[Peter Hyatt]

Yea, need 2go info’s

I need to find out if 2go will be released and when.

If you release it I promise I will not say “2go’s release is the same fiasco as poly’s was”.

By the looks of it, we will need to wait for chord to attend yet another industry junket to declare that they are yet again releasing another game changing product.

I cant wait for dacs to become so good and cheap that all dac companies fold overnight. We are in the dac age, something else will come along and the cycle will continue.

I would even go so far to say that within the next 10/20 years dac’s will be so good that human hearing will no longer be able to tell a chord dac from one on a pc or phone, seriously, dacs can only be so good up until a point, just like our hearing.

I don’t even know where to begin.

 

[Christer]

Totally disagree Christer. It's an amazing piece of electronic engineering. TT2. With stored power reserves on demand it'll glide through large symphonic pieces effortlessly.

You make a fair point and I suspect TT2 is partly Rob's answer to those of us who have complained about even DAVE and especially the DAVE /BLU2 combo not having quite enough raw power to drive some of the most demanding headphones "through large symphonic pieces effortlessly."
The power certainly seems to be there with TT2, but although it boasts twice the number of taps of H2 and Qutest, it still lags behind DAVE not to mention DAVE /BLU2 in resolving capacity.
In other words it has still been intentionally designed not to outperform DAVE or BLU2 in that respect.
DAVE on its own still has twice the number of taps and they do seem to count in my opinion.
I also still suspect that even my Qutest or a H2 with a separate M-scaler might outperform the TT2 on its own if my initial auditions under less than ideal conditions and Romaz's stated preference of H2/BLU2 over DAVE on its own are to be trusted.
Once you have heard what 1M taps can bring to the equation it is very difficult not to want them!
On the other hand I also suspect that not even 1M taps would fully resolve all the amazing complexity of for example tonight's live performance of Bruckner's 9th symphony here in Singapore which I am just back from.
But 1 M taps is quite probably about as good as pcm digital currently gets.
And I personally wish Chord had delivered that in a new product instead of the TT2.
But I am sure TT2 will make many others very happy indeed.
Then again,what if it actually takes 256 M taps and no bandwidth limitation for pcm digital to capture what our ears and brains are really capable of resolving?
Cheers Christer

 

[Amberlamps]

I don’t even know where to begin.

Lol, The Beginning ?

I knew one diehard would bite.

 

[OK-Guy]

Let's speculate on where 2go. Uber!?

I'm ethical... I might ask another HeadFier, where's that Phuca gone?

 

[Amberlamps]

Am here, it’s 17:47 on a Friday, will 2go be released at 18:00 ?

 

[OK-Guy]

Am here, it’s 17:47 on a Friday, will 2go be released at 18:00 ?

the dreaded 18.00 conundrum, I'll expect you 2go after.

 

[Amberlamps]

I think I should explain.

Even though I take the piss and most of my posts here are filled with dumb schiit My posts should however, not be taken seriously or be taken with a pinch or punch of salt, as they only make sense to me and thats on a good day.

I do however think that what Chord makes, I think its magic in a Can. Roger Water’s Pro’s and Con’s of Hitchhiking help’s demonstrate exactly why I think their kit is magic in a Can.

I even have some love left over for Poly.

Never seen that coming did ya’s ?

Really need 2go soon, as I cant decide whether to wait for 2go or go straight past free parking and land on Hugo 2 TT ???

 

[musicday]

Would you like 2Go or 2Stay?
I decided 2Go and read more about the amazing Hugo 2 TT.

 

[Amictus]

@UELong @miketlse Well the Hugo 2 arrived today. Compared to the Hugo, it is night and day. A bit aggressive at first, but the revelation of details is amazing. The headphone amp is way better than in the Hugo. The whole effect is so musical. Thank you for your comments. I am late to the party, but grateful to be here.

 

[GreenBow]

@UELong @miketlse Well the Hugo 2 arrived today. Compared to the Hugo, it is night and day. A bit aggressive at first, but the revelation of details is amazing. The headphone amp is way better than in the Hugo. The whole effect is so musical. Thank you for your comments. I am late to the party, but grateful to be here.

Ace.

(Aren't you a Grado thread dude. Maybe the RS1e.)

