Chords New M -Scaler

[BigAlMc]

Just read all ten pages of this thread and not one of you bozo's answered the all important question! Will this thing improve @BigAlMcs system! ?

 

Short answer I suspect is not without significant changes, as I'm not even close to being willing to consider parting with my Directstream DAC and because I have a heavily optimized USB flow.

 

But would appreciate some more expert input on the following. The M-Scaler sounds very impressive but it has USB input but no USB output. Therefore I could potentially put it after my TX-USBultra but not before.

 

So if I have a TX-USBultra (clocked by an SoTM OCX-10 reference clock) providing a very, very nice USB signal to my DAC. In theory would feeding that USB signal into an M-Scaler have potential benefits or be a dumbass idea?

 

Would the M-Scaler take that very nice USB signal and scale it to 386Khz or whatever making it even nicer? Or would the M-Scaler completely reclock/rejig the signal to the extent that the efforts (money spent!) on the TX-USB-Ultra/OCX-10 were rendered pointless or lost?

 

Cheers,

Alan

[BigAlMc]

1 minute ago, adamdea said:

You have to weigh up the relative benefits of introducing inaudible jitter with the M-scaler as against the very real danger that by not using it you will leave in inaudible images at mulitples of 2x the upsampled frequency of your dac due to its using zero of first order hold approximation in the next stage of upsampling for sd modulation.

which one has the prettier box?

 

Dude I thought you and I were in the same ballpark if not page when we posted at pretty much the same time referring to USB. Guess not! 

 

The Chord defo has the prettier box. It's very cute. 

 

Question stands if anyone wishes to opine with more than sarcasm. 

 

Cheers, 

Alan

 

[BigAlMc]

21 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said:

The M-Scaler is really built for Chord DAC's already made to take advantage of it's full abilities.  Personally I wouldn't recommend it for any other DAC at this point.  

 

Thanks Elvia, 

 

Yup - I feared as much. The Chord Dave is probably the only DAC I would consider swapping my Directstream for - if I were ready, which I'm not. 

 

The Directstream with its upsampling to DSD is probably a particularly bad synergy with the M-Scaler. 

 

Still an intriguing bit of kit tho. 

 

Cheers, 

Alan

[BigAlMc]

10 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said:

If your going to spend 4k pounds for an m-scaler, then you might as well get a Qutest or Hugo 2 to take full advantage of it.  Otherwise TT2 or DAVE are the other choices.

 

I was very impressed with the QuTest at a hifi show earlier this year. For the money it sounded very natural and very nice. But I've too much love for PS Audio and my Directstream to even consider such, er, infidelity ? at this stage.

 

Anyways risking going off-topic here. Was just hoping for some insight into the relative synergies of super upscaling vs super clocking. 

 

Cheers, 

Alan

[BigAlMc]

39 minutes ago, EnjoyTheMusicNow said:

 

Did you ever get a response to your question? I have the same question. I have the SOtM master clock and SMS200 ultra neo and an M scaler on order. Trying to figure out if anyone has used and M scaler with the SOtM USBultra and master clock.

 

Not really. There was a suggestion that the M scaler makes the most sense with a Chord dac. But the combo of super clocking and super scaling wasnt really opined on.

 

Be interesting to hear how you get on.

 

Cheers,

Alan