I rarely post here but think Head-Fi is a fantastic resource and read the useful information posted often. I have heard all of the existing Chord DACs and think Rob Watts and Chord bring a superb line to the marketplace, and I have been fortunate to experience extensively many of the world’s best DACs as reference points.
In addition, I own a Hugo 1, numerous high end daps, many high end headphones and a high quality home headphone system. I feel comfortable saying the Hugo2 is unquestionably a solid performer as a transportable and is probably best in class from everything I’ve listened to. It does not, however, rival true high end headphone amp/dac rigs, but it is very, very good for something users can carry around. And I will ignore the minor hardware defect that will require me to return my unit for a replacement, because that defect didn’t impact the SQ, which was solid and better certainly than Chord’s Hugo 1 and Mojo for sure (but does make me question Chord’s quality control).
But (MAJOR BUT) the 2Go simply is not ready from prime time. In fact, my experience, in a word, would be - abysmal. In another word - disappointing. In a third word - frustrating. The software is just awful. It is extremely glitchy and poorly organized and implemented from a UI perspective. I am pretty surprised Chord didn’t team with a real developer to create a good app. They’ve had plenty of time since the Poly. The 2Go is supposed to be a premium product. The software is the furthest thing from premium; it’s amateurish. Maybe some users are willing to compromise, but there shouldn’t be a need to compromise for a $4,000 product offering. I had read some posts expressing similar views, but I didn’t think it would be this lousy.
Unfortunately, I had consistent problems with the 2Go hardware too. I could not get the 2Go/Hugo2 to play for more than about 90 minutes without shutting off totally, and it was plugged in the entire time. The Hugo2 alone played unendingly, as expected. Moreover, on many occasions I suddenly lost network connectivity and needed to reboot. I have no network issues, and I know a fair bit about networking and am connecting the 2Go to 2.4 WiFi (which is itself a complicating limitation). I had to make substantial adjustments to my home network, including changing router security settings, just to get the 2Go to even connect to my network using a high end linksys router.
I hate to say it because of my respect for the Chord product line, but the 2Go just isn’t ready for prime time. I will be returning everything. Unfortunately, I cannot return expensive custom headphone cables and sd cards that I purchased on the belief that I would use them with the Hugo2/2Go, so I am out money for being a beta tester for Chord. That part is my fault I suppose. I might keep the Hugo2, but my primary anticipated use case was with the sd storage, which implicates, among other problems, the poor software (p.s. I didn’t find any high quality iOS player that did everything I wanted, but there are a few decent ones mentioned in posts here, and no player can see both sd cards at the same time, so users need to basically memorize what’s on each card and potentially change a setting deeply buried in menus too frequently to access other music).
My bottom line would be buyer beware on 2Go.
