Chord Electronics - Hugo 2 - The Official Thread
Jul 18, 2017 at 9:06 PM Post #6,017 of 22,433
What I am trying to say is that you don't need to be listening to audiophile approved music, to net substantial improvement in SQ with Hugo 2.

I agree, whats the fun in listening to music you don't enjoy?

I'll take poorer recorded metal albums over Amber Rubarths binaural audiophile recordings any day.

Now playing; Megadeth - Sweating Bullets
 
Jul 18, 2017 at 9:31 PM Post #6,018 of 22,433
Hi. I'm 15min in to my listen of the Hugo2 on my turn of this USA Tour group. A question:

Do any of you have a bead on where to get a unit in the U.S. sooner than August at Moon Audio or Sight + Sound?
 
Jul 18, 2017 at 9:48 PM Post #6,019 of 22,433
agree!! a mini project.:dt880smile:

use this link to see inside H2 by using zoom tool. the picture to select is on the left hand side. just move your cursor over the image.

http://www.iglooaudio.co.uk/chord-hugo-2.html

Really awesome to see how minimal the components are in Chord DACs compared to other companies.

8123704_thumb.jpg 9119805.jpg
 
Jul 18, 2017 at 10:00 PM Post #6,021 of 22,433
Hi. I'm 15min in to my listen of the Hugo2 on my turn of this USA Tour group. A question:

Do any of you have a bead on where to get a unit in the U.S. sooner than August at Moon Audio or Sight + Sound?

Lol! Enjoy your time with the tour unit! :)
 
Jul 18, 2017 at 11:19 PM Post #6,025 of 22,433
Has anyone encountered the unsigned driver issue with the Windows 10 Creator Edition version of the driver? I can't get this thing to work on my PC at all...

It may have something to do with a Windows update. Try re-installing your driver or getting a new one. My XMOS receiver recently stopped working, but all was fine again once I re-installed the driver.
 
Jul 19, 2017 at 1:45 AM Post #6,027 of 22,433
i'm also selling my senn650s...was listening to them against the sony z1r a few wks back
(on iFi micro idsd) and what a diff in the details, layers.

wonder how the z1r sounds on the hugo2.....thought i'd read macedonian hero enjoyed the duo
the elear also interest me as does the nightowl as a 2nd pair for work

I'm enjoying the Z1R/Hugo 2 combo quite a bit, it's basically what I wanted upgrading from the Mojo. The extra resolution is pretty amazing on some tracks, I'm still discovering tons of new things in music I know well. And tonally it's a great fit for me, I use either the white or green filter setting. I haven't run into anything bright enough yet that has made me want to really try out the other two.
 
Jul 19, 2017 at 4:18 AM Post #6,028 of 22,433
I have been testing different sources these last few days and have found that a Regen/LPS-1 hooked up to an ipad/JB sounds an order of magnitude better than just the ipad and jitterbug alone.

The ipad/JB sounds flat and not as musical in comparison. The regen/lps-1 hooked up to the iPad sounds more realistic with better timing, soundstage width and depth. To put it frankly, the combo just gets more out of Hugo 2 and increases my involvement quite a bit.I don't even need to use the crossfeed settings, it already sounds out of head and believable, but the crossfeed does further increase immersion. Tomorrow I will be receiving my ISO REGEN and we'll see where it goes from there :D
I've never owned the Regen, but the improvement the ISO Regen brings to replay out of the iPad, through the Hugo2, is very impressive. I would also attribute some of the improvement to the USPCB, which I use from the Apple Camera adapter lead to the IR.
 
Jul 19, 2017 at 4:31 AM Post #6,029 of 22,433
I've had the Hugo 2 for over a week now. I agree everyone who says that compared to the Mojo, it's more open (deeper and wider) in space and soundstage. The imaging and 3Dness and detail is definitely improved. However, I do find a strength in the Mojo over the Hugo 2, I find the Mojo more midcentric, especially with my JH13 and hence do find them, to my taste, more engaging, especially the vocals.

I LOVE these types of descriptions as they help me to try to quantify what I am experiencing and I try to see if I can experience similar things. Right now, I find the cross feed is very useful in live recordings. I also find that the red filter gives a warmth to unmixed live soundboard recordings.

The red and orange filter gives vocals a very euphonic sound that I do enjoy from time to time. I think that in terms of intimacy the red filter is the closest to Mojo (I sense more 'bloom' to the sound) combine that with crossfeed on red or green and you get a wonderful full bodied and euphonic sound. Try it with your JH13 and let me know what you think.

The trade off, however, is that Hugo 2's wonderful timing (the starting and stopping of notes) is less evident as Rob intended. Not everyone may be able to hear this right away but I sure can.

Overall, I prefer the white filter on the majority of my songs.

Sure Mojo is more mid-centric, in that it has a softer or fuller bass; and this is down to the use of a single coupling capacitor (digital DC servos would be too expensive to implement for Mojo). Electrolytic capacitors add an unnatural bloom to the sound, which can sound superficially attractive. I have talked before about yin and yang with audio - the battle between refinement and on the other hand transparency. More refinement equates to a warmer presentation; more transparency gives a much brighter presentation. Unfortunately, people are extremely sensitive to this balance; and when you employ listening tests in product development it's crucial that very sensitive and accurate listening is used, as a superficial improvement may just be down to better balance (one distortion balancing another). So I have to consciously be extremely careful when using listening tests, because you can never be 100% sure; that's why a null listening test (when one can hear no difference) is extremely valuable.

