I was interested to read your thoughts on the HQP vs MScaler comparison. Since getting the Antipodes K50 I have been playing with HQP running on the K50 and comparing it to the MScaler.
After giving it a couple of months I feel safe in saying that Rob Watts has nothing to be worried about from HQP. It is not a substitute for HMS.
I am guessing that at some point Rob and Chord will announce a new Choral range Scaler and if so that will undoubtedly open the gap even wider.
I am even now cleaning up some of my HiFi boxes in anticipation of having read out the dreaded long number to a Chord dealer if the new Scaler does happen.
It seems very system dependant… as in how it’s connected to the DAC. I didn’t like it at all as a direct connection but with a HQPlayer NAA optical setup, it’s really good.
I found Sinc M & Sinc L to be good when paired with NS9… LNS15 is a little too heavy, thick, in my setup for my liking. However, I’ve found Closed Form M paired with NS9 with upscaling at 384k to be very good. I’ve been running that since Sunday and the M Scaler hasn’t been back on. It gives great texture, tone as well as detail but what I really like is the very good bass and deep soundstage.
Is it the same as the M Scaler… no. However, that doesn’t bother me though. I have the M Scaler for that. Once I stopped trying to get HQPlayer to sound like the M Scaler and just played around with it to find something I really enjoyed then that’s exactly what happened. I’m not even sure if one is better than the other… as in, the best one is the one you like the sound of the most and that will most likely be different for each person.
I think if someone was debating an upgrade, the next Chord DAC up or buying an M Scaler… I think I’d go with the DAC and use HQPlayer. Add the M Scaler later on when funds allow. I still think the main problem with HQPlayer is not the sound quality, it’s the extra involvement in its setup and the M Scaler wins hands down there.
Tomorrow I’ll be receiving Tellurium Q Black, Silver Ultra, Silver Diamond USB cables along with Entreq Primer Pro USB to see how that changes things… a little AudioTherapy for the Easter weekend
I am interested to hear about your cable experience. I am working through a variety of True Signal Audio Sliver Cables - playing with balanced and unbalanced currently.
Burning the cables in currently, so I am hoping to do some A/B comparisons this weekend.
For the Etude I went straight in with XLR cables rather than RCA. The dealer recommended XLR when I bought the Etude. I posted way back in this thread about the ones I looked at. Link to Post
I really like the detail, tone and bass slam of the TQ Ultra Silver. I’m sure at least one person on here has the True Signal Audio Silver cables… I haven’t tried them myself though.
The TQ XLR cables I received were mostly well burned in apart from the Black Ultra. Even as new, it sounded really good… just gets better over time. My preference for detail, bass slam and more neutral mids with pushed me towards the silver. The blacks have a slightly warmer presentation. Which one to go for very much depends on how your system sounds like now. Sort of like fine tuning with cables. Burning in, I just played them through the night with the DAC volume muted.
Not sure what to expect tomorrow with the USB cables, although the dealer mentioned the Ultra Silver performs very well indeed for the price point!
Mine recommended sticking with RCAs with Dave/Etude. I’ve been playing around with Chord Epic, Hiline, Townshend Fractal and some cheap Flashback Premiers. The Fractals are probably winning so far, but I need to spend a bit more time with them yet.
Not sure if the decision would be different with TT2? Does it use balanced by design, or does it convert from unbalanced like Dave?
I couldn’t honestly say with any confidence myself. A quick search revealed Moon Audio review of the TT2 and it says, "The Hugo TT 2 is also a true fully balanced design. "
The TT2 did come quite a while after Chord Dave so it’s very likely to differ from it’s design approach. Certainly did in terms of amplification.
I’m not either… the Moon Audio review was at the top of the first page I searched. I stopped there as they said it was balanced design… I’d have to take their word for it as I don’t know. I do know the XLR cables on the TT2 sound great though
The didn’t expand on any details, just said what I have said above. I asked because I was reading conflicting feedback from users, some favouring RCA others XLR, so I emailed them.
It’s because Etude is a natively balanced amp, one of the reasons why you can bridge.
The Dave and TT2 are natively unbalanced preamp DACs…
So one has to convert, the DAC preamp or the power amp.
All in all I prefer the performance using the unbalanced DAC preamp outputs into the Etude … it’s slightly more relaxed… but both are very extremely good… and the cable type almost certainly has more to do with performance rather than whether balanced/unbalanced.
Rob Watts has also mentioned on another forum that technically the unbalanced Dave outputs are more transparent than the balanced outputs because less electronics are involved… but in practice there is not much if anything in it.
Thanks @Simon-in-Suffolk . I am find the same thing with presentation (s) . The unbalanced is very much a relaxed sound where’s as the balanced in much more ‘punchy’. Still trying to figure which I prefer. It is on many occasions influenced by mood, time of day and recording. A difficult choice … tougher than I thought it would be.
You are correct in that technically the best output from Dave is RCA however I also use the balanced output and accept the slight sound quality degradation due to the extra op amps to create the balanced signal because my power amps (Pass Labs XA60.8) are true balanced design and I wanted to take advantage of that.
If DAVE is a single ended device with an output adapter at the back end for balanced, then it should be better when run single ended.
However, it may be helpful to look at it from the perspective of the whole system, rather than DAVE as a stand alone component.
After Simon confirmed that DAVE is single ended, I used Townshend’s F1 Fractal single ended interconnects between DAVE and a Chord Ultima Pre 2 / Ultima 6 power amp. I then swapped the single ended F1 Fractal for balanced XLR F1 Fractal of the same length. Music sounded slightly smoother/more refined with the balanced interconnects and flowed a little better. Resolution & imaging were virtually indistinguishable to these cloth ears but we had a repeated preference for balanced because it was even nicer to relax, listen to and enjoy.
The pre & power were connected with balanced interconnects. Worryingly, we even heard differences here between Atlas Mavros, Atlas Asimi and Townshend F1 Fractal interconnects, none of them exactly cheap (!)
Perhaps the benefits of balanced to the Chord amplifier outweighed any slight reduction in DAVE’s performance when run in balanced mode.
We are now back “slumming it” with our NAC52/Supercap/NAP135s and it sounds lovely.
Hi Simon, it is an interesting point you make about preferably having only one end with galvanic isolation, can you share any background to this, any online links to research further? tried to research online but could not find much on this… Today I am running Chord Dave via an UltraRendu (not sure if the USB port on this one is galvanically isolated but I guess not as it outputs 5V to the DAV via USB).