Agreed. The Hugo 2 is something else. It does calm down as you get used to it. I didn't find it aggressive, but the amount of detail was more that I could place at first. Took me about a month after the only owning the Mojo. I just took it as neutral, with a natural warmth to the music.

(I still only have the lowly SR225e. I definitely need some better headnophes.)

 

[514077]

@UELong @miketlse Well the Hugo 2 arrived today. Compared to the Hugo, it is night and day. A bit aggressive at first, but the revelation of details is amazing. The headphone amp is way better than in the Hugo. The whole effect is so musical. Thank you for your comments. I am late to the party, but grateful to be here.

Glad to hear you took the chance. Great times ahead, re-enjoying your music. If you're in fact a Grado user as @GreenBow asked, H2 is, I find, a lot easier with the highs on my PS1Ke than the old Hugo.
Enjoy.

 

[Slim1970]

Found a nice little storage case for my Hugo 2. There's not much room for much else but the Hugo 2 is well protected

 

[x RELIC x]

The headphone amp is way better than in the Hugo.

Out of curiosity, how can you come to the generalized conclusion that it’s simply the ‘headphone amp’ that is the contributor to the improvements you hear? There are many improvements to the Hugo2 over the Hugo1, and the integrated OP analogue stage is just one of them. I could see how the noise shapers in the analogue output definitely contribute, but the nagging question for me is, how much improvement compared to the improved power supply filters, the improved WTA filter, and increased Pulse Array element DAC? I’m not sure anyone but the designer can pinpoint what improvements contribute to where.

To pin the improvements on just the ‘amp’ is doing the Hugo2 overall design a disservice IMO.

This post outlines the complexity of balancing sound when designing gear and covers the many improvements made over the original (click the spoiler to read):

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/cho...official-thread.831345/page-112#post-13342285

Spoiler: Rob speaks about Hugo2 measurements

I promised that after Can-Jam Singapore I would publish my slides, so here goes. Apologies in advance if you find it too technical - but we are dealing with an immensely complex subject, and I have tried my best to simplify it as much as possible.



So the opening slide.



So here I am talking about the WTA filter, and I have assumed that the reader is aware of the WTA filter and why the recovery of timing of transients is important - so I assume you know already that more taps gives better accuracy, and much better sound, and that moving from 8 FS (output at 352/384 kHz) to 16 FS (output at 705/768 kHz) is seen as a benefit in SQ due to the improved time resolution of the output.

The FPGA is jam packed - I use all of the available DSP cores, all of the memory, and 99.8% of the logic too. The downside to all this is now the FPGA uses a lot of power, around 800 mW.

The output from the WTA 1 is now passed to another WTA filter (WTA 2) that takes us from 16 FS to 256 FS (output at 11.289.6/12.288 MHz) so now the WTA is working to a resolution of 88 nS.

The filter option is actually a big departure for me - I go for what is technically correct (assuming it sounds best), and don't give options. Now the HF filter is a technically correct option - as using the HF filter with HD files can reduce HF noise from the recording, which is not music but noise shaper ADC distortion and noise - if this gets into the analogue parts it can cause more noise floor modulation, so removing it will make it sound smoother. So having the HF filter is a technically valid option. But the 256 FS filter is always the more accurate option, and will recover the timing much more accurately than not using it. So why did I add this as an option?

Several reasons. I thought it would be cool for people to actually hear the effect of the WTA going from 16 FS to 256 FS. Normally, I do lots of listening tests, and so build up knowledge to allow better designs and future improvements, so I thought it would be good for one to hear the effects of 16 FS to 256 FS. What you hear is an immediate change in the ability to perceive the starting and stopping of notes. This quality is very different to the usual WTA benefits (better timbre, pitch, instrument separation and focus etc) in that being able to perceive the starting edge of a signal (the initial pluck of a string or how the piano sounds when instantly hitting the key) all depends upon timing accuracy going from uS down to tens of nS - so I thought it would be interesting to actually hear what I am talking about directly. Now this filter will be called the incisive option, as calling it Hugo is a bit confusing. Its incisive because you can now perceive the starting and stopping of notes much more clearly - and when the brain can't perceive the leading edges, then it becomes a blur and things sound soft.

The second reason for the filter options is that the incisive revealing nature of the filter does make it sound brighter. Now it is absolutely technically more accurate; it only sounds brighