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The new Chord Mscaler officially has a name.

Fourlegs

Fourlegs

Trade: WAVE High Fidelity digital cables
There is a video interview with John Franks and Rob Watts that has just been published where Chord reveal that the new Choral range Mscaler to match the Dave is called the Quartet.

It is not entirely clear whether this will be a two box device with a separate power supply or whether they were discussing the new Ultima DAC that is on the way.

John Franks was particular in saying how the new Mscaler for the Dave makes the Dave sound absolutely incredible but I guess he would say that!

There are some biggish hifi shows coming up and I guess there will be a more formal announcement at one of them.

It is exciting times though for us Dave owners.
 
I thought most DAVE owners had already sold up in anticipation and were temporarily "roughing it" with some alternative product.

Or did they sell up after the ASR review of the DAVE? Its credibility was rather badly damaged.
 
Oh I don't know, they seem to quite like Eversolo and SMSL too.

I owned the original DAC64 and at the time it was the best thing out there, but had no issues moving through the full series of Benchmark DACs to an incredibly inexpensive Topping D90SE with an upgrade in SQ each time.

I might have stuck with Chord if mine hadn't broken down, but given it's one of only two pieces of seriously expensive HiFi electronics I've owned that's ever broken down I lost confidence. The other piece was the TAG DVD32R which I bought with it!

I seriously doubt Chord can produce anything that's remotely reasonable VFM compared with the Topping, and possibly not even actually anything that sounds better.

The difference between £899 and £50,000 seems to be getting vanishingly small these days I suspect.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to take the manufacturers of mega money DACs at all seriously IMHO and I'm clearly not the only person to think so.

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Topping D90SE DAC Review - The Absolute Sound

Steven Stone discovers the Topping D90SE, a perfect example of just how good today's inexpensive DACs have become.
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You pays yer money….

I’ve had that D90, pretty much all the Chord stuff post DAC64, and loads of others, stopped buying/demoing a year ago when I found something that’ll work for me long term, so not had the latest buzz kit like the A6/A8/Gustard etc.

Diminishing returns kicks in with digital for sure, way way quicker than analogue sources, but there are differences and I’m OK paying the extra for small gains and better UX, build, aesthetics etc. Hi-Fi has always been costly getting the last wee bit of improvement.

Of all the ChiFi gear ASR was banging on about with their SINAD BS, the Matrix Sabre stood out (the one in the middle) surprisingly heavy/well put together, actually preferred it to a Vega G2, D90 and a TT2.

 
colasblue said:
I thought most DAVE owners had already sold up in anticipation and were temporarily "roughing it" with some alternative product.

Or did they sell up after the ASR review of the DAVE? Its credibility was rather badly damaged.
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If I’m not mistaken the MScaler was replaced with offline software upsampling.
 
tuga said:
If I’m not mistaken the MScaler was replaced with offline software upsampling.
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What are the facts, assuming anyone actually knows, of how many/percentage of m scaler owners changed to offline software upsampling. There was a bit of internet chatter but not enough to draw any conclusions.

As for ASR’s review of the Chord Dave, not to mention the flawed methodology of their m scaler test, how many people who bought a Dave would be remotely interested in their way of assessing anything. I’m guessing that people who buy the more expensive Chord items are more interested in how it sounds within their system and to their ears rather than the beliefs of, as Angus puts it, a measurement cult. Not that there is anything wrong with measuring things when correlated with listening tests done without preconceived bias.
 
camverton said:
What are the facts, assuming anyone actually knows, of how many/percentage of m scaler owners changed to offline software upsampling. There was a bit of internet chatter but not enough to draw any conclusions.

As for ASR’s review of the Chord Dave, not to mention the flawed methodology of their m scaler test, how many people who bought a Dave would be remotely interested in their way of assessing anything. I’m guessing that people who buy the more expensive Chord items are more interested in how it sounds within their system and to their ears rather than the beliefs of, as Angus puts it, a measurement cult. Not that there is anything wrong with measuring things when correlated with listening tests done without preconceived bias.
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Well chord have been saying recently tha sales of the Dave have remained strong. I doubt that the measurement cult website has had any effect on that whatsoever.

I have tried the offline upsampling as an alternative to the current Mscaler and I even bought a license so I could fully try it out. The sound is good but the big issue is that it requires a powerful computer and even then takes a very long time to process an album. At the time that I dipped out this was hours per album. One really has got to be at the fanatical end of the hobby to do that. Also of course there are impossibilities to using it with say Radio 3 on the beeb which I listen to a lot.

If the new Mscaler for the Dave does take the Dave to new places in terms of sound then I expect it’s sales to be very strong indeed and also probably swell the Dave sales. As to price I would imagine that a main competitor might be the dCS Rossini Apex at the thick end of £30k and it will be interesting to see how the Dave sounds with the new Quartet Mscaler compared to that. Although the Rossini Apex is a great sounding dac I already preferred the Dave plus original Mscaler so I am looking forward to trying the Quartet Mscaler.
 
Hours of processing before you can listen to an album? That really is for the fanatical end of hifi as an hobby and would, for me, seriously get in the way of listening to music. I felt much the same about HQ Player, sounded great but when I tried it a pain to use and no surprise that people opt for the fit and forget m scaler.

