Qutest, Hugo TT2, Mscaler

If you were going to put a different DAC between an NDX2 and a Naim pre-amp, which one would it be?

I found the TT2 was preferable tonally and balance with the NAC552 / 250 and ATC SCM speakers - although it was clear that the TT2 is unable to resolve subtleties in timbre and presence and minute dynamics (ie musical timing) that DAVE provides - but to my ears DAVE sounded too forward into the 552 for my tastes.
Put a high end set of planar headphones on the TT2 and DAVE and you kind of notice quite a performance difference with DAVE very much ahead in terms of insight and musical cues.

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Small update on my PGGB quest. The software designer has been helping me via email to stumble through setting it up. We, or he decided it is not worth the stress for me because my Laptop only has
4 GB of Ram. He recommends a minimum of 16 GB, so he has offer to blast a few songs for me to see if I want to bother buying a suitable Laptop. Now to try and figure out how to get him my files…Dropbox is what he suggested, but that is also new terrain for me.:weary:

Sorted out, I have sent 6 albums to Nick (Fourlegs) and he is giving them the PGGB treatment right now. What a nice guy😀 He said I should be able to download them later this morning.
I used WeTransfer to send him my albums, piece of cake.

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I do find watching the PGGB posts interesting, and the VERY reason I bought the M-Scaler.

Like many of us I do find the technology aspects of digital HiFi interesting, this includes not only the hardware but, by extension: The operating systems; the storage systems; the file types; and, the network protocols …amongst others.

One area that I don’t think that has been explored here, yet, is low latency protocols used by broadcast companies, such as Dante bundle of technologies:

This caught on in certain quarters in quiet a big way:

This chap then returned to using USB and looked into how to manage DC in quiet a big way.

ALL of these things made a difference, whether they were ultimately an improvement was a big question in my mind, although I actively dove in, and then moved off into experimenting in other areas.

What was NOT a question is that I found myself being sidetracked from just listening to my system more and more and, as a side product, CONTINUALLY tinkering.

Thank God for the Meridian 210, M-Scaler & Qutest.

It is not that I don’t still tinker, as you all know I am currently listening using different BNC cables, but that is at a far lower level, as in every few months.

I am glad for all of you and I know how interesting this can be …but I suspect that it will ultimately add little to how much you enjoy your systems, whilst reducing your listening time.

M

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Me too Mr U, what I am finding out today is how slow my Broadband is. The first album Nick sent me I started downloading about 4 hours ago. It said in the little box, 15 hours to go…I am down to 11 hours now.
My building still uses the old phone lines for my internet, the provider is slowly moving throughout the city, upgrading to high speed fibre.
If I end up liking the sound, I will buy a more powerful computer, to process my own files.
What I am doing right now is just an experiment, so I don’t waste my money on a new Laptop to convert my Library. I have 2,300 albums stored on my Core, but I doubt I would PGGB all of them…maybe 10-20% of them tops.
The Mscaler is going nowhere, I still like what it does to streamed music. I don’t see a problem using two connections to my TT2, USB for PGGB, and dual BNC for streamed music.
Who knows where this tech will advance to, but I am excited to try it.
Just to show you how big a 17 song album is now(44.1),it is 15 GB now.:flushed:

Hi NQ,

I look forward to your thoughts on PGGB.

M

To be honest Dante is more about being a professional version of UPnP DLNA - ie plug and play and supporting audio business applications interworking with each other

Transferring media itself over Ethernet or IP is very straightforward and doesn’t need much if any special consideration, especially if latency is not an issue, and indeed the media standards support that.

Transferring audio and control signals into a system of interoperating devices or where extremely low latency - ie realtime audio - is required requires different approaches and requires the development of an ecosystem. Dante and UPnP DLNA of examples of this - one commercial and one consumer.

Hi Simon,

The reason I was pointing at the Rednet devices was that there was/is a whole audio sub-culture working in the area, and I have no doubt that there are things going on hear that would be interesting to hear …whichever part of the audio stack is responsible for the sound differences that are being heard.

We can point at all the elements of the way we process the audio data and say it is straight-forward, but my experience is that everything I vary has some effect on what I hear at the other end. I have read MANY posts and threads by people claiming that audio nirvana was synonymous with low latency …this is one rabbit hole I didn’t explore.

