Qutest, Hugo TT2, Mscaler

I use a Naim Core to store my music, and ND5XS2 streamer, so BNC is the connection I use to Mscaler. The Core only serves up to 384 K/32 bit WAV, so maybe I would need to use my Laptop to serve these files?

@NO-QUARTER I copied 2 albums with PGGB.

Agnes Obel - Citizens of Glass (24/44) - 655mb > 13.87gb
Yello - Toy (24/48)- 745mb > 22.39gb

I’m going to do a couple more tomorrow. CD quality albums.

Initial impressions are positive. Better or different?!? Hard to say but just like HQP, it has that same distinctive MScaler smoothness, air and realness with great soundstage width/depth. I’ve been trying out HQP new Sinc-Mx filter and that sounds very similar to PGGB.

I found a couple of tracks of Citizens of Glass to sound a little odd. The soundstage sounded artificially wide. I need to try a few more vocal albums to see how they fair compared to electronic genre, which sounded impressive.

To me, the difference PGGB offers feels similar to the difference you might get from different filters in HQP. More listening is needed to decided if it’s an improvement or, just a different filter.

My main hangups would be

  1. Streaming… will it be possible to use it with Qobuz and if so, what will we need in terms of processing power to achieve it.
  2. File size and time. I have a maxed out Mac mini 2018, i7 64gb Ram with a large eGPU and fast TB3 PCIe drives which has custom built cooling. I use this to process 4k 60p motion graphics and I could do 4 x 30sec clips in the time it took to do one song. It didn’t appear to be making much use of the eGPU.
  3. Cost. It’s about double the cost of HQP, which can also be used with Qobuz and other streaming. You can run HQP on a headless Mac mini M1 for £699 (PCM and DSD up to 256… and probably get away with a lot less. It will be interesting to see how PGGB works lower / mid range laptops but for an option that will get through a lot of files in a reasonable time, it’s probably going to cost £1500+

Having said that, I think it’s great that they are doing this… pushing boundaries and trying something new is the best way to achieve better things. Get this to work with streaming without needing a supercomputer and I’d be very happy!

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Thanks for the update Toon, I have been working my way through Ray-dude’s thread about it on Audiophile style…I am about a third of the way so far. The nice thing is, the designer of the software is posting on the thread, along with Romaz, and a few other “heavy hitters” on that forum.
Like you, I don’t want to have to spend a bunch of money on a super computer just to convert files, hopefully I can somehow try it on my Windows Thinkpad.
I realize that Tidal or Quobuz are not an option right now, but music on my Core (2200 albums) could be gradually converted, well, maybe just my favorite albums.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Are you using a trial, or did you have to pay something?
Also, are you listening with speakers or headphones?

I’m using the trial version. This allows you to copy 5 files in a row and then it will stop. You can then select another 5 files etc etc for up to 30 days when the trial will end.

Last night it was via speakers. I’ll be listening a bit today with headphones.

You’ll need a good NAS drive for that many albums. So far, based on my avg size that would require over 40tb of space. As you mentioned, pick out the ones you like and then focus on those.

The CD album of Billie Eilish - When we fall asleep, where do we go was 14.5gb when converted. This is at 24/705 - 768. This was averaging just under 5 minutes per 5 tracks after I tweaked the drives in which it uses (all NVMe PCIe M.2 drives).

Edit. Also, I’m listening via Roon & HQP NAA via optical network… not USB direct into the DAC.

This program doesn’t sound very interesting to me, for the above reason in particular (having to pre-process albums that result in huge file sizes).

What would be a lot more interesting, is if they / someone would make a realtime converter that works like an Mscaler, but uses the GPU of a computer. GPU’s are much more suitable for this type of task than CPU’s, and even something small like a Mac Mini or a Raspberry Pi would likely be able to do realtime interpolations of 1-5M+ taps, and then output the signal to a DAC.

I agree. I like the sound and fortunate to have a system that is able to do 5 track in less than 5 minutes while still doing my photography/footage work. The cooling system I use is keeping the Mac mini low enough to allow it to sit at max cpu freq (pic below).

HQPlayer has a very similar sound if used over optical network and using a NAA to feed the DAC but I do like what PGGB does, just not enough to set aside best part of 25TB+ hard drives to convert my collection.

I’d also like a way to be able to get it to play nicely with streamed upscaled HQP content without the need to keep changing settings.

Someone should make a Roon DSP plugin for this based on OpenCL, that would be a killer feature.

That would definitely be one reason for me to switch to Roon, and i’d happily pay for the plugin as well. :+1:

Yeah, it would. I guess these are early steps and who knows what the future may hold. You will just need a powerful music server to sit in a separate room and connected to a NAA (R Pi, OpticalRendu) over Optical ideally beside the DAC.

