Also: each person in this hobby should be able to define what she needs. Be that portability, price/performance factor, battery life, great ID3 support, gapless, or even just a great UI. We are all in it together, if not for the same outcome.
If we are in it for absolute performance, we had better prepared to prove, subjective bias be damned, that the gear path we choose is the best. You can't say gear A or B is better just because it sounds better to you. If it does, great. But that is the same as saying grape pudding is better than apple pudding because to you, it tastes better. If we spend 3500$ in order to get the top performance, even if in doing so we downplay an impressive 3500$ DAP to a transport for an outboard DAC/amp, AND we tell the world it is best (as in an absolute), we had better be prepared to prove it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Corollary: if, in educating ourselves beyond our personal biases, we discover that what we proclaimed, even strongly, is incorrect, we had better own up. Especially to ourselves.
The HUGO/AK380 may in fact perform better than the AK380 naked or with something like a Vorzüge PURE II (depending on your output headphone), but it may not. It may be better, or barely better, or even worse. At normal listening levels, it may be exactly the same. In which case, what matters? How well a device is able to reproduce the original file? Or, in spending 7000$ on a system, is it just touchy/feely stuff that is important? That, and the assurance that comes from spending the most?
I have neither tried the HUGO/AK380 together, nor measured the combo. But I'll be damned if, at normal listening volumes, the HUGO offers anything above the AK380. Even so, I'll happily concede if/when that gear is measured at the same volumes through the same headphones. The problem, of course, with using the AK380 to an outboard amp (not DAC) is that few, if any, amps out there can keep up to the AK380's absolute, measurable performance. They can better it under load in a few areas, but it is all give/take. And the HUGO may be better. It may be worse. In the end, this thread is a lot of people talking subjective experience as though it is fact. We really should preface our impressions with the disclaimer that it is our opinion that A sounds better than B, and be prepared to have another person suggest that B sounds better than A.
That is how subjective experiences work.
