Do you guys know where to purchase replacement batteries for the Hugo 2? I was able to replace the batteries for my Hugo 1 no problem, but there doesn't seem to be Hugo 2 batteries available online.

Now people get all excited over a $4,500 headphone. This is nuts. When I first joined this hobby HD650 was the uber expensive, lol.

With todays Uber-expensive flagships, you hear how badly recorded your music is, then you realize 99% of sound engineers are not audiophiles.

I remember when Audeze's flagship was $995, those were exciting times with affordable flagships.

Their focus isn’t the audiophile market, like Bose the focus will be on increasing market share. Luckily, there are now a lot of headphone brands for us to pick from. There was a time Sennheiser was the top with their hd600/650 headphones, that time has past and will probably never come back...

It seems Sennheiser wasn't as active innovating their products, competitors like Focal and many others has been steadily improving their headphones and releasing improved models every 1 - 2 years while Sennheiser took 10 years to update their HD800 to the HD800S and it was a minor update. Old...

Do headphones have the same issues as full range speaker drivers? Full range driver have issues, to overcome issues(Doppler distortion, limited high and low range) speaker designers have split the frequency to dedicated drivers. When a driver is playing low frequencies and high frequencies at...

Curious how this compares to cheaper options like Schiit Jotunheim or Lyr.

A $2000 is about 1 - 3% better than a $500 dac, which is just a little better than cheaper ones, like a Schiit Modius. Over excited reviewers make it seem like the latest a greatest dac is like 300% better, but it's not. Dacs can only contribute so much, speakers and headphones make the most...

You can demo, but it doesn't guarantee you get a more accurate dac, however it guarantees you get a dac you like. You might like a dac because of certain characteristics(wider soundstage, bigger bass, better timbre, etc…), but you don’t know if those characteristics are more or less accurate...

I have the Schiit Modius, great sounding dac and very comparable to my Hugo. I wouldn't necessarily say one is better than the other, but they do sound slightly different in the upper frequencies.

If the improvement cannot be measured, then what makes a more expensive dac better and what should be measured instead? I can see the reason for boutique resistors, capacitors etc, but not always a guarantee.

You sure it’s 20 - 30% difference? The $99 Modi vs $2,199 Benchmark Dac 3, seems like what you get for 10X - 20x the price is fractions of a percent improvement. The measurements comparison below shows it's very very close. THD is Modi .0003% vs dac3 .00022% S/N Modi 116 db vs dac3 128 db...

Just wondering with all the advancement in dac technology. I would guess something like the Schiit Modi, for example, is probably as good as $2k dacs of 5 - 7 years ago? I don’t have the latest and greatest dac, but would it be correct to assume something like a Modi or Bifrost is within 98%...

I'm wanting to upgrade to a Hugo 2, but considering it is 3 yrs old, is it better to wait for a Hugo 3? I would think in the last 3 yrs, FPGA chips have doubled in performance, good enough for a new Hugo?

Will internal photos of Aegir be posted? Curious to see what the inside looks like. :smile:

The Ragnarok 1 sounds great already. Can’t wait to read comparisons with the new Rag 2. I hope the input lights are labeled. It makes it much easier selecting inputs.

nice, another uber expensive headphone to get excited about.

For high fidelity music with lossless playback, I listen to my H800s or Elear driven by my Chord Hugo to Ragnarok/Ear + HD(tube). For even higher fidelity. I listen to my GoldenEar Two or Klipsch Palladiums. I'm not sure it's fair to compare $4k speakers to $1k - $1.5k headphones though. In...

On this article. It says, balance headphone outputs do not get the same benefits as balance line-level interfaces. Below is a cut and paste of pieces from this article. https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/audio-myth-balanced-headphone-outputs-are-better. Not sure how factual the...

Yes, I don’t hear all the claimed benefits of balanced many say, darker background, less distortion, more dynamics, clearer instrument separation, etc… So I was just wondering where the discussion of balance vs SE currently is, or maybe it has been settled? I read the article above saying...

You are essentially making the argument that audiophiles wouldn't pay more for a little sonic improvement and that "good enough" is what they are after. I don't know if you are right on that one. Anyway, maybe power regenerators for headphone amps can be lower in price, because less power...

I think you can make that argument between amps and dacs of different price points. The difference between the Magni 3 and a more expensive amp is probably small, yet many go for the higher price option for a tiny sonic upgrade.

Been doing some reading on power regenerators for audio equipment. Why isn't power regenerators popular among headphone users? Seems like something that can potentially benefit an amp and something Schiit can make at more reasonable prices?

Is balance headphone amp still preferable over single ended? I read this article regarding the myth of balance headphone amps(link below), seems factual and makes sense. Are their counter arguments to this article which says balance introduces more artifacts to the signal and SE amps is...