A different question:

It’s difficult for me to demo Chord products in my country side by side, so i was curious how you guys would subjectively assess the difference between the TT2 and the Dave (both together with an Mscaler). Is it a big difference, or is it perhaps more subtle?

Big difference

You get what you pay for

I paid for Dave

There will be a difference but some prefer the TT2 while others Dave. I’d also imagine current system will come into play as well as how much you use headphones. Sadly, especially at that price point, I would want to demo both.

I know @Simon-in-Suffolk did for quite a while before deciding on Dave… but for that amount of money, I would hate anyone to buy off my preferences without at least being able to return it if it wasn’t their cup of tea!

Hi Toon, I finished reading through Ray-dudes entire thread. Have you seen it on Audiophile style? Dmance , who is the founder of Opto-DX just yesterday provided access to a download that makes the whole process easier, from what I gather. It helps you index, or file all the files you have converted…the problem is you need the full licence to use it. I need to update my Laptop from Windows 7 to 10 before I can do anything, so one step at a time for me.
Can I not transfer converted files to external hard drives that I just plug into my Laptop?,or Core. Why do I need a powerful music server, I thought once they are converted, you are done? As you can see, I am a bit lost with all of this. The creator gives specs of the computer you need to process the files, which I have to investigate if mine is powerful enough. I know he talks about RAM, and virtual RAM, which I have no clue how to find specs on,lol.:sweat:

Attaching hard drive to the core would be ok, provided what ever plays it can handle the file. i.e, 705/768 or 352/384 etc. This way it would be used over a network. It will also work connecting a laptop to the DAC via usb but you are introducing PC noise to the DAC so it might not sound at it’s best when compared to the MScaler. It will work but just bare in mind it won’t be at it’s best.

Powerful music server was in reference to using PGGB for streaming… if that ever came about. The music server would have to be powerful enough to do it all on the fly. As you said, once files are converted then they are done.

Virtual RAM is really hard drive spaces to make up for any shortfall in actual RAM. From my tests today… converted about 15 albums, it does seem to rely on CPU & RAM rather than eGPU etc. My desktop has 64gb but I was able to use my photographic software as well as converting files. Slowed up every now and again when I was working on large .psd files (photoshop). 32gb would be enough and possibly 16gb but not how fast that would work.

The main thing is to get a couple of albums you like converted first to test it before committing to large scale conversions!

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I have been part of the beta team on PGGB since the end of last year. What we have been finding is that there is a lot more to it than just PGGB processing the files and copying them to hard drives and thinking that us the end of the matter. Ideally the file storage will be on SSD within the streamer/player rather than being external or on a network. Also the player software is still very important to the sound quality. Roon is used by a few who dont want to give up on its superb interface but others have moved away because of concerns about sound quaility. Some people had been using HQP on ‘pass through’ ie with upsampling and filters set to ‘none’ to play the PGGB files because HQP + NAA is a good player in its own right but i became unhappy about that sound quality compared to other methods such as MPD on my K50. Also recently i have been using the Innuos 2.0 app beta version with great success and that sounds really nice playing the 32bit 705 & 768khz files to the Dave via usb. It also happens to have much of the functionality of Roon which is nice.

However, good though the 32bit 705 & 768khz files are by usb it seems that converting the usb signal to dual bnc and feeding that to the Chord DACs can be even better. And not in a marginal way.

Some of this is driven by a view of sone that the best sound quality comes not necessarily from having a low noise low powered processor to do the playing and maybe a higher powered board with low latency is better. Then the objective becomes not to have high latency inputs on the dac and hence why the group have shifted away from 32bit 705/768 files via usb and now many are using 24bit 705/768 files by dual bnc into the Dave.

I still love listening to my Mscaler / Dave combination but equally i am really enjoying albums such as Opium Moon sounding absolutely stunning on a PGGB processed file into the DC4 Dave via dual bnc.

To some this is probably just all too much faff but it has been an interesting journey over the last few months and more is being learned each week.

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I managed to get my laptop updated to windows 10, but after some digging, i guess i only have 4 GB of RAM. This probably means my computer is not up to the task of PGGB conversion, should i even bother trying it?

I’m not sure how fast it will be but, as you have the computer and the trial is free it would be worth a shot. Even if it takes an hour to convert a couple of albums, at least you have something to listen to / demo.

I’ve enjoyed the sound… but I also enjoy HQP new Sinc-Mx filter so time will tell. I’d say most of my listening is streaming these days but I could be tempted to get PGGB if pickup a load of CDs again. I’ll be converting more today.

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Ok, maybe i will give it a try tomorrow…it is almost 3 AM here.

Ah… so you have a couple of hours to do it before work then :rofl:

Yeah maybe i can set it up before i leave home tomorrow, and it will be done when i get home…now, which album?

If you like electronic music, start there. All the ones I’ve done have been good but the best have been the electronic genre with good soundstage.