I feel for the guy who let you borrow it. Such a shame.
I know, I'm weeping in shame. How can I face my kids when I tell them they can no longer afford to go to college because of that M Scaler...
Just kidding, of course. It's not a big deal. First World problems. Sure, it's annoying, but I've made worse bets and lost. And that's what a lot of high end audio devices are, they are bets. Most of them don't work. But some do. It's the price you pay if you want to be an early adopter, you should see all the e ink and RLCD monitors I have accumulated because that's a technology I am very interested in (monitors without backlight). A total indulgence, I know.
I cannot sell the M Scaler in good conscience (see below on transparency) so I will keep it. Maybe even use it; I mean it's a sunk cost now and I detected no degradation in sound from it (whatever the degradation of signal that Amir is referring to, I can't hear it, although as I mentioned above I can't say I notice a difference right now not having it).
I still don't have as hard a line against the M Scaler as many posting here. My own takeaways after thinking about Amir's review are more nuanced:
1- I'm disappointed in Chord's lack of transparency. They should not have marketed this device as something to use for non-Chord DACs. And it is marketed this way, look at the website. Rob Watts own comments clearly indicate he designed this specifically for the Chord DACs. I'm not blaming him personally for this decision; I know that there's a lots of decisions with these things and could easily see the hand of marketing/corporate to insist that the device.
2- It's clear the 16x is the intended mode. It feels like the 2x and 4x modes were just thrown in to accommodate other DACs. They should have been transparent about this. Again, the tone of Rob Watts' comments indicates he doesn't really feel these modes are important.
3- I've seen some people post here to the effect that they are not going to buy a Chord product against because of the M Scaler review. To me, that is as irrational thinking as what they accuse the people on the Headfi forums. You can make good products and have a dud. It doesn't take away from your other products, assuming they can stand by themselves as having good quality. I have Chord DACs, I like them. I like the Chord 2Go as well as a streaming device. Maybe Amir will eviscerate the Hugo 2 if he looks at it again and make me question my judgment but let's see.
4- I'm not going to conclude that Rob Watts is a fraud. How would I know? I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. People can believe their own dreams, you know, even when they're misguided. Especially when they put a lot of time into them. Even the smartest of us can fall for the simple fallacy that all progress scales linearly (40,000 taps good; 1,000,000 taps must be amazing!). However, here I believe Amir is right, blind testing can provide a useful correction for the maverick inventors who often do spark innovation. It's an easy thing to implement as part of a product development phase, yet for some reason people resist it.
5- I'm also staying open to the possibility of impacts of ultrasonic frequencies that might be affected by things like hi-res audio and upscaling. I'm not saying that humans can hear ultrasonic frequencies. But there is growing evidence that ultrasonic frequencies can impact how we feel. No nothing is established yet in terms of audio. But there's enough studies out there that it's not a preposterous notion, people who are exposed to constant levels of ultrasonic noise reporting fatigue, sickness, etc. One of the things in audio that people notice is listening fatigue. It's not clear what causes it. It's also not something you can easily blind test, because it takes effect after, say, 30-45 minutes of listening to music. When people say they prefer the M Scaler 16x sound (I can't say I'm one of them), perhaps they are referring to something like this, the music is less fatiguing. I don't think this is testable at all at the moment. Still, I don't want to just dismiss it for that reason; I'm not a logical positivist!
6- After all that though, I would ask someone who wants to buy an M Scaler why they just shouldn't start with the HQ Player first and see if it makes any difference at all. And go from there.
7- I saw that Amir posted two sound files, one sampled at bypass and the other at 2x. Is that a fair thing to do? I mean does it accurately capture the signal coming out to the M Scaler (I don't have the technical wherewithal to know). If so, I have to wonder why Chord just doesn't do this on their own website. Let people download an upsampled sound file after the M Scaler processes it at 16x, and then the original sample, and let people decide. If it's as good as Chord thinks it is, then it should sell itself.
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