Chord M-Scaler and Should I Want One?

@herman, thanks for sharing your experiences. Yes I agree the jitter control and upsampling benefits can be solved in high end DACs instead of using these sorts of boxes. But, money. I need more of it to get a DAC of that caliber, premium power cord, and premium interconnect. Ideally I’d have an Innuos Statement and a Chord Dave or something. But again, money…The PhoenixUSB box defining helps me get my digital chain a lot of the way there with a lesser streamer and a lesser DAC.

Also, I’ve not mentioned this. Terry’s Gryphon Diablo 300 review (Pursuit of Perfect System) mentioned that the Diablo DAC module has a weighty, energetic, “live” quality to it. But also noted it could not keep up with Chord TT2 + M Scaler with detail clarity and focus. He noted that the TT2 and M Scaler lost this “live” scale factor. While the Diablo DAC module is a lesser DAC vs pricier standalone DACs, I like its character, which is synergistically matched with the Diablo 300 amp, just as Terry also noted. So in this respect, there value in being able to keep this character of the DAC while compensating for some of its shortcomings with the PhoenixUSB. The M Scaler however creates more jitter again though, as confirmed by Rob Watt, and to me that seems like it would undo what my PhoenixUSB does, which is remove jitter.

@lollipopguild , too funny.

Just remembered I also knew a guy who was in construction with the last name Swinghammer.

Just saw the YouTube of the Innuos demo of the Uber expensive Statement Gen 2 server/streamer. Can easily hear the difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2 in the video. Sounds amazing.

But the part relevant to this thread: Innuos chose the Diablo 300 for the demo, and from what I can tell in the video they used the Gryphon internal DAC module, even though they were inputting their flagship streamer that costs 4X more than the Gryphon DAC module. I am starting to understand that the more you can lift the input to the DAC, the better the output from the DAC. I know you can also “solve” the issues from the DAC side with an Uber premium DAC but the relatively modest DAC doesn’t seem to be bottlenecking the performance of the input device, in my case.

In other words, I’m happy with my Diablo DAC with a high quality input thanks to the PhoenixUSB. This sort of closes my interest off in the M Scaler, which I can see being of value in other setups, where the DAC is more jitter resistant and where the DAC isn’t a Dave level DAC or higher. Would definitely love to have that Statement Gen 2 though. Not for a pretty long while….

I think you are on to something about using m-scaler with other Chord products for best results. I always thought of it as primarily intended to elevate the performance of the Hugo TT, with diminishing returns in other applications. Here is another review from yesterday you may not have seen - 

@tom23, Koji Ghafoor is a really knowledgeable guy when it comes to what audio gear is available on the market right now. I totally trust his opinions and insight. And I’m not saying that because he gave the TT2 and M Scaler positive reviews. The guy literally spends days out of every month demoing audio gear. Wish I could do that. 
 

IMHO, the M Scaler is an absolute necessity if you’ve got either the DAVE or the TT2 because it adds so much fullness and analog character to whatever you’re listening to. But you’ve gotta go all in on using really good BNC cables and having quality LPSU’s for both the DAC and the M Scaler. Though they’re not a must have because you can get by without them, when you do the result is truly satisfying.