chord 1,000,000 taps

[philiphifi]

hi

can an expert explain to me what taps are used for in chord products? Whenever I demo their products, the sound tended to be analytical and thin yet it is claimed that the sound is more accurate than others particularly with the m-scaler 1m taps.

What are these taps compared to the traditional analogue filters and is it true that chord sound is the most accurate? (I hope not!)

 

[davidsrsb]

Accuracy in digital filters improves with more taps.
You get diminishing returns beyond a point and recent Chord designs have in my opinion turned this into a marketing gimmick

 

[Mike Hughes]

Is there some technical conformation you can point to with regard to diminishing returns and the point that starts to occur?

Wholly agree it’s a marketing gimmick at this point but equally I don’t see the evidence for the above assertion.

 

[philiphifi]

when you say digital filter, i presume you mean the equivalence of trying to reconstruct a brickwall analogue filter at 20k. i.e. more taps means a sharper brickwall filter?

 

[RoA]

No idea about a trillion or whatever taps but Mojo 2 user here. Superb

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

hi

can an expert explain to me what taps are used for in chord products? Whenever I demo their products, the sound tended to be analytical and thin

That’s also my experience of the Chord sound, but I tend to lay the blame at the amps, not the DAC.

 

[John Phillips]

... can an expert explain to me what taps are used for in chord products? Whenever I demo their products, the sound tended to be analytical and thin yet it is claimed that the sound is more accurate than others particularly with the m-scaler 1m taps.

What are these taps compared to the traditional analogue filters and is it true that chord sound is the most accurate? (I hope not!)

Broadly, the number of taps refers to the number of digital signal samples used in calculating the output of a digital filter applied to those samples. This is a low-pass filter used in a DAC to "reconstruct" the smooth original analogue signal (which you want) and reject signals like aliases (which you don't want). More taps means:

• Wider pass-band response with lower frequency response error (to get closer to the original signal)
• Greater stop-band rejection (to ensure less of what you don't want)
• Smaller transition band between pass-band and stop-band (ideally this should be of zero width).

And yes, Chord's way of doing things in its DACs is conventionally correct, assuming the original signal's anti-alias filtering, sampling and conversion to digital was done by the studio according to conventional theory.

So, more taps does equal more accuracy. But better accuracy does not always mean better enjoyment.

Also humans just don't hear audio differences when they become small enough. I don't know anyone who has practical filter design experience who thinks you need anywhere near Chord's tap counts (even in their products from way back) to do better than human hearing capability.

 

[camverton]

Accuracy in digital filters improves with more taps.
You get diminishing returns beyond a point and recent Chord designs have in my opinion turned this into a marketing gimmick

Yes, you get diminishing returns and those differences when comparing the “sound” become very small as you go up the Chord range.

For me the benefit comes when I stop trying to analyse the sound and settle down to listen to music, then I find that instead of being occasionally irritated in a way that distracts me from the music to wondering why the sound is a bit off I just enjoy the music.

I find that the best hifi is that which gets closest to the original performance (recording and genre permitting) but also doesn’t distract or irritate from the music. Of course, we are all irritated by different things hence why many people can’t understand or hear what the fuss is about with an m scaler whilst others find it brilliant for restoring the best aspects of analogue sound without the practical drawbacks of vinyl or tape.

Something to try for oneself at length, preferably in a very good system which doesn’t mask its contribution to the sound. If it doesn’t make any difference perhaps time to shrug one’s shoulders and be thankful that one doesn’t need to spend £4k but not time to dismiss it as a gimmick or something that is without value. It’s curious that certain objectivist forums pillory Chord for getting closer to ideal conversion. In the end it’s down to what is audible and whether our minds perceive it and in that respect we are all different.

 

[philiphifi]

This wasn't a debate on sound quality but a question on the technicality of Chord's approach to filtering. From what i can gather from the answers, they are trying to reconstruct a brick wall filter. Whether or not better filter means a better (or more accurate) sound is another question altogether.

 

[Brennus]

As others say, more taps give a more accurate reproduction of the original analogue signal. I have progressed from a Chord 2qute to a TT2 them adding an Mscaler. Music has got more natural and accurate. I regularly go to live classical and jazz performances so I have a constant reference to the real thing. The TT2 and Mscaler do not sound “Thin and analytical”

 

[camverton]

This wasn't a debate on sound quality but a question on the technicality of Chord's approach to filtering. From what i can gather from the answers, they are trying to reconstruct a brick wall filter. Whether or not better filter means a better (or more accurate) sound is another question altogether.

And yet you make reference to sound quality in your opening post .

 

[Alex S]

However many taps the 2Qute has is enough for me.

