Totally agree on those points!   But I think most new comers are mentioning the lineout thing mainly due to the concerns of whether Hugo amp is adequate enough to drive those commonly recognized "hard-to-drive" headphones such as HD800. If it were to drive "easy-to-drive" ones such as Z1000...

Thanks! Got your point. Using hugo to drive passive speaker is very wise.

Hi alubis, the term "power amp" does refer to the headphone amp such as phonitor, is my understanding correct? But those amps also have preamp function. Actually my point is that I am quite uncertain that whether an external amp is needed to accompany hugo to drive hd800? If it is still needed...

Thanks! Knowing this would be a great relief. I will try to dig those posts out.

Thanks kkcc. If no bypass, then the signal will go through unnecessary amp section inside the hugo, causing negative impact on sound quality... Isn't it? By the way, how would you compare hd800 with hugo output versus wa22 output?

Hi Hugo owners, just wondering whether the RCA output is true line-out that bypasses amp section or just set the amp to the highest volume, as AK240 do? Anyone who use Hugo as a DAC only and connect to an amp through RCA can answer this question? Thanks you guys!

Thanks formula1. I will check that out.

But I think if you got hugo and hdvd800, you can connect both by RCA and bypass the volume control section of hugo. In such setup, I do think it should sound better than hdvd800 or hugo combo alone. This will be a great dac + a great amp. Isn't it ?

Agree that hdvd800 is a better amp by a far margin than hugo or ifi dad. And for hd800, amp is a very important section. I will take hdvd800 I think. Thanks Al for the suggestion and help. I think thin is quite a nature of hd800, and cable change and go balanced mode can both somehow change its...

Yes, one reason that I am prone to hdvd800 is because it runs balanced mode. Ak pef11 is way too expensive... And I am not sure how it runs, since ak240 actually does not have a true line out.

Thanks Al for your test. Really appreciate! So are you suggesting that using R10 as transport, hugo sounds better than hdvd800, even with hugo's internal amp? Is my understanding correct? I am really surprised by this result actually. If this is the case, obviously I should pick hugo rather...

Really appreciate your help Al! Yes I believe as a transport R10 can definitely do its job. AK240 is a simply too expensive to be a transport, not that worthwhile... even AK100 can deliver the job. Glad to know that you also possess a Chord Hugo. It is really hard to find someone who own both...

Hi Al, AK240 has dual Cirrus Logic CS4398 dac chip, not Sabre I think.. Hdvd800 has PCM1792 as far as I know, and yes R10 adopts an sabre ES9810 chip. Obviously amp inside hdvd800 is great, but I am just worried about its dac part. If you could run a small test between R10 rca to...

Hi all, I have been looking at this dac/amp for several days. Currently I have an AK240 and plan to connect it with toslink on hdvd800. Not sure if any owners has tried the optical input of hdvd800. How does it sound compared to other inputs? Also, considering the not-so-strong dac part of...

Thanks Steve for your feedback. Can I ask what source are you feeding both equipment? PC, toslink? Is the difference between HDVD800 and Hugo easily noticeable? Thanks.