I want to give you an idea of the tricks that are available. I talked about capacitors - an electrolytic will impart a softness to the sound (tantalum caps are better - more accurate - and I use that in Mojo), and this is due to dielectric absorption effects, and straight forward low frequency distortion from the capacitor. What happens is a low frequency error is created, and the brain detects this error, and the bass then sounds soft and fuller. Removing the capacitor will make a much tighter, leaner bass; also it will be faster, with better pitch definition. But superficially one just notices the lack of bloom due to the absence of the low frequency error.

Another source of low frequency errors are due to the reference circuitry. Now actually a DAC is simply a reference voltage where the output is digital data modifying the reference voltage. That's simply how a DAC works. The reference voltage is buried inside the DAC chip, but it is crucial to performance - what happens is the DAC draws current from the reference voltage, and this current subtly modulates the voltage directly - and this changes the gain of the system. This is normally overcome by adding a decoupling capacitor; but then what happens is the OP will amplitude modulate depending on the music envelope - and this creates another set of LF distortions, again giving the sense of body or bloom. Unfortunately, this set of AM distortions are not measurable with conventional measurements, and so developers and chip DAC designers aren't aware of the consequences; but it does provide an opportunity for a developer to tweak the sound by changing the decoupling. This is one reason why I talk about my discrete reference circuitry, as I can eliminate this issue. The third trick one can use is straight forward low frequency second harmonic distortion, and I see lots of developers using this to artificially fatten up the sound.

So given that Hugo 2 has a digital DC servo, so no coupling capacitors in the signal path, and the reference voltage is rock solid with zero music envelope modulation, and there is zero low frequency distortion, in a normal DAC this would make it sound impossibly bright and lean - even if the bass is extremely tight and tuneful - the yin-yang balance would be wrong. So why would a conventional DAC sound un-balanced with this approach?

In three words - noise floor modulation. This, where the noise floor pumps up and down with signal - is the principal problem. All other DAC's suffer from measurable noise floor modulation, and this makes things sound hard and bright (there are other errors that do this too). By eliminating the tricks that will add an artificial bloom to the sound means I have to work very much harder to eliminate this problem; and this is an issue that has taken me 30 years to resolve, so it is not easy to eliminate, as there are myriad sources of these errors within a DAC.

Moving on to the filter selection. Now providing the option of adjustable filters very much goes against my purist design philosophy; the 256 FS filter (white or green) is the technically more accurate filter, in that the reconstruction of transient timing is more accurate to the original analogue signal in the ADC, and in the past I would have simply given that. But I included the option for two reasons; firstly as it provides a simple way of getting yin-yang balance, even if we are using an inaccuracy to enable that, and that's OK so long as people are aware of that fact. When you get better headphones, then ideally the incisive filter options will be the best. The second reason was to demonstrate that actually very subtle technical differences can have a profound subjective effect. The technical difference between the 256 FS filter and 16 FS is very subtle; both options employ digital filtering up to 2048 FS, but the 16 FS option is just IIR filters (analogue type filter) and the 256 FS replaces the 16>256 IIR filter with a WTA filter (an FIR filter) which will re-construct the timing much more accurately. But the difference technically is very small. Note that conventional chip DAC's employ no filtering whatsoever above 8 FS or 16 FS (that's 384 kHz and 768 kHz max respectively).

Now although the technical difference is very small, to me the sound quality difference is very much not small. And it does sound very different to a normal WTA filter - you do not get the usual changes in sound quality, but you can perceive the starting and stopping of notes more easily - and because it's like snapping everything into focus, it sounds sharper and more incisive. When you can't hear the starting and stopping of notes, things sound soft and warm. Indeed, poor timing reconstruction is another way where you can soften up the sound - but again it's unnatural, as everything sounds soft, even sharp percussive effects that in real life sound sharp and fast.

To me the change is not small - so I was disappointed that a lot of posters were initially saying that they could not hear much of a change. Maybe I am a hyper-sensitive listener - or more likely the change is much more apparent when you are not doing AB tests, but are listening long term to music, and your brain has learnt about the better accuracy that Hugo 2 offers. But it's good to hear posters starting to report the change that I hear.

Just to wrap up - I have talked a lot about yin-yang balance, and how distortions are used to balance other distortions. But because Hugo 2 is very different to other DAC's, and distortions or errors are fundamentally lower, the downside is that headphones deficiencies will be thrown into relief; transducers that were before too bright may actually become acceptable; and conversely transducers that had "nice" or optimizing errors become unacceptable - it becomes very much easier to hear problems. So bear in mind that your headphone collection abilities will change in sometimes surprising ways.

Happy listening, Rob
 
Jul 19, 2017 at 4:50 AM Post #6,030 of 22,433
IMHO not loving the HD650 with the Hugo 2. i feel/hear like it accentuates the infamous "Sennheiser veil"...

Focal Elear and SE846 on the other hand are kicking my ass. sounds amazing.
I had the impression that elear was kind of veiled too. To me the idsd bl made the hd650 unveiled and clear. Iguess though all is relative. And yes hd 650 is the higest level of headphones ive heard. And i am happy with them still. I thoght h2 would unveil them. Good thing about hd650 they could never become to harsh so it needs a clear and detailed dac as possible unlike hd800 as i have read can become to harsh.
 
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