MSB Select II arrival

Mike Lavigne · Jun 11, 2017

Steve Williams said:
Perhaps Mike

I just cannot believe that using HQP with the Select ll will give better sound but we are all waiting to hear what you say. So what are your-sampling everything to before it reaches the DAC? Are you still using upsampling to DXD as you had with the Formula

I just think that if I had the Select ll playing bit perfect files it couldn't get better than that. I would like to hear how native rate compares to upsampling via HQP

for myself, I am trying to avoid assuming what can or cannot happen with digital playback. so many of the truths about what sounds best are a matter of execution and not dogma. so when a server comes along like the SGM which has such over-the-top execution we just have to watch and listen and see what the implications to the performance turn out to be. and the same with HQP and 'bit-perfect'. our intuition might tell us one thing about what cannot happen, but how deeply do we understand what is happening? I admit my intuition agrees with you, but my ears are telling me different. the 'discs are better' that Vince (MSB National Sales Manager) told me at the show, does not jive with what I'm hearing from redbook files and dsd files here in my room.

Steve Williams · Jun 11, 2017

Mike Lavigne said:
for myself, I am trying to avoid assuming what can or cannot happen with digital playback. so many of the truths about what sounds best are a matter of execution and not dogma. so when a server comes along like the SGM which has such over-the-top execution we just have to watch and listen and see what the implications to the performance turn out to be. and the same with HQP and 'bit-perfect'. our intuition might tell us one thing about what cannot happen, but how deeply do we understand what is happening? I admit my intuition agrees with you, but my ears are telling me different. the 'discs are better' that Vince told me at the show, does not jive with what I'm hearing from redbook files and dsd files here in my room.

What are you upsampling to before it reaches your DAC

Have you played the Select ll without HQP (native rate) to have come to that conclusion.

Mike Lavigne · Jun 11, 2017

Steve Williams said:
What are you upsampling to before it reaches your DAC

Have you played the Select ll without HQP (native rate) to have come to that conclusion.

to my knowledge, there is 'zero' up sampling going on anywhere in the SGM now; I'm told the output of the SGM passes the 'bit-perfect' test whatever than means. OTOH HQ Player likely has algorithms of some sort in play. and then the MSB Select II does it's own thing too.

but really I don't personally know, or care so much. I know that SGM is quite focused to surpass the Renderer.......and what I'm hearing is remarkable. so I'm happy.

if Ed or Takio choose to get on here and comment that is up to them.

Steve Williams · Jun 11, 2017

So I'm confused.

If you still use HQP you must be changing your files.

Mike Lavigne · Jun 11, 2017

Steve Williams said:
So I'm confused.

If you still use HQP you must be changing your files.

Steve. a couple of days ago you opened a thread and explained how little you understood about digital. now you are telling us how it has to be. how can you possibly know exactly what HQ Player might or might not do?

I already said that my intuition was similar to yours, but I just follow my ears.....and I don't assume anything with how digital works.

email Ed and ask him your question.

Steve Williams · Jun 11, 2017

I guess what I'm trying to decide ( and I'm sure yiu are also) is how the Select ll DAC sounds without the SGM and HQP. I would hope that it would be every "bit" (no pun intended) as good. Are you able to play it without the SGM. What does Priaptor use with his Select ll.

I just can help but think that playing native rate with that DAC will be as good or better than with the SGM. Only my guess but I'd love to hear your impressions

Mike Lavigne · Jun 11, 2017

Steve Williams said:
I guess what I'm trying to decide ( and I'm sure yiu are also) is how the Select ll DAC sounds without the SGM and HQP. I would hope that it would be every "bit" (no pun intended) as good. Are you able to play it without the SGM. What does Priaptor use with his Select ll.

I just can help but think that playing native rate with that DAC will be as good or better than with the SGM. Only my guess but I'd love to hear your impressions

Vince at the show just used a laptop for files, and no wonder he prefers discs.

unlikely I will ever be the source for comparing multiple servers. I'm done with that question personally and know that the SGM is a superior server. someone else will need to help you with that.

asiufy · Jun 11, 2017

Once Mike has the Renderer input, he'll be able to compare the SGM on the USB (doing whatever it's doing) vs the Renderer being fed music directly from his NAS.