I suppose the real question is does anyone need anything better than the current m scaler with either Dave or TT2. It may be better for someone with very keen hearing, a highly revealing system and deep pockets but for the less obsessive, not to mention less well healed I doubt that a music lover needs to have much fear of missing out! Nonetheless it is good that designers are pushing the limits but there is a danger that reported “improvements” (even when real, often exaggerated) can make people needlessly dissatisfied with their own setup. But hey, making people think they need something is business…
 
camverton said:
What are the facts, assuming anyone actually knows, of how many/percentage of m scaler owners changed to offline software upsampling. There was a bit of internet chatter but not enough to draw any conclusions.
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There’s more than just a bit of chatter over at Computer Audiophile. And most of that software users seem to be Chord owners. But I don’t have the numbers.

I support the idea of off-DAC upsampling, although I prefer to use a PC instead of an audio upsampler.
I think that the double S/PDIF coax is a daft idea though… ASR measurements corroborate my opinion
 
@camverton I suspect that few of us would think that our systems are deficient and need to be upgraded and there is always the aspect that ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ and we would perhaps be well advised not to do any comparisons if we don’t want to become dissatisfied with anything in our systems.

However the reality is that there are often sound gains that can be made and part of the fun of the hobby is phaffing about changing stuff here and there to see what difference it makes. With my Antipodes streamer for instance it can utilise various pre loaded different player and server apps and it has been a pleasant diversion to hear the sometimes significant differences in sound quality between them. It is all part of the fun.
 
tuga said:
There’s more than just a bit of chatter over at Computer Audiophile. And most of that software users seem to be Chord owners. But I don’t have the numbers.

I support the idea of off-DAC upsampling, although I prefer to use a PC instead of an audio upsampler.
I think that the double S/PDIF coax is a daft idea though… ASR measurements corroborate my opinion
Click to expand...
It would be interesting to know what percentage of m scalers users have sold their m scaler and moved to software upscaling as a long term solution, which is obviously different to just trying something out for interests sake.

What is the double s/pdif coax thing you mention? Do you mean the dual BNC connection between m scaler and DAC? If so I wouldn’t put much credence on the flawed ASR m scaler review.
 
Even though I am not a pfaffaer, I do like to try to improve the performance of my system from time to time.
I would expect a new chord upsampler to provide some level of improvement in the performance of the Dave, there seems to be scope for improvement in the MScaler and chips have become cheaper and/or more powerful in the meantime.
 
tuga said:
There’s more than just a bit of chatter over at Computer Audiophile. And most of that software users seem to be Chord owners. But I don’t have the numbers.

I support the idea of off-DAC upsampling, although I prefer to use a PC instead of an audio upsampler.
I think that the double S/PDIF coax is a daft idea though… ASR measurements corroborate my opinion
Click to expand...
I was part of the beta assessment group for the software so am aware of much of the chatter. One reason why many seem to be Dave owners is simply that it sounds so darned good with a Dave.

You may think that double S/PDIF is a ‘daft idea’ but in the Dave group of users there is a consensus that the double spdif sounds the best into Dave, considerably better for instance than USB and so when using a streamer with usb only output you will often find that Dave owners convert the usb to dual bnc spdif using an SRC.DX converter.

It will be interesting to see what outputs the new Quartet Mscaler has but I suspect it will stick with dual bnc as well as say usb.
 
camverton said:
It would be interesting to know what percentage of m scalers users have sold their m scaler and moved to software upscaling as a long term solution, which is obviously different to just trying something out for interests sake.

What is the double s/pdif coax thing you mention? Do you mean the dual BNC connection between m scaler and DAC? If so I wouldn’t put much credence on the flawed ASR m scaler review.
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Indeed. I’ve seen a few MScalers in the classifieds but that doesn’t mean people have replaced them with the software
 
Fourlegs said:
I was part of the beta assessment group for the software so am aware of much of the chatter. One reason why many seem to be Dave owners is simply that it sounds so darned good with a Dave.

You may think that double S/PDIF is a ‘daft idea’ but in the Dave group of users there is a consensus that the double spdif sounds the best into Dave, considerably better for instance than USB and so when using a streamer with usb only output you will often find that Dave owners convert the usb to dual bnc spdif using an SRC.DX converter.

It will be interesting to see what outputs the new Quartet Mscaler has but I suspect it will stick with dual bnc as well as say usb.
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I suspect that the high levels of jitter measured by ASR are the result of S/PDIF
That S/PDIF is better only shows that Chord needs to improve the performance of their USB interface.
I won’t go into people’s preferences because you have all sorts.
 
tuga said:
Even though I am not a pfaffaer, I do like to try to improve the performance of my system from time to time.
I would expect a new chord upsampler to provide some level of improvement in the performance of the Dave, there seems to be scope for improvement in the MScaler and chips have become cheaper and/or more powerful in the meantime.
Click to expand...
Rob Watts has been quite tight lipped during his development of the new Mscaler but he has said that whilst the new chips are indeed more powerful their cost is very high and the supply is uncertain. From what we read between the lines it is possible he has gone a different route from using one powerful chip and is using an array of less powerful ones to achieve the same objective. He has mentioned as well that a big issue with either more powerful chips or arrays of lower power ones is the noise generated by them and having to deal with that in an effective way.
 
I’ve used software upsampling HQ Player and looked into offline remastering with PGGB. End of day HQP is ugly and PGGB is sloooow, both are a faff.

In the end I went with the streamer/dac hardware front end I liked most, expensive but worth every penny for me. Hi-Fi/Music is a hobby to get away from the usual crap, last thing I want is to be messing with Software/IT/Computers more than is necessary.

For anyone interested here’s a couple of links.

HQ Player:

PGGB:

PGGB - Offline remastering

www.remastero.com www.remastero.com
 
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