A digital upscaler is an outboard processor that sits between a digital source and a DAC, interpolating low-rate PCM up to 768 kHz before conversion, so the DAC receives a signal that is already close to the original waveform. Chord Electronics builds its digital upscalers on custom Xilinx FPGAs running Rob Watts' Watts Transient Aligned filter code, the same engineering DNA inside the reference DAVE DAC. Where most upscalers buy off-the-shelf math, Chord writes its own algorithms and runs them on hardware big enough to compute every coefficient in real time without resorting to software shortcuts.
The Hugo M Scaler is the table-top reference, running a 1,015,808-tap WTA filter on a Xilinx XC7A200T FPGA with 740 DSP cores, approaching the spatial resolution and timing accuracy of Chord's BLU MKII and DAVE reference stack at a fraction of the cost. Five digital inputs cover galvanically isolated USB, dual BNC coaxial, and optical. Its dual BNC output delivers 705.6kHz or 768kHz to any Chord DAC with matching inputs, including the Qutest, Hugo TT2, and DAVE. To pair one, see our Chord Electronics DACs.