As I said before, I didn't do such comparison on the SELECT, only on the DAC V, and it was no contest, and that's why I keep saying the Renderer is the best input for MSBs. But I understand Ed and the guys are working on this specific challenge, so let's see what happens there!

As for the CD transport, we have one here in the store, that we can get to Mike so he can scratch that itch as well, if he's inclined to go there

cheers,
Alex

Legolas · Jun 11, 2017

Steve Williams said:
I guess what I'm trying to decide ( and I'm sure yiu are also) is how the Select ll DAC sounds without the SGM and HQP. I would hope that it would be every "bit" (no pun intended) as good. Are you able to play it without the SGM. What does Priaptor use with his Select ll.

I just can help but think that playing native rate with that DAC will be as good or better than with the SGM. Only my guess but I'd love to hear your impressions

I was thinking the same. But a server is more than resampling or upsampling the data. If it can be set to send as is, I would major on that, get the HQP and filter options out of the picture for at least the first few weeks of testing IMO. Any good server will have optimised the power supplies, control noise and feed the DAC as near bit perfect as possible. I am told the Select is the first MSB DAC to NOT upsample, unless asked. Thus this magic ingredient (to me anyway) should allow the Select to grab the data uncorrupted or changed in any way, then convert that to analogue. If the Select can also not apply any filtering, or at least minimal filtering, that could be key as well. IMO the advantage in many R-2R DACs I have heard is the lack of upsampling and filtering (Zanden, Audio Note, Aqua).

I would also try the Ethernet input on the Select as that could surpass the USB performance.

I know Rob Watts of Chord recommends feeding his DAVE (FPGA so bit different) as resident sample rate, let the DAC do it's thing. In some 'lesser' designs, quite possibly using HQP may help the DAC apply it's filter, I guess it depends on the DAC and how it is designed.

The path of PCM upsampled to 512 DSD seemed popular on some DACs, and those DACs seemed to have a FPGA DSD engine fitted. I wonder if that was again, DAC design dependent? Guess it's best to experiment.

Legolas · Jun 11, 2017

asiufy said:
Once Mike has the Renderer input, he'll be able to compare the SGM on the USB (doing whatever it's doing) vs the Renderer being fed music directly from his NAS.

As I said before, I didn't do such comparison on the SELECT, only on the DAC V, and it was no contest, and that's why I keep saying the Renderer is the best input for MSBs. But I understand Ed and the guys are working on this specific challenge, so let's see what happens there!

As for the CD transport, we have one here in the store, that we can get to Mike so he can scratch that itch as well, if he's inclined to go there

cheers,
Alex

Interesting. And seems to align with what I thought (on USB v Ethernet). Oops, if the Renderer is better, why have the SGM?

Steve Williams · Jun 11, 2017

Oops, if the Renderer is better, why have the SGM?

precisely the point I have been trying to make

EuroDriver · Jun 11, 2017

Steve Williams said:
I guess what I'm trying to decide ( and I'm sure yiu are also) is how the Select ll DAC sounds without the SGM and HQP. I would hope that it would be every "bit" (no pun intended) as good. Are you able to play it without the SGM. What does Priaptor use with his Select ll.

I just can help but think that playing native rate with that DAC will be as good or better than with the SGM. Only my guess but I'd love to hear your impressions

Steve,

With a system at Mike's level, everything matters, you can hear the effects of everything. With bit perfect delivery, the transport PC power supplies, the RAM, the OS, the interaction of the OS with Roon, the interaction of the OS with the player software, Ethernet activity, the protocol being used by the Ethernet communication all make a difference.

