We have to also thank the members that sent in their units for analysis, member keep it going to Amir. A big thanks from me to Amir and you guys out there .
Think about how bad the hi end market gear is no real test gear just some liars swearing sounds like your in the studio or at the live concert !!! All Lies and 90 percent reviewers and builders can not hear ! 😮😮😂 Facts R facts
DSP engineer here. This product is not only a complete waste of money, it's not even doing its job correctly. Everything this product claims to do can be done in software (although it makes literally no audible difference). In fact, software will do it better, because the filter design is clearly wrong (and poorly implemented), as you can see in the reduced stopband attenuation. There's even some visible passband ripple! What a joke. Folks, this is basic DSP math - building an antialiasing filter is not rocket science, and it is the job of your DAC. If you want to learn how this process really works, I recommend reading the documentation of the free and open source tool called "SoX" - its sample rate converter is exceptionally well-implemented, with correct stopband attenuation, and uncompromised parametric control over phase, filter order, and even filter length - all the way up to 100k coefficients (or "taps").
How do you get a loaned $6,000 piece of gear and say anything bad about it on youtube??? That aside, any listening tests should be blind. Otherwise it is trivial to "hear" differences that are not there. With barriers to entry for audio review down to zero, anyone can go and post praise for products. Plurality of such doesn't make them right.
In image processing, we typically use Sinc or Lanczos filters, as they produce the best balance of sharpness and low aliasing. Gaussian filters are only used where you don't need high-frequency information, or in some math (unsharp masking for instance) where you are in fact trying to isolate HF components. In signal processing theory, you can get a triangle (aka linear) filter by cascading two impulse response filters (aka 'nearest neighbour' or 'box') and you can get a cubic filter by cascading three impulse responses, and so on. There's always a trade-off with the width of the filter kernel (equivalent to the time-domain in audio), whereby two wide a filter loses you HF information, while two narrow a filter is more sensitive to noise and aliasing. Simply stating that a gaussian filter is superior to a triangle filter makes no sense, because it depends on the application. If you upscale, you want to use a sharper filter ; if you downscale you want to use a smoother filter ; but it also depends on the total impulse response (aka 'modulation transfer function') of you entire reproduction chain. For instance, contrary to theoretical logic, it was discovered back in the early 90s that when transferring digital images onto film, you had much better results by NOT filtering the output, because both the cathode ray tube's flying spot and the film's MTF would take that responsibility for you. Adding digital filtering would only make your images blurry. In audio, I have never seen any vendor take into consideration the cumulative impulse response of the reproduction chain, as a decision factor. Understandably, if you sell modular components, you need each link in the chain to perform to the best possible spec, but if you do have some control over the whole chain - as is the case with active speakers with digital crossovers - you have the luxury to pick the options that produce the best results in the air before the sound reaches your ears. We live in a ridiculous world today where people spend money on snake oil gear that may measure great (or not), but the effect of which is negated or mitigated by how the reproduction chain is assembled. As much as I love my Topping D90, I would never feed it to a pair of LS-50WII, a Buchardt A500 or a Genelec The Ones. My D90 feeds a fully analogue pair of Genelecs, for this reason. Amir, I'd be curious if you could eventually - because you own a Klippel system - show the impulse response of the whole system (with different output transducers), as opposed to the individual components. I am certain that much of the BS that some audio engineers hallucinate about, would be totally drowned into the compound impulse.
Amir, I am consistently amazed at how some of these products are marketed to be significant upgrades to one’s music system and then turn out to be high priced electronic nothingness. People tell me all the time how certain components make “significant” or “astounding” differences in their systems but then castigate me for requesting blind testing. But blind testing works. Try blind testing where you feed a 3 db higher volume to one output. Any listener with working ears will get that choice right every time. No listening fatigue or test pressure. It’s just obvious.
It has truly become wild west in audio with no rules, no logic, no science, no nothing. Anything goes and folks line up to praise them. Sadly when you ask them to just use their ears for evaluation, they refuse.
I would think if you were in the market for a $6k sidecar to your DAC then the rest of your system is likely high quality. At that point, a sprinkling of some magic thinking may in fact be the thing you need to push your enjoyment to the next level. All said, maybe there is a specific situation with dynamic music being played through this system that creates a positive change for the user. But I suspect that few pick it out with blind listening tests. More likely, they pay the money and believe it sounds better, thus it sounds better. Doesn't that sound better?
@@erics.4113 You statement is a great paradox. If the system is going to be good, wouldn't a premium DAC player have all the options and functionality of this up sampler? I haven't come across one upsampler that made any difference in audio sonics when mated to a great DAC + HQ player. Of course there are supposedly perceived subjective "improvements" in an average digital to analog renderr. But then again what are the odds of someone spending USD 5 K+ on an upsampler has an "average" digital audio renderer? :-)
Before listening to a word of this review I was already skeptical of the claims. The bottom line, as you noted in closing, is that you cannot add detail that is not already present in the source material---end of story. "Upsampling" is not going retrieve detail that is not there to begin with. Better to spend the $6000 on recordings that don't need correcting, I would think. Thanks for all that you do.
I spend $10/month for 75 million songs on Spotify. $6k gets me all of the music for the rest of my life. Someday it’ll be lossless, not that I’ll be able to hear the difference…
I have a streaming subscription since years and I must say that if the source delivers more resolution the music becomes more deep and emotional. So it is a difference to me between the quality level of „CD“ and „MQA“ and my streamer can decode MQA. Imagine I would save money and cut the quality at the streaming source, would change my subscrition to lower resolution but would buy such a Chord upsampler. It would not help because It is the difference between upsampling and real source resolution. The upsampler cannot tell „additional stories“.
The reason it costs $6000 is that if it only cost $600 everyone would think it sucks. They sell more units at six grand than they would sell if it was less expensive. This is really true.
Companies thrive from ignorance on the consumer end, without people like you it'd be out of control, at least we can make fun or people who swear by these "magic" devices since we know its a net loss for fidelity
They have such an advantage over the consumer. Throw out some big technical words and folks believe anything if the person is likable. Or the marketing material is nice. Or some random reviewer who is excited about getting expensive gear praises it.
@@command8783 It is like looking at the colour blue, if you look at it twice it turns bluer and looking at it four times maybe it turn to red, who knows.
When this product was launched I was fortunate to listen to it at the Bristol Hifi Show. The demo was a) without m-scaler b) with m-scaler. The amount of people commenting on how much better it sounded with m-scaler and there was I, sat there wondering what they were hearing that I wasn't. Now I know. My ears were working just fine.
Thanks Amir. I hope you will be able grow your channel and test more gear. With less and less places buyers can go to actually hear equipment this is a fantastic resource. Measurements aren’t everything, but they’re a great place to start. (You may actually like the coloration- no shame in that 😂). Keep up the great work. I’ll definitely be sending some funds. Thanks Amir!
Thanks. I am running as fast as I can with testing. It is such a large problem to solve given how much gear out there that has no proper engineering foundation. I hope by the time I am too old to do this, the industry changes for the good.
Should be called M-Downgrader. Thanks Amir for saving my hard earned money. Wondering how the other reviewers of this device are feeling now after reading this.
Sometimes I catch myself wondering how much energy alone we waste with audiofoolery stuff. I sit there thinking about all these unnecessarily inefficient tubes, class-a amplifiers, power regenerators, ultra-high resolution DACs that no-one can hear a bloody difference anyways, all there sitting on a shelf somewhere, powered on 24/7.
Great review and thanks for being on the side of good audio engineering. There is too much snake oil around and those selling it will never get on your side, but so be it.
I have a question, you have shown that the analogue output isn’t as good using the m-scaler as it is with your standalone dac. If the premise is if it doesn’t measure well it isn’t good, then surely it would have been audible as worse than your test dac? I’m not saying the m-scaler sounds good, but if you can’t tell the difference then it doesn’t sound worse. This makes me question the point of measurements if something bad can’t be heard then good measurements can’t be heard. What we do know is that different audio components sound different to each other, so this video has made me think listening to the products is the only way to determine what is good for you.
The impairments are too small to be audible. The combination of DAC+M-scaler still has less noise and distortion than 16-bit audio for example. So I would not expect it to show audible artifacts. The main point is that the device doesn't do anything positive either so least they could to is not harm the performance of the system prior to insertion of it.
Many years ago I did an internship at a pro audio manufacturer. We had semi automated AP testing on the production line for QC and for determining the added-on-test components to be added to the PCB. And this was just for production test. No design issues like this would have made it this far. And we were selling these products for less than this unit! It beggars belief that the vendor thinks the ticket price is justified for this sort of performance.
Hi sorry if I misunderstood but you said throughout about the noise but towards the end you said by the nature of the device it will always have noise? (I have no horse in this race btw)
It is a fundamental issue in signal processing. To multiply and add audio samples and not overflow, you have to use higher internal precision than input (i.e. > 24 bits). When you are done, you need to convert the samples back to integer samples or your DAC can't play them. This conversion cannot be done by just throwing away the extra accuracy. Doing so causes distortion. To avoid distortion, you add noise. That randomizes the distortion but then raises the noise floor. So the digital processing better have other value to be worth this cost.
Can you hear the difference because of the jitter? Are you measuring relevant factors that make a difference. You said no. Then you said it can make an impact. Which is it? Fascinating test including subjective samples.
Thank you again, Amir. Beyond all the tap and dither complexity, it just sounds the same, and indeed clutters the signal with noise. So. It's a noise box I could have made at home, using mystery parts, like feathers and sponge, crystals and beer. I appreciate your applying your excellent equipment, years of knowledge and experience, and obviously honest and kindly demeanor, to the much needed task of clearly instructing the rest of us as to what we're getting before we wander off and spend our money.
Thank you for another excellent video Amir. Just one question - you talk at some length around 19 mins mark about the higher noise floor after the sharp filter - but isn't al of this well outside the audible range? kind regards
Another Hi-Fi garbage to sell to audiofool. Chord is well known to have snake oil philosophy, the CEO did a video claiming sonic transparency was about -150db to -160db or even higher (wtf... )
I'm so glad I'm not on this little mouse-wheel anymore! The amount of cash I've wasted on gear like this over the years upsets me. It was ASR that opened my eyes a couple years back. Now I have a minidsp SHD with a pair of Genelec 8341 active speakers with built in DSP. Can't go wrong. 👌
I remember GoldenSound raving about this thing being one of, if not the greatest thing he's ever listened to, only to now see this... I like to reserve judgement until I've heard things myself, but this just looks so dumb as an audio product, especially for the price. I'm really curious as to what they were listening to when they made such claims about this thing. Maybe they prefer the added harmonics that this introduces to the music, but I don't know. I'm boring and just like to get as clean a signal as I can get with no amount of color added onto my music.
GS and folks like him don't bother to do anything according to audio science. If they did and testing was blind, then they would never spend half our pontificating how this thing sounds better with this and that DAC.
Everyone that claims to hear sound improvements in useless devices always say the "depth" improves. It's ALWAYS soundstage depth that, of course, can't be heard by anyone contesting their claims. Linear power supply, R2R dacs, cables. All give immeasurable "depth" improvements.
@@Jon-nz3dm And don't forget darker darks, and richer highs, and smoother mids, and greener pastures in general...🤣 It's amazing that quite possibly, more ingenuity, manhours and research is put into the verbal descriptive than the actual engineering and design of such products!
If you admit that the increased noise floor isn't relevant to SQ (as you can't hear it) and that jitter isn't relevant either (as the Chord DACs filter it out anyway) then it's not entirely obvious what the point of this test is. As I understand it, the mscaler is designed to improve the sound quality by improving the DAC filtering downstream. Your test seems to be more about whether it fits your assumptions about how it should or shouldn't measure.
Never understood why those upscalers are so damn expensive. The difference between CD quality and 24/96 or higher is already so minute. Upscaling CD quality music cannot possibly recreate the bits of a real 24/96 file so the difference is even smaller if existent at all. You basically pay 5 grands for a box that degrades the signal.
@@fraustosound Some work has been done here in very low bit rate audio codecs to extend their frequency range. While they work, they can have very annoying artifacts. Our eyes are much more forgiving than ears in this regard.
Up sampling is something akin to making a four egg omelet with only two eggs? The result may be an tasty, but it is NOT a four egg omelet. Thank you again for your review Amir. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted just watching reviews that turn out to be product fails. It seems the audiophile industry is replete with snake oil manufacturers.
Motu 8d is 600 eur and will do sample rate conversion to 192k via aes or spdif over coax (could use a nasty adapter box to input optical). I'd be interested if you ever review it or even just one of those 10 dollar coax to optical boxes, that would be super interesting
Great video as always....the snakeoil is strong with this one and it's hilarious how the suckers are trying to justify the money they wasted on this. Any chance you can test the questyle cma400i amp/dac?
I have a Questyle 192D Golden DAC...I think Amir should keep his hands off it ;-) I like the sound and I don't want him spoiling it for me by telling me it doesn't sound any good
this is kind of hard to watch, especially the last part w/ the conclusion-response; quite embarrassing. it just goes to show that pro-audio is king when it comes to proper engineering in expensive equipment, there companies can;t afford to "fake it until you make it". i understand the concept of "not audible" but when it comes to performance-price ratios at some point we need to start talking about literal scams :( ps: an upsampler may be useful when processing, mixing, mastering, etc, tracks recorded at a lower resolution since each filter eats up bits, so headroom is a must. but that's a different application.
Me too but some people like them. Beyond look, the buttons feel very cheap with that plastic globe and such. The colors are faded and often don't match the manual. I am sure it looked a lot better in a 3-D model in a computer but execution is poor.
I use Jriver on my PC to upsample 44.1 FLACs to 352.8 and apply a slow filter on my DacMagic 200M. I really enjoy the results and the sound of my music while still having enough money for a hip replacement surgery should I ever need one.
I appreciate that but if you can, a) make sure the levels are the same. Upsampling frequently changes level. And b) do a blind test 10 times and see if 8 out of 10 times you can identify upsampling. If you do, report back on exact setup and music selection and I will attempt to replicate.
In my very humble opinion, upsampling a digital value does not make it different at all. You may be able to apply a brick wall filter with sharper slope to the signal, but what is the advantage? It is like watching standard over the air TV signal on your 4K High resolution TV, nothing changes, it remains a standard signal, it does not become high resolution..... Shit in remains shit out, there is no magic.
@@AudioScienceReview my experience is totally subjective and I might not be able to tell the difference on a blind test, however, I love to tinker with my stuff and really enjoy the sound coming out of the speakers. On the other hand, sometimes I listen to the same files on a usb drive in my Bluray player on the same dac and no upsampling and they sound great too. Heck, the best source I have is my Marantz CD6006 cd player, it sounds better than flacs upsampled or not. So, in my opinion upsampling is a fun gimmick to play with if you have it but don't go spending money on exoteric gear with lofty promises.
you should do a segment on reclockers, I was thinking of about buying the wyred for sound remedy, jitter reclocker with femto crystal 400$. have you got an opinion on reclockers? this one's got optical input.
USB input runs asynchronously so you really should use that. If you want to use S/PDIF, I have tested the Remedy and results are not good: www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-wyrd4sound-remedy-reclocker.4036/ So I would not waste money on them.
Saw Golden Sound* video on this and was mesmerized, I played around with upscaling myself to see if I can hear any difference, this probably explains why. The one device that sounded like one of those magical boxes, that could potentially work "with a million tap filter" ooo. More hogwash. Sad.
I like the M Scaler. It upscales all my 44.1 CDs to high res. Plus all my streaming. The DAC is getting 768k out of the M Scaler and the audio improvement is there, albeit it may be subtle depending on the recording but I dig it. The M Scaler is akin to the Darbee video upscaler if anyone is familiar with that. It may not actually add resolution, but it sure looks (sounds) like it does.
Your CDs would sound better if you played them at the original 44.1khz 16 bit, adding another component to the chain not to mention injecting copious amounts of noise if anything will just degrade the sound.
@@Tinez87 I guess you didn’t watch this video? He clearly states that any of the noise is a very small amount and actually not audible, plus not even there with a Chord DAC.
@@phototristan I watched it start to finish sir. Even tho the noise is inaudible, why would I want to add noise to the chain. Upscaling doesn't add anything to the sound either it's quite unnecessary.
As I responded to you on ASR Forum, you are not getting high-res. Sample rate doesn't change nature of information in your file. Once the > 16 bit/44.1 kHz info was thrown out in the process of creating the CD, nothing gets it back. As for Darbee, that actually changed the nature of video samples. It was an effects process and not anything about higher resolution.
Thanks, Amir... I hope that you've started a trend that will help the industry. BTW, how about a similar review on this Upsampling Processor: AURALiC Sirius G2.1
I can even understand if some one spend a lot on cables even it's dumb, but it's that simple as a fact that no way you can generate more/better sound from the source.
Nice work, Amir! Rob Watts claims to design for extraordinary measurements. But from the head-fi thread, it seems he simulates much in software. Which is not exactly real-word. Also, many audiophiles and audio journalists note subjective benefits of NOS dacs OVER ones with esoteric oversampling using a gazillion taps!
How dare you flat earther smash a $5000 piece of aluminum. I'd have to listen my self but my cheap pc speakers will definitely not be resolving enough.
The M scaler needs to be connected to a chord DAC, as the DAC corrects the jitter, you have to be careful looking at measurements only, best to listern to it, then you will understand.
Excellent video. Doing EE myself and I saw a review for this equipment and I have to say it was the dumbest thing I've ever seen. The people who are shilling this crap need their internet taken away forever
Thanks. I always research other reviews before completing mine in case I am missing something. The one video that I saw was just amazing. His own measurements showed degradation of signal but yet he goes and invents all kinds of sonic benefits. And even rated them different between this and that DAC.
Who buys that stuff ?? I clearly understand someone paying 1-2k$ for a high end dac, but this is really puzzling to me. Anyhow, we ll end up with a very short list of useful items 😅
The video by Lachlan (passion for sound) and Rob Watts must surely make people think of the validity of the measurements here so far as ignoring any subjective view (for or against) M scaler
That guy sounds just like any Hi-Fi reviewer from the 1990's. It's like the world hasn't moved on. I think a lot of industry and reviewer folks are upset that consumers can now find out that electronic devices do or not not perform as well as the manufacturer states in such elaborate and florid techno-gobbledygook. I fully accept however, that a badly measuring device can sound great to some listeners. The issue for the industry is whether or not they feel consumers should buy a technically poor/deficient device. $400-1400 with a idiosyncratic performance and sound may appeal to some and be a valid product still. But when asking $14000? Maybe not so much.
Спасибо за обзор! Результаты, действительно, поразительные. Может это единичный образец??? Знаете, Амир, вы с каждым днём приобретаете всё больше врагов в лице этих аудиофильских монстров, давно потерявших совесть. 😆 А знаете как отреагирует многоуважаемая в узких кругах фирма Chord? А никак! Они продолжат продавать за 6к $ негодные устройства. Вам спасибо за смелость и ум!
Amir needs praise for his proper audio engineering approach and perhaps there can be cases where he gets a bad sample, but this case is about digital electronics where I am confident it's not some defective unit. One thing I wish Amir would do some day is to create some A/B blind listening test videos where we can put a nail in the coffin on certain topics from a pure listening perspective. A lot of people claim that certain things sounds better (cable lifters, special power cables etc.) but I never see any proper A/B listening test that can easily debunk it.
Why do you expect upsampling a 1khz signal to impact the impulse response? Also, It can be all this noise from the power supply. Did you try to see the source of the noise? Any research project is subject to review. I respect science, but I can see you showing much bios, at least in presenting the results. You can be good, but knowing how damaged this industry is, I am not sure about the integrity of anybody involved in this business. I have the mscaler and am using it with Chord Dave. I power it using an isolated lab power supply. It is a nice addition to Chord Dave. It is not a breakthrough product, but with Dave, it produces great sound better than much more expensive DAC systems.
I would like to hear this for myself i find chord dacs sound very good compered to the budget china Dacs for example mojo 2 gives a over £1000 dacs a run for there money 💰
I have to admit I never heard of them. But if all their products are like this then the question should be: Why are so many people so stupid to buy it?
@@edgar9651 Chord amps and DACs are used in some of the best studios in the world. FACT, I laugh at people who comment but havent even heard of the product. Considering their amps are as i say factually used in the a big percentage of the Worlds best studios with PMC BB5 or top end ATC for instance,
@@BoredSilly666 I'm gonna be honest with you: no studio is actually using that stuff outside of maybe a couple mastering houses. Probably the most common converter in the Pro Audio space is the Avid HD | I/O or the Universal Audio Apollo series. Amps, Bryston is the most common for passive speakers. Studios care much more about stability and longevity than any sort of audiophile woo woo. Also because nobody stops to think about "but what if I use _this_ converter instead???" except for, again, mastering engineers, who are as a whole more in the audiophile nervosa world than anybody else.
