Chord Electronics - Hugo 2 - The Official Thread

[jwbrent]

Am I the only one here who thinks that white (or grayish) case looks much more awesome than the black? Same for Dave...

I was going to comment on this. I bought the black Hugo when it first came out since I thought it looked better with the then Hugo design. In my humble opinion, due to the new casework, the silver looks better and that will be my choice.

 

[bflat]

  Here's a general overview of how pulse array works.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/800264/watts-up/120#post_12586725

Thanks, so more pulse arrays, the better. Got it.

 

[canali]

Some real world photos of Hugo:
















I think it looks marvelous!

Edit:

Note: I was not present at this event. These photos were taken from the web and are not my own.

I love the lights...Against the brushed metal or blk they give the device a futuristic, sci fi-ish feel. Very cool looking

 

[raypin]

mm...I agree about the design. It looks awesome. The Mojo, by comparison, looks like a.........lol! Although, I would prefer that the headphone out be out in front and both USB at the back of the H2.

 

[halloweenman]

The design looks fantastic, the best yet DAC design from Chord. Undoubtedly a module is planned.

 

[ChrisIsAwesome]

The buldge around the volume control looks like a big octopus eye, only aesthetic thing i dont like over the original. Everything else is cool and i like the silver more this time.

 

[Malevolent]

  I'm in the same boat as you when it comes to upgrading from Mojo to Hugo. I felt it would be more of a side grade in many respects and was planning on purchasing a preowned unit around the $ 1,200 price range.Change of plans now. I am also leaning towards the black version but I have to see it for myself in person before I make any final conclusions.

 
Yeah, like you, I did toy with the idea of purchasing a second hand Hugo, up until the point when I tried the Mojo (early 2016). That was when I decided that I was going to be happier going with a brand new Mojo. What it lost in sound quality, it more than compensated in the aspects of size, cost and portability.
 
 

The buldge around the volume control looks like a big octopus eye, only aesthetic thing i dont like over the original. Everything else is cool and i like the silver more this time.

 
Actually, I thought of this..
 

 

[Christer]

Agreed. I myself dont sit alone to listen to music. I listen on my commute.

Nor do I when I  attend a concert a rehearsal or a  recording session. But I wouldn´t even dream of listening to music on a bus  or any other noisy environment for  that matter.
Can we get back on topic now, please.
The topic in this case being that HUGO 2 now seems to have an onboard class A op amp for more power capability with high quality  power hungry headphones.
HUGO  does not drive some headphones with enough authority.
A fact that now seems to be acknowledged by Chord since one of the improvements they mention is more power from HUGO 2.
OT I don´t like iems even if they can sound reasonably good. It don´t like sticking things into my ears

 

[JaZZ]

Interesting that chord limited the frequency response to 20Hz - 20kHz. Ive always wondered what the effect of inaudible frequencies would be on the response of the driver and perceived sound if any.

 
That's certainly not the case. «Frequency response: 20 Hz – 20 kHz  ± 0.2 dB» indicates the deviation from linearity within 20 Hz and 20 kHz (thus the audio band), not the disposable bandwidth, which will be much larger with hi-res recordings. I don't have measuring data for the classic Hugo at hand, but here are some for the TT.
 

Originally Posted by Christer /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
...HUGO 2 now seems to have an onboard class A op amp for more power capability with high quality power hungry headphones. HUGO  does not drive some headphones with enough authority.
A fact that now seems to be acknowledged by Chord since one of the improvements they mention is more power from HUGO 2.

 
I don't think that's true – it would be a regrettable turning away from the puristic original approach with no extra headphone amp for maximum transparency and accuracy. In fact both Hugos are said to have discrete class A output stages, so I'm confident that the design has stayed the same. See the slide show: «Hugo has a discrete class A OP stage integrated into the DAC output amplifier and filters» – which is the very same as in the original Hugo.

 

[dmance]

Here's hoping the Hugo2 add-on module is more than a Poly. Maybe RW can craft a separation of FPGA's and give us a few hundred thousand more taps isolated in a 'noisy' module that feeds the USB of Hugo2 with 768Khz samples. (In addition to streaming/SDcard playback).

 

[reeltime]

I heard from the folks at Chord: No plans for a trade-up offer.  And existing Hugo owners cannot upgrade, due to hardware changes.  Bummer.

 

[TG04]

I believe AQ offers a free firmware upgrade to existing Dragonfly owners (a $149 item) so economics can't be an obstacle....  Curiously, it seems dCS is making that very argument with their new $30,000 Rossini model.  There's something here that doesn't quite make sense.  
 
Just signed up for a free Tidal 60-day trial and I must say those MQA tracks played back through the Mojo (w/o the special decoding obviously) sound really, really good.  I hope Chord Electronics will follow the AQ initiative, and soon!  If we can't have hardware decoding, please let us at least have the software
 
TG

 

[ray-dude]

The parts of MQA I'm most interested (the "backing out" of smearing from the recording chain and the reproduction chain) are limited to MQA DACs.  TBD how much effort has been put into encoding these parameters into the available MQA content out there, and what impact it really has on sound quality.  I imagine the hardware certification process is much more labor and licensing cost intensive than the software side.  I would be shocked if they have standardized licensing costs, so that it is the same for $149 DAC as a $10000 DAC.  
 
It seems from the reading I've done that the software MQA decoding is limited to the "unfolding" aspect of MQA.  Licensing issues aside, that should be the easiest thing to implement technically (basically supporting a new encoding/compression format).  This is great for the streaming services, since they can stream high res'ish content now by basically using MQA as a compression technique (all goodness, adds more joy to the universe than was there before) 
 
It will be interesting to see if MQA does the "MQA-lite" software licensing for folks that want to implement it in hardware, without all the MQA secret sauce time smearing stuff.  If not, using a MQA-lite enabled software package (Audirvana, Roon, Tidal, etc) gets you all that benefit regardless.

 

[Arpiben]

   
I don't think that's true – it would be a regrettable turning away from the puristic original approach with no extra headphone amp for maximum transparency and accuracy. In fact both Hugos are said to have discrete class A output stages, so I'm confident that the design has stayed the same. See the slide show: «Hugo has a discrete class A OP stage integrated into the DAC output amplifier and filters» – which is the very same as in the original Hugo.

 
I am also hoping that the Output stages' design stayed unmodified. But since they increased by 50% the output power at 8 Ohms ( 1W vs 0.7W) they either added another OP or used more powerfull ones.

 

[JaZZ]

 

  I don't think that's true – it would be a regrettable turning away from the puristic original approach with no extra headphone amp for maximum transparency and accuracy. In fact both Hugos are said to have discrete class A output stages, so I'm confident that the design has stayed the same. See the slide show: «Hugo has a discrete class A OP stage integrated into the DAC output amplifier and filters» – which is the very same as in the original Hugo.

 
I am also hoping that the Output stages' design stayed unmodified. But since they increased by 50% the output power at 8 Ohms ( 1W vs 0.7W) they either added another OP or used more powerfull ones.

 
I don't mind higher output power and different electronics components at all as long as the signal path remains as direct as it is in the original Hugo.