The initial burst of hiss will never go away. That is "by design" although I appreciate you don't like it!
You raised a good point about sound adjustments. If you use the stock player, and use a modifier like Clear Audio+ it actually makes the sound louder. If you are using Tidal or Spotify, choosing the same mode actually makes the sound quite a bit quieter. I am wondering if a reason for this is that when using the stock player, it scans the track for the peak sound levels of the track and ensures that EQ adjustments won't cause clipping. But for 3rd party players, it does not have this information, so the more EQ you apply, the less volume you get. This can cause a radical difference if you A/B the same track in Tidal and in your own music collection.
I know the Chord Hugo is very popular, and understandably so. But from a brief audition I had with it, albeit good, I felt it overpriced. For example consider the Oppo HA-1 which is a desktop unit...it costs less and definitely sounds better. I realise you are paying for portability, but nonetheless it also compromises the power supply, DAC and balanced outputs. So the PHA-3 represents much better value for money and probably gets to within 80-90% of the Chord Hugo. The downside is if you are European you need to import the Japanese one to get the rechargeable battery version of the PHA-3.