 

[Fourlegs]

That’s also my experience of the Chord sound, but I tend to lay the blame at the amps, not the DAC.

yes indeed that is rather my experience as well.

 

[HiFiman]

I’m tapped around the million mark sounds pretty good

 

[hifi-dog]

I’m not sure whether the increase in taps or the removal of the output caps of mojo 2 from mojo has made an appreciable difference, but either way it’s positive . Is also say the same I’d qutest compared to 2qute.

 

[Hazelberry]

What are “taps” in a digital context? I’ve never heard of them before.

 

[colasblue]

I bought the original DAC64 because it was the first thing I ever heard that made digital reproduction sound acceptable. The taps theory sort of came with it.

Unfortunately my DAC64 broke down (was repaired for free under warranty) but being used to Naim reliability I was a bit unimpressed and shortly afterwards came across the original Benchmark DAC.

To me that was as good in every way and substantially cheaper so I "sidegraded" and sold the used DAC64 for more than the new price of the BM. Obviously the BM has a rather more normal tap count.

I'm now on a DAC3 and completely happy with it. Each revision of the BM has been an upgrade but 2 to 3 was fairly small.

I think the current marketing of realtime upscaling with huge numbers of taps is very questionable and see no reason why similar processing couldn't be done offline by a decent CPU or GPU at much lower cost.

 

[philiphifi]

And yet you make reference to sound quality in your opening post .

it wans't meant to opine that the Chord sound is bad or anything (on the contrary). It's about the claim that more taps means a more accurate sound. If this is true then it means that my (and many other dacs) sound production is not accurate.

 

[ryder]

Whenever I demo their products, the sound tended to be analytical and thin yet it is claimed that the sound is more accurate than others particularly with the m-scaler 1m taps.

I have the QBD76 which is rather low in taps but sounds great. I find the Chord to have an airy, detailed and 3-dimensional sound which are all positive attributes to me. It made music sound more natural and accurate than DACs that sound warmer and fuller with a bunched up presentation as percussion will mostly sound less realistic with reduced air and warmer tone. In other words, the relatively thinner sound of the Chord works in favour for me as fuller or warmer DACs sound less accurate or enjoyable.

I don't have experience with the latest Chord DACs such as Dave + M scaler which is supposedly superior with their higher taps count but agree with some posters above that the rest of the components in the system such as amp and/or speakers may have contributed more to an analytical, thin or bright sound.

 

[Werner]

What are “taps” in a digital context? I’ve never heard of them before.

PCM digital audio is governed by the sampling theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem), and that latter formally proves that the reconstruction of the sampled signal will be 'perfect' in the band below Fs/2 when the Sinc(x) function (or sin(x)/x) is used as the reconstruction (low-pass, anti-imaging) filter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinc_function

The sinc function is a single sinusoid peak with wiggles to both sides of it in time, damping out the farther removed one is from the center peak. Sinc stretches back from the Big Bang to Armageddon.

In digital (low-pass) fitlering, using oversampling, Sinc is approximated by storing a number of the function's values along the time line. Each such value can be named a 'tap'. (Not exactly so, but you get the idea.)

Is there some technical conformation you can point to with regard to diminishing returns and the point that starts to occur?

Wholly agree it’s a marketing gimmick at this point but equally I don’t see the evidence for the above assertion.

It is an obvious and trivial fact from mathematics. I doubt anyone would even have done the effort of writing this out to laymen.

As the function values of Sinc quickly approach zero when moving a way from the peak, original samples that far from the peak will ever contribute less to the reconstructed output signal. The original Philips 4 x oversampling filter in the early 80s had a few tens of taps, perhaps slightly over 100 (don't remember). Later over/upsampling filters went to a few 100, at which time the summed far-out samples' contributions would fall below the quantisation noise inherent to the DAC. As this noise is physically limited to 20-22 bits equivalent at best you have a clear limit here.

Even so the error incurrent by truncating (actually windowing or, gulp, apodising) a Sinc function early translates in a less steep transition of the filter when viewed in the frequency domain. You can see this clearly yourself when playing with the filter settings of a software tool like iZotope.

You can also glean a lot from the 'transition' and 'impulse' views of this site that compares tens of sample rate convertors: http://src.infinitewave.ca/


Back in 2008, on sabbatical, I played some time with oversampling and downsampling filter designs, thinking there might be a market for ultra-high-accuracy convertors. I went into the low millions of taps (IIRC), but in the end it was not worth it. At any rate, products like iZotope saw the light of day and that was it. I went back to my normal business, which tends to have a bit more (positive) impact on mankind than trying to fit millions of angels on the top of a tap.