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@amirm I've signed up here at the encouragement of some of your subscribers to raise a few questions about the measurements of the M-Scaler. For those who haven't seen my video where I interviewed Rob Watts to ask him about some of the results in the measurements you produced, my intentions are as follows:
I should add before I continue that I may use the wrong terminology or (more likely) avoid it altogether. My aim is to discuss the concepts, not get caught up on whether I used the right specific word.
- I am not looking to make anyone right or wrong - I am seeking open discussion for clarity and exploration of what I believe to still be some ambiguous areas of measurements and their relation to human auditory perception
- I am asking these questions to explore, not to criticise and I openly acknowledge that I do not have an engineering background or qualification. For the record, my primary qualifications and studies are in hearing and speech (speech pathology/therapy or pre-audiology) and organisational psychology
- I am writing a full explanation of the concepts I am discussing for clarity of my perspective, not to suggest that anyone reading it doesn't understand
With that said, let's start with one specific measurement (or conclusion) that I felt was misleading in relation to an upsampler like the M-Scaler - specifically the performance with the 1kHz test tone. My belief is that an upsampler's purpose is to convert the incoming signal (let's say 48kHz) to a higher sample rate (ideally 768kHz in the case of the M-Scaler). In doing so, every frequency being received in the digital input signal should be faithfully recreated with no alterations to the frequencies in terms of frequency response.
As I understand it, there are two potential benefits of upsampling:
So, with all that in mind, I thought it was misleading to criticise the M-Scaler for providing no benefit when upsampling at 2x to 4x with a 1kHz tone. That is 100% accurate performance as far as I understand it. What benefits would you expect to see from an upsampler with a 1kHz test tone?
- That it improves the available range in which to apply noise shaping to push processing noise outside the audible band and allow for steeper attenuation filters
- In the specific case of the M-Scaler, the purpose stated by Chord / Rob Watts is to improve the timing accuracy of transients in a musical signal (i.e. where the DAC is reconstructing the rapid fluctuations of the output waveform of complex musical signals)
Welcome. If I were you I would be more interested in the $14k Chord device that doesnt seem to live up to expectations https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/chord-dave-review-dac-hp-amp.35974/ than the $4k device that no one seems to know how to prove the worth of.