DAVE w/ or w/out M Scaler?

I had a DAVE with Blu2 (sold), and then a TT2 with M Scaler, and then a Qutest with M Scaler. I sold them all over time, deciding I wasn’t really a fan of the Chord sound. But the one thing I realised over that time was that the M Scaler made everything sound worse.

The sound produced by the M Scaler is brighter, tonally bleached, lean and artificial. It removes the natural warmth and fullness of recordings and adds an artificial sense of detail. People hear this impressive difference and think it must be an improvement. It’s not.

The M Scaler is no different to upscaling through Roon or other software. Rob Watts adds some proprietary sauce to make it sound a little different to Roon but it is essentially the same thing. There is absolutely no reason why a PC cannot do what the M Scaler does, despite Rob Watts’ claims.

There are no free lunches in audio. Massively upscaling audio files to 768 Mhz does not just turn them into the equivalent of native ultra high resolution files and does not come without cost. That cost is the bright, lean and fatiguing sound that the M Scaler produces.

Rob Watts claims that the DAVE/M Scaler reproduces transients better than any other dac, but this is audibly not the case. The DAVE/M Scaler produces splashy, two-dimensional transients which sound artificial, and can be bettered by many other dacs.

The gullible Chord fanboys on Head-fi have drunk deeply of Chord Kool Aid, but make sure you form your own view before buying one. Definitely don’t fall for the old trap that if it sounds different, or if it appears to produce more detail then it is better, because it is not.

I really loved the m-scaler paired with my Qutest.  It made a really big and clear difference that had it going toe to toe with my PS Audio DirectStream.  But it just hasn't been able to cut it with the DAVE.  Hard to say exactly what it is - but it just feels completely sterilized.  Like it sucked all the air out of the room.  Maybe this is because the Dave is so strong on its own. It seems to add a little tighter articulation at the cost of space and entirely removes the three dimensional vibe that Dave starts with.  It's just a totally lifeless sound.  Like an extremely high resolution image of a sculpture.  Without it, the Dave just absolutely comes alive. There have been one or two fringe cases where I felt like the m-scaler was additive - usually on poorly recorded tracks, but 99% of the time the Dave is demonstrably stronger without the m-scaler in tow.  

The difference was night and day for me.  M-scaler makes a huge difference when used with Dave in my system: Soulution amp, Magico S5 mk2, Synergistic research Galileo powercell, grounding, and interconnects throughout.  I recently moved from Devialet expert 1000 monoblocks just because I wanted to listen to this Dave/M Scaler combo that used to be my headphone setup.  Dave alone does not sound better than Devialet, but with M Scaler, everything changes for the better.   Maybe your system needs to be highly resolving and dynamic to hear the improvement, but for me, M scaler for sure!

Wellschlager,   For me I didn’t find that it aucked the life out of the room but I did find that the music just sounded off and unnatural.  Hard to put my finger on it.  I really tried to like it too since I had bought the m-scaler new.   At the end of the day I sold it though and still love my DAVE.   Maybe jchoiny is correct, it must be system dependent.  

I found DAVE with MScaler to be very System dependent. BUT… also…. if Streaming it’s very dependent on which Streaming service and what quality of Music it’s being fed.

If playing CD’s in to the DAVE the Transport needs to be of pretty good quality.

Network Noise can be an issue and a break in the Network Chain can help between one’s Broadband Router and Source… then in to the DAVE.

TT2 with MScaler was good. Warm sounding but powerful. A great upgrade for the TT2.

Dave with an MScaler can be viewed as a good addition but not a massive upgrade and I feel the DAVE on its own is great enough thus far. That is until the new MScaler shows it’s face matched to the DAVE. One can improve the DAVE via Farad Power Supply and a carefully chosen Network Noise reduction. Source is obviously a consideration.