 2021 was a year where I learned a lot more about music reproduction. In this video, a summing up. In 2020 I bought the Air Acoustics AX520 amp for I realized that a part of the equipment I was going to review needed the higher quality amp to show of their quality. I already owned the Aurelic Aries G2 network player but that has no internal DAC. Up till then, the MiTech Brooklyn with Syntax Xtreme power supply was the highest quality DAC. In 2021 the Ferrum Hipsus should be placed the Syntax power supply to squeeze out the remaining sound improvement. I started to review more expensive DACs and some upscalers. Finally I decided for the chord Dave and M-scaler combination. Why for the chord DAC? I have always been super sensitive to time domain errors in digital systems. Somewhere halfway the 80s I noticed the influence of digital interconnects in a time that everyone thought bits are bits. And although there still are people that think that, those are not designers of digital audio equipment. Designers know what jitter does to the sound quality and how to tame that beast. With chord DACs something else played a role. Rob Watts, the designer of the upscaling filters chord uses, realized already years ago that the time resolution was far more important than was believed in that time. I suppose that Ted Smith that did the design of the PS Audio Direct Stream had equal insights and there will be others. But chord made the first product I came across and had superior time resolution, although I didn't know that was why I liked them. When I reviewed the Dave and M-scaler combination I knew that's the DAC for me. Some find the Dave sounds technical, non-musical and although I don't agree I understand that. For me the DACs that they prefer lack time resolution. It's hard to explain how that sounds. The most clear music to identify that property of sound is solo piano like Chopin's Nocturne's or Beethoven's Sonatas and listen to the right hand, especially when played in the two octaves to the right of the keyhole. Organize a DAC that has a very good time resolution and compare that to a DAC that does that less perfect and it will be clear immediately. It's like the tone envelope is good up to a certain point when the decay is not as quick as it should be. I will talk in my new timing differences. But if it's done well, the sound opens up, is more precise and lows have more texture. With the M-scaler the stereo image even gets impressively deeper, wider, more focused, with more air around the instruments. That's not these properties as such that are important. It's the result of these properties combined that is important. The other day I was watching the Dutch version of the BBC TV program Maestro where eight celebrities compete to conduct a symphony orchestra. They start off with no conducting experience at all and learn on a job. Every week the contestant with the lowest rating has to leave. After seven weeks, at the end of the contest, two remain. The very experienced musical star, Simone Kleinsma, and the rapper Saw in this case. The rapper won by the way. One of the final pieces they had to conduct was the beginning of Beethoven's fifth. You know, ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta. I know, singing is not one of my talents. I noticed again the importance of the whole, as if the whole answers. Today I listen to some of the recordings of the fifth over my set of 1A, with both the Davon-scaler and the Maitec and Ferrum combinations. I perfectly matched the levels using a one kilohertz stone and an SPL meter. I noticed that the Dave and the M-scaler combo sounded louder, more dynamic and after careful listening I had to conclude that this was due to a better reproduction of the Hall's acoustics. That might not be as strange as it seems. In real life louder signals excite the Hall more than softer signals. For our auditory system the loudness of the reverb is an indication of the loudness of the music source. So if the reverb is reproduced better, the music is experienced as louder. Early reflections are rather time critical, while reverb needs a good low level resolution. But isn't reverb smearing out the audio over time too? No, for early reflections and reverb will arrive at the ears with some delay. Which lets our auditory system discriminate between the original signal and the whole sound. Plus the direction on the information of course. The original music is coming from the front, while early reflections and reverb come from all directions except the front and at a lower level. Which shows the importance of good recording techniques. Modern music reproduction mimics that by using electronic devices like digital delays, EQs and reverbs. In the 50s and 60s studios had reverb chambers where loudspeakers reproduced the music while microphones picked up the reverb sound. Later on large metal plates were used that were excited by a driver while pickups registered the reverb the plate generated. Another thing that I noticed during my quest to upgrade my reference set of one is that the acoustics of my room became less of a factor. I'm sure there will be protests against this statement, especially by those that can afford acoustic measures but can't afford the high end equipment prices. And I understand that. But my statement is based on many listening