Trying to end up with something that you can simply listen to and enjoy seems to me to be just that bit more difficult in this sphere …although I suspect it is easy to construct an argument that the analogue world is equally fraught. :wink:

M

Indeed —

BTW latency is only relevant in realtime or multiple synchronised device replay …

Otherwise it becomes almost irrelevant (unless there are platform network limitations) - a bit like a CD can lie on a shop shelf for months if not years before being bought and played

I wouldn’t seek to debate you, I was referencing what others were claiming and gained traction with; although that is NOT to say that I was drawing a parrallel with PGGB - just that there are MANY rabbit holes down which we can dive.

Actually what I posted earlier is not correct, the 15 GB was only half the album. The other half is just over 10 GB, so 25 GB total for a 17 song CD quality PGGB’d album.

Indeed, however when we use TCP transport protocol that many consumer audio transfer solutions use, by design, latency considerations are removed from the payload or sample data.
I do think around these sorts of topics there is much enthusiasm, but perhaps poorly informed awareness in consumer Hi-Fi circles.
I do realise that data network protocols can look mystical and almost magically to some and I can understand the temptation for them being considered as perhaps a frontier to hitherto undiscovered routes to audio nirvana… but ironically that would be counter to the concepts such networks architectures were built upon in the 1970s.

I must say I have been professionally working with audio networks since the mid 90s and alas it would be wonderful if these things were available, but in real life I have yet to find these magical Harry Potter style secrets… or thinking of rabbit holes should I say Alice in Wonderland secrets :grinning:

Many people claimed to hear great improvements when listening to the Rednet devices, and many wrote great tracts in the efficacy of the low latency of the network protocols used. The thing is that ALL the systems we listen to are complex interactions using both digital and analogue technologies. Accurately identifying the true reason for a change in what you are hearing can be very opaque it seems to me.

Finally I have ten songs downloaded from Fourlegs. The transfer took forever, and at one point crapped out, so I had to start the process again. I have only played the PGGB’d files through the Laptop speaker so far, but it sounded incredible. They definitely are on to something here I think, but alas my Laptop is SLOW, and is tied up for the time being, downloading more music from Nick.
This simply means I have not had a chance to try the converted music into my TT2 yet, but I can’t wait to try this.
Digital music is evolving big time, Apple, Spotify and now this, not sure what direction to take yet, but if I stick with PGGB tech, I need a super computer.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

I can feel the pull of curiosity already.

Look forward to your thoughts post-TT2.

M

There is much sense in what you say there. My system often gets changed around in order to listen to different components and rather than link everything back together when settling back to listen to music in the evening I often resort to playing locally stored redbook files straight to my Dave.

No Mscaler, no PGGB. No fiddling. No extra kit (well just the Sean Jacobs DC4 but that will go the desert island with me!) . . . . . . . . And the result is that I just enjoy the music rather than listen to the kit.

Except having said that, the PGGB files are a seriously interesting distraction. Don’t be put off by @NO-QUARTER and his tales of large album sizes. He sent me his collection of test tracks arranged into six yearly collections each with about 20 tracks per year. That was always going to be a significant undertaking to send back as they are about 30GB per year’s collection of demo tracks. Even so they were only taking about 30mins per processed album to send to him from my end using my out in the sticks EE 4G mobile broadband connection.

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Hi Nick,

Yes, I can feel my curiosity being tickled; but I am mainly concentrating on my vinyl at the moment.

M

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Yeah… in the Lakes at the moment and took the TT2, Empyreans and a Roon NUC to plug into the router of the self catering place. All fitted into a spare camera bag. Very nice to be able to retreat to great sounding music with excellent views!

I think the quality of PGGB is slightly better than the HQPLayer with Sinc-Mx but HQP is better if you mainly use streaming. Very similar though. For me, in my system and network setup etc, I preferred both over the MScaler.

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It is perfect weather for the Lakes. I was brought up near Cockermouth and so Bassenthwaite and Derwent Water were my ‘local’ lakes and then windsurfing on the Solway Firth (“If you can’t see Scotland it is raining, if you can see Scotland it is going to rain”.)

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