Introduction
“Musical”: “i) relating to music ii) set to or accompanied by music iii) fond of or skilled in music iv) having a pleasant sound, melodious or tuneful”
“balanced”: “keeping or showing a balance; in good proportions”
(Oxford English Dictionary)
I’m no engineer; I don’t do measurements. For me the audiophile pursuit is a little akin to wine tasting – a subjective struggle to define and describe taste with words, or “dance about architecture”. There’s another complication – my taste keeps changing. Or should I say evolving. It’s a journey I started on with my old Grado 325 and ibasso amp/dac and my upgrades from there can all be charted through my posts on Head-fi.
For a while I was seduced by detail, hearing the things I hadn’t heard in my cherished recordings, for good or ill. Then I started to realise that detail for its own sake can get tiring after a while – the words “fatiguing” and “bright” entered my audio vocabulary.
Now I’m looking for “balance” and “musicality”. Details are great, but they are only one part of the overall musical equation. It’s about tone, emotion and naturalness.
I’m don’t seem to be alone. To my eyes there has been an upswing in the last year or so for Head-fiers who’s stated aim is something like “musicality”. And often they have gravitated towards ‘out of the box’ thinking in the DAC world, away from implementations of the standard off the shelf DAC chipsets towards the innovators.
Rob Watts the designer of Chord’s DACs is such an innovator. He is off on his own road, writing his own code for implementation in something called a 'field-programmable gate array". Something to do with taps. I’m no engineer. But he’s on to something.
Now lets’ talk about the Hugo TT.
Hugo TT
Big brother to the “game changing” Hugo, the Hugo TT is what you get if you let Rob Watts loose with his Hugo software design without the limitations of making a portable device. Like the Hugo, it serves as a DAC and a headphone amp – there is no traditional amp stage, this is handled by the DAC itself by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, or something. (You can use an amp with it if you wish to). Again, I’m no engineer (had you noticed?), so I refer you elsewhere on this site and the interweb for the tech details. The TT had been described to me by a dealer as the Hugo on steroids.
For this review tour organized by OKGuy the TT came along with a Beyerdynamic T90 and a Grado GS1000e. (Thanks to OKGuy for organizing and including me on the tour!). In addition to those I spent some quality time with my own Audeze LCD-X and Sennheiser HD800 headphones. Let the games begin!
Listening Impressions
Where do you start? You start with “Love Song” by Simple Minds from the “Sons and Fascination” album of course! A new wave classic, the song is very much the sum of some highly individual parts – a throbbing Derek Forbes bassline, a squalling, shape shifting guitar, shimmering synths, and Jim Kerr’s baritone out front and centre. The TT does this track so right I know I’m listening to a winner right from the off. The space between the instruments. The cohesive sense of a band performance. The vocals centered and just a little forward, commanding.
The TT exudes authority in its presentation – in the bass, in the weight behind every note. Which is not to say it is slow or overly thick, like some tube systems can be. No, its that word “balanced” again.
Moving on to Radiohead‘s “Weird Fishes” from the “In Dreams “ album. A great test track as there is so much going on that it can sound like a collection of special effects rather than a song. No such problems for the TT, which makes the track cohere effortlessly, managing to communicate the musicality in the rippling synths. To use another Radiohead title – everything is in its right place. I rapidly conclude that the LCD-X and the TT is a match made in audio heaven for me.
My other go-to can is the HD800 – known to be picky with sources and amps. Its my first choice for classical repertoire and the TT shows it off brilliantly, bringing out all its strengths in detail, resolution and imaging. I feel no need for additional amplification/coloration, such is the transparency of the pairing. It is with acoustic music that you can really gauge how ‘lifelike’ the sound is, and the TT came through with flying colours. Violins sound like violins, brass has the requisite 'parp' The TT doesn’t turn the HD800 into an Audeze, it is still a relatively bright presentation, and not one I would choose for, say, rock. My conclusion - the TT is a platform that brings out the innate qualities of your headphones – it is non-interventionist.
Both Beyer and Grado are brands with definite house sounds, both on the brighter side of neutral. I started to self-identify as a Head-fier with a Grado 325 and my first upgrade was to the Beyer T1 so I have some form with them both. BUT bear in mind in what follows that I moved on from both because I ended up finding them too bright…
The TT presents the T90 like a baby T1 (that’s a lot of Ts) – spacious and with a wide soundstage. But on Wild Beasts’s “Bed of Nails” from the “Smother” album the drums sound more than ideally compressed, and Tom Fleming’s deeper voice is less clearly delineated as against Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto. The Grado adds some welcome bass presence and some additional vocal warmth, but for me it still sounds overly bright. Back to the LCD-X and everything digs deeper, and the ‘boogie factor’ clicks in.
In Led Zep’s ‘Black Dog’ from their fourth album, similar findings, but here the Grado closes the gap a little on the planar, with a good guitar sound and a really tactile crunch to John Paul Jones’ bass. The extra warmth of the LCD-X means I have to listen harder for that bass texture (though it is still there), but the drums have more impact, there is excellent extension and weight to Plant’s vocal, and again I find myself wanting to keep listening to the rest of the album.
Moving on to Melody Gardot’s “Preacherman” from this year’s all-analogue “Currency of Man” album renders similar results – the TT/LCD-X combo presents a wonderful sense of a full live band, with the ability to follow the individual instruments while maintaining a cohesive whole. The Grado has a drier presentation, bass is again lovely and crunchy. The T90 is similar, but with a wider (artificially wide?) stage.
Conclusions
Tour headphones first. The T90 seems like something of a bargain – getting you close to T1 sound quality at a fraction of the price (note I haven’t heard the new 2nd Generation T1). The Grado didn’t quite click with me – maybe I needed more time with it to re-acclimatize to the Grado house sound. But for me, personally, both felt a little too dry and bright to be keepers. YMM very well V.
On to the star of the show. The Hugo TT sounded great with every genre of music I threw at it – indie rock, rock, electronic, orchestral, renaissance polyphony, you name it, the TT served it up with authority and panache. While the TT played nice with every headphone I tried, its detail retrieval coupled with its shear musicality in my opinion deserves, indeed demands, a highly resolving top of the line ‘phone like the LCD-X and HD800. The Audeze in particular gets my vote as an ideal pairing.
For the price of the TT you are getting something as near to ‘affordable end game’ as I could reasonably expect, and comfortably the best sound that I have heard in my home. An easy 5 stars.
“Musical”: “i) relating to music ii) set to or accompanied by music iii) fond of or skilled in music iv) having a pleasant sound, melodious or tuneful”
“balanced”: “keeping or showing a balance; in good proportions”
(Oxford English Dictionary)
I’m no engineer; I don’t do measurements. For me the audiophile pursuit is a little akin to wine tasting – a subjective struggle to define and describe taste with words, or “dance about architecture”. There’s another complication – my taste keeps changing. Or should I say evolving. It’s a journey I started on with my old Grado 325 and ibasso amp/dac and my upgrades from there can all be charted through my posts on Head-fi.
For a while I was seduced by detail, hearing the things I hadn’t heard in my cherished recordings, for good or ill. Then I started to realise that detail for its own sake can get tiring after a while – the words “fatiguing” and “bright” entered my audio vocabulary.
Now I’m looking for “balance” and “musicality”. Details are great, but they are only one part of the overall musical equation. It’s about tone, emotion and naturalness.
I’m don’t seem to be alone. To my eyes there has been an upswing in the last year or so for Head-fiers who’s stated aim is something like “musicality”. And often they have gravitated towards ‘out of the box’ thinking in the DAC world, away from implementations of the standard off the shelf DAC chipsets towards the innovators.
Rob Watts the designer of Chord’s DACs is such an innovator. He is off on his own road, writing his own code for implementation in something called a 'field-programmable gate array". Something to do with taps. I’m no engineer. But he’s on to something.
Now lets’ talk about the Hugo TT.
Hugo TT
Big brother to the “game changing” Hugo, the Hugo TT is what you get if you let Rob Watts loose with his Hugo software design without the limitations of making a portable device. Like the Hugo, it serves as a DAC and a headphone amp – there is no traditional amp stage, this is handled by the DAC itself by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, or something. (You can use an amp with it if you wish to). Again, I’m no engineer (had you noticed?), so I refer you elsewhere on this site and the interweb for the tech details. The TT had been described to me by a dealer as the Hugo on steroids.
For this review tour organized by OKGuy the TT came along with a Beyerdynamic T90 and a Grado GS1000e. (Thanks to OKGuy for organizing and including me on the tour!). In addition to those I spent some quality time with my own Audeze LCD-X and Sennheiser HD800 headphones. Let the games begin!
Listening Impressions
Where do you start? You start with “Love Song” by Simple Minds from the “Sons and Fascination” album of course! A new wave classic, the song is very much the sum of some highly individual parts – a throbbing Derek Forbes bassline, a squalling, shape shifting guitar, shimmering synths, and Jim Kerr’s baritone out front and centre. The TT does this track so right I know I’m listening to a winner right from the off. The space between the instruments. The cohesive sense of a band performance. The vocals centered and just a little forward, commanding.
The TT exudes authority in its presentation – in the bass, in the weight behind every note. Which is not to say it is slow or overly thick, like some tube systems can be. No, its that word “balanced” again.
Moving on to Radiohead‘s “Weird Fishes” from the “In Dreams “ album. A great test track as there is so much going on that it can sound like a collection of special effects rather than a song. No such problems for the TT, which makes the track cohere effortlessly, managing to communicate the musicality in the rippling synths. To use another Radiohead title – everything is in its right place. I rapidly conclude that the LCD-X and the TT is a match made in audio heaven for me.
My other go-to can is the HD800 – known to be picky with sources and amps. Its my first choice for classical repertoire and the TT shows it off brilliantly, bringing out all its strengths in detail, resolution and imaging. I feel no need for additional amplification/coloration, such is the transparency of the pairing. It is with acoustic music that you can really gauge how ‘lifelike’ the sound is, and the TT came through with flying colours. Violins sound like violins, brass has the requisite 'parp' The TT doesn’t turn the HD800 into an Audeze, it is still a relatively bright presentation, and not one I would choose for, say, rock. My conclusion - the TT is a platform that brings out the innate qualities of your headphones – it is non-interventionist.
Both Beyer and Grado are brands with definite house sounds, both on the brighter side of neutral. I started to self-identify as a Head-fier with a Grado 325 and my first upgrade was to the Beyer T1 so I have some form with them both. BUT bear in mind in what follows that I moved on from both because I ended up finding them too bright…
The TT presents the T90 like a baby T1 (that’s a lot of Ts) – spacious and with a wide soundstage. But on Wild Beasts’s “Bed of Nails” from the “Smother” album the drums sound more than ideally compressed, and Tom Fleming’s deeper voice is less clearly delineated as against Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto. The Grado adds some welcome bass presence and some additional vocal warmth, but for me it still sounds overly bright. Back to the LCD-X and everything digs deeper, and the ‘boogie factor’ clicks in.
In Led Zep’s ‘Black Dog’ from their fourth album, similar findings, but here the Grado closes the gap a little on the planar, with a good guitar sound and a really tactile crunch to John Paul Jones’ bass. The extra warmth of the LCD-X means I have to listen harder for that bass texture (though it is still there), but the drums have more impact, there is excellent extension and weight to Plant’s vocal, and again I find myself wanting to keep listening to the rest of the album.
Moving on to Melody Gardot’s “Preacherman” from this year’s all-analogue “Currency of Man” album renders similar results – the TT/LCD-X combo presents a wonderful sense of a full live band, with the ability to follow the individual instruments while maintaining a cohesive whole. The Grado has a drier presentation, bass is again lovely and crunchy. The T90 is similar, but with a wider (artificially wide?) stage.
Conclusions
Tour headphones first. The T90 seems like something of a bargain – getting you close to T1 sound quality at a fraction of the price (note I haven’t heard the new 2nd Generation T1). The Grado didn’t quite click with me – maybe I needed more time with it to re-acclimatize to the Grado house sound. But for me, personally, both felt a little too dry and bright to be keepers. YMM very well V.
On to the star of the show. The Hugo TT sounded great with every genre of music I threw at it – indie rock, rock, electronic, orchestral, renaissance polyphony, you name it, the TT served it up with authority and panache. While the TT played nice with every headphone I tried, its detail retrieval coupled with its shear musicality in my opinion deserves, indeed demands, a highly resolving top of the line ‘phone like the LCD-X and HD800. The Audeze in particular gets my vote as an ideal pairing.
For the price of the TT you are getting something as near to ‘affordable end game’ as I could reasonably expect, and comfortably the best sound that I have heard in my home. An easy 5 stars.
great review mate!