sessions and talks to people in the industry. There are developments in the industry too pointing to that direction. People like Bob Stewart didn't bring up time smearing for nothing and I have already mentioned Ted Smith and Rob Watts. If an audio signal is smeared out the same energy is played over a longer time and thus the amplitude will be somewhat lower. To excite a room mode you need the acoustic energy over a longer time. You can try that with a bottle. Blow over the opening of the bottle to excite its resonance and you will notice it will take some time before the tone is heard. There is also a certain slowness in the resonance, both in starting and stopping. Room modes also need some energy over a longer time to be excited. Longer time here is being in the millisecond range. Once the room mode has been excited it will take some time to die out. So if a stereo has time smearing it will excite room modes and those room modes will take longer to die out, causing even more time smearing. Ever thought about why a piano in the room doesn't seem to suffer from room modes that much? It all explains why I use the MiniDSB SHD Studio Room Correction System when the MiTech DAC is in the system and not when the Chord Dave and M-scaler is playing. It also once again proves that simple questions like are you against or in favor of room correction can't be answered. It not only depends on how well the room correction system is developed but also because it depends on other equipment used. Every DSP action, such as room correction, gives a certain amount of loss in sound quality. And that's no problem as long as the problem it is to cure has a bigger impact on the sound. If room modes are a problem and the loss in DSP is clearly less, it's a good solution. That is the case with the MiTech and many other DACs in this price range or lower. With the Chord Dave and M-scaler combination or comparable products like the Aurelic G2.1 series in this system, the room modes are far less excited and hear the DSP losses by the MiniDSB and comparable systems become noticeable, meaning that the room correction will be beneficiary up to a certain quality level, that will be between my setup 2 and my setup 1B. In my ongoing quest for time purity, I have also done some more tests on MQA. There are no definitive conclusions, only a report on where I currently stand. As said, MQA is also focusing on reducing time smearing, so I experimented with MQA2. Using the MiTech Brooklyn with Hipsys power supply and my reference tricks, I collected after the introduction of MQA, I found the MQA tracks in about 90 percent better sounding than the original albums I ripped from the CD. One remark, most of these tracks were given to me by MQA and are most likely manually mastered. I have not used title tracks since I lacked the time to work with tracks that, as some say, might have been automatically remastered and should supposedly offer less quality. I did not have time either to investigate if my reference tracks differ from title tracks. I was rather interested if MQA rendering using the MiTech Brooklyn MQA DAC with Hipsys power supply yielded equal or better sound quality than using the high end DAC like a DAVE with M-scaler. This is an unfair comparison given the 5 times higher price of the chord setup, but I tried to analyse the time behaviour and can assure you the chord setup wins hands down. This means that in the future I will do the same with a high end MQA DAC. But there is more to learn from this work, like that MQA is a clever way to make affordable DACs sound better. Another interesting preliminary conclusion is that with the tracks I used the chord combo sounded better than with the CD ribs. In this case I used either the MQA decoding by Roon or in the Auretic LSG2 network player. There is no MQA rendering in the Chord Dave and M-scaler combo, but that might not be needed given the quality of the reconstruction filters. Confused? You won't be after the next episode of what I have learned. Please feel free to join in and place comments below this video in Youtube. But do behave, use arguments that contribute to an insight and don't start again on the lossless not lossless argumentation, for that is not where progress can be found. The comments will be moderated. There is a lot to gain by knowing more about tiny resolution. I have heard time related problems already years ago, starting with Jitter mid 80s and later on discovered that digital filters in general are limited, until I heard the Chord Jam that did this better. I consequently reviewed the Chord QDB76 and immediately bought it, not knowing how much further the current Dave M-scaler combination would go. The same goes for the upscaling by Aurelic and perhaps other devices or upscaling done on a computer, although the latter is not as handy as having a quality upsampler. It's cheaper but leaves you with many settings and choices. Anyway, there still is much to discover in 2022. So I wish you a prosperous, healthy and musical new year. Like in 2021 there will be a new video every Friday at 5pm central european time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or link to this video in the social media. It is much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video in Youtube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.