And that’s before cables. You have to spend another 40% - £1400 - on top of the M Scaler to get the same cables that the designer uses. And since by all accounts the new upscaler has a separate power supply there will likely be incredibly expensive cables for that too. So, pro rata, if $15k is...

Many potential users will have more than one pair of headphones and/or use headphones and speakers. For me at least the ability to have easily selected presets would be essential. Some headphone manufacturers like Audeze also have recommended EQ for each of their models. Again, I would hope for...

Will you be able to load the EQ via USB - say from an app like Roon or REW? Or will you have fiddle with coloured balls? And will the volume be controllable via USB also, so that music players like JRiver and Roon can set it?

Nothing weird at all. There’s no credible argument that any digital source should sound any different from any other, as long as they are bit identical. What they might do is expose inadequacies in a DAC. In which case you might argue that as the Pi is an inherently low powered processor with no...

Yes, as the quote from Rob in my reply to you said, “With battery operation and optical on the M scaler there absolutely is no loop for current to flow - so the problem is completely eliminated.”

That is not correct. If the MScaler is battery powered - ie not connected to ground - then no ground loop can exist via the BNC cables, so no RF, so no need for ferrites. Rob recently confirmed this:

What battery do you use?

If a £1250 mains cable improves the sound of a £8500 DAC drawing a few watts then something is seriously wrong, in my opinion.

The MScaler should work at i This is just nonsense. The new MScaler should work optimally as supplied. As should have the current M Scaler.

Agreed. The remotes Chord supply are rubbish. The original one for the DAVE even more so since it had loads of buttons nearly all of which didn’t work. You should at least be able to directly select an input. But the USB protocol allows volume control info to be passed to the DAC and music...

Not if you are worried that RF (or evil spirits or bad karma) can travel through the USB cable. A fair a/b implies that only one of the two cables should be connected at once. If you leave the USB cable in, then the M Scaler is always connected electrically in some sense to the source - even...

I listen to a great deal of live classical music - three concerts in the last week - happy to stand by my judgement, and happy to respect yours.

How would you say it improved the MScaler?

I hoped I had made it clear I was talking about classical music.

How is listening to a studio produced recording on a hifi more faithful than listening to the same performance in a concert hall? What is more “faithful” about the studio recording? To what is it ”more faithful”?

To what else could a live performance have better fidelity than itself?

I just think it is absurd to claim, as Kentajalli did, that good recorded music is better than live music in terms of sound. One is real thing, the other is a reproduction, with a different purpose and validity. At least for classical music. Offhand I can only think of one artist, Glenn...

There’s a guy waving a stick in front of the orchestra called a conductor. He can tame the timpani down with the tiniest of gestures, or make the basses more pronounced with a glance. Absolutely at will.

Last Sunday I went to an orchestral concert - Haydn and Strauss. Last night I went to the opera - Wagner. If any of you have a stereo that you think is better than listening to a great piece of music played by fine musicians in a world class concert hall or opera house do please let me know and...

I couldn’t disagree more.

You could alternatively run Roon on your laptop. It will integrate your own rips and your Qobuz or Tidal favorites into one library and has a decent interface and can be remote controlled from your phone or tablet. There’s a free trial so you can see whether it suits you.

Here’s Rob Watt‘s actual post where he says that in the case of the BNC leads connecting an M Scaler to a DAVE, a 2m cable is significantly better than a 1m cable because of the extra inductance supressing the 2GHz current on the ground...

Yep, I can play 24/192 from Qobuz through Roon and HQPlayer with no problem. I‘m using a MacMini M1 for Roon Core and HQPlayer and playback and it is not remotely stressed. There are free trials of Roon, Qobuz, Tidal and HQPlayer so really easy to give it a shot. There is perhaps a slightly...

But what do you mean by "depth perception"? Do you mean distance? Or do you mean that a sound source appears to be say two feet deep, while its distance may be 20 feet? Or something else? I can't see how you can discuss "depth perception" without being able to say what it is.

What do you mean by “depth perception”? Do you mean distance perception - ie how far something is away? Or do you mean the depth that something sounds - ie a cello sounds a foot deep say, though it might seem 10 feet away. If you mean distance perception, what distance cues do you think are...