Tour" and we would have regular headphone meets to try them out. We were astonished multiple times when my DX7 or my other buddies D50 would stomp all over more expensive stuff.... even with the Topping A30 Amp or JDS O2 would walk all over $2000 Amps just obviously. We did listen to a few things over the years that we liked (although it wasn't source equipment) and ended up purchasing later on.

I took my setup to south florida headphone meet ups friends organized (a couple had like 30+ people turn out) and typically there would be a line of people waiting to listen to my "controversial Topping Stack". The last meet up I went to; I had just gotten the THX AAA 789 and paired it with my DX7 w/ passthrough for my O2.
Basically everyone at the meet ups wanted to listen to my setup and most really loved it. Brought their own headphones and tried it out (sometimes more than one at a time, due to the multitude of outputs). We drove other DAC's & Amps from the DX7 Coax output sometimes as well for AB testing.
Most people were really astonished to hear how "clean" my setup sounded. With most of the people showing up to the meets around that time having schiit gear, or other boutique brands sold by Moon audio. Some really expensive stuff even, and these guys were just in disbelief lol

 

[DSJR]

Not sure the 'bakeoffs' here are the same, although @Mart68 will confirm or correct that vibe as he's attended quite a few. Many here seem full of home made gear it seems.

 

[Jomungur]

Thank you for sharing and sending the Dave for review.

I've had a similar experience with a Topping dx7pro that I tried in my main system. I too came to the conclusion the Topping was better. However, I've noticed I've been wrong on several occasions too. Notably one that involved testing the allo digione streamer vs the chromecast where I prefered the latter because it sounded 'warmer'/slightly fuzzier. And on a second occasion where I thought music that was louder, better mastered and clearer than the original. Thinking about this led me to the conclusion that I either need to rely 100% on measurements or do testing with a switch box. Our mind is a box of tricks that easily fools us. And does this constantly, with food, sounds, sights etc based on preconceived ideas or preference of one sense above the other. Nobody is immune to it. Anyway, that's my experience so far.

Gear involved
Speakers: Beolab 9
Dac/preamp: NAD C510 (same as M51 but with a rotary volume dial afaik)

Agreed, the mind does play tricks. Still, it's good enough for me. A couple of funny things. I'm more relaxed with the Topping DE90 than the DAVE. Because I'm not worried about damaging an uber expensive DAC. Unconsciously I was always a little tense with the DAVE, even when switching interconnects because I didn't want to damage it. It's not just the expense, if you want to get another DAVE they are not easy to find in stock- and who wants to wait 6-8 weeks to get something fixed? I can order another Topping and get it quickly if I need one for a fraction of the price of the DAVE. This relaxed feeling helps me enjoy my music more.

Also, I like that the DE90 has full MQA functionality. The Chord does not support MQA. I'm not saying MQA makes a difference, what I mean is that just the knowing that the DE90 can do the full unfold if I want it to psychologically makes me feel better, like I'm not missing out on anything. For some reason my Roon always defaults to Tidal, where everything seems to be MQA, even though I have Qobuz too.

EDIT: I kind of envy the people here who have the absolute confidence that all these small differences between DACs, etc. don't really make a difference in perception. Personally, I often wonder whether I'm missing out soundwise when I hear about the newest thing. If you're like that, it can be worth paying a premium knowing you have something that measures really good to give you some peace of mind. I think this site shows that the premium can be a modest one, not a ripoff.

 

[mansr]

The Chord does not support MQA.

I'd like to see Rob Watts and Bob Stuart debate filter design.