The horse race between USB and Ethernet has become much hotter with the recent introduction of a slew of grounding devices from Tara Labs, CAD, Nordost and Schnerzinger. We were quite floored by how effective some of these devices were, and Emile started thinking about possible mechanisms which might explain their beneficial effects. Taiko now has a family of grounding devices built around these speculations and they were very effective in Munich as well as in our workshop. We will be trying these out in Mike's system to see what they bring to the table. There was a very good interview with the chief engineer of MBL where he discusses ground currents in USB implementations, and the importance of managing these grounding issues well

Steve Williams · Jun 11, 2017

Ed

I just cannot understand why HQP is needed with the Select ll. Why not play native rate with the renderer

Mike Lavigne · Jun 11, 2017

astrostar59 said:
Interesting. And seems to align with what I thought (on USB v Ethernet). Oops, if the Renderer is better, why have the SGM?

of course, that was always one possible outcome all along. and it's been my main question, when a renderer is an option, is it better than a fully optimized server?

the answers we get will not be ultimate truths, but might be relevant for a few moments. these technologies will continue to evolve and mature.

EuroDriver · Jun 11, 2017

Steve Williams said:
Ed

I just cannot understand why HQP is needed with the Select ll. Why not play native rate with the renderer

Just like JPlay significantly improved the SQ of JRiver delivering bit perfect, HQ Player also has a very good transport implementation. How the player software access memory and deliver this to the USB controller all makes a sonic difference.

With a Renderer, there is also a microprocessor inside the module with RAM, software, and its putting out the data over a variant of I2S or something similar. So its a horse race to see which way does it cleaner / sounding better. The processor inside a USB receiver has less to do than the processor inside a Renderer

spiritofmusic · Jun 11, 2017

Mike, you're a man of many means, good contacts
The trial I'd love to hear as a resolute flat earth disc spinner is one of these uber transports from Wadax or JMF going into the Select 2, in a little time warp moment transport/dac situation
Could you ever make that happen?
The Audio Exotics crowd are beside themselves w these items, many dumping their computer audio for eg the Wadax transport/dac-streamer-phono-pre magic boxes

Mike Lavigne · Jun 11, 2017

spiritofmusic said:
Mike, you're a man of many means, good contacts
The trial I'd love to hear as a resolute flat earth disc spinner is one of these uber transports from Wadax or JMF going into the Select 2, in a little time warp moment transport/dac situation
Could you ever make that happen?
The Audio Exotics crowd are beside themselves w these items, many dumping their computer audio for eg the Wadax transport/dac-streamer-phono-pre magic boxes

the HK crowd is so silver disc centric that servers never really got a toe-hold there like here, and hi-rez is an afterthought. not sure their digital conclusions are relevant to me.

Ed has taken his SGM into Wadax territory but not sure he would choose to comment.

asiufy · Jun 11, 2017

spiritofmusic said:
Mike, you're a man of many means, good contacts
The trial I'd love to hear as a resolute flat earth disc spinner is one of these uber transports from Wadax or JMF going into the Select 2, in a little time warp moment transport/dac situation
Could you ever make that happen?
The Audio Exotics crowd are beside themselves w these items, many dumping their computer audio for eg the Wadax transport/dac-streamer-phono-pre magic boxes

Just FYI, a local client had the Wadax DAC/streamer/phono/server combo. He replaced that with an MSB Diamond V, and he now has a SELECT II. He wasn't into spinning CDs, though, so he didn't have the transport.

cheers,
alex

EuroDriver · Jun 11, 2017

Mike Lavigne said:
the HK crowd is so silver disc centric that servers never really got a toe-hold there like here, and hi-rez is an afterthought. not sure their digital conclusions are relevant to me.

Ed has taken his SGM into Wadax territory but not sure he would choose to comment.

The SGM dealer in Hong Kong has heard a direct comparison of the SGM and the Wadax Atlantis server. In his and a another SGM owner's opinion, the SGM had a lower noise floor than the Wadax Server. As we always say, home demo, and let the customer decide

spiritofmusic · Jun 11, 2017

Oh Ed, as you know I've heard SGM at Blue58 in E London for a good 12 months now, and that spooky nr zero noise flr I believe is where all the magic starts
Sorry for thinking aloud/making up wish lists
But once we onlookers hear of guys like Mike L in uber rarified territory like Select 2, these transport/dac examples are just combinations that whet my appetite
And on a personal level I'm afraid I'm struggling to recognise the world is round, w a whole bunch of probably unjustified fears and reservations re going to streaming

MSB Select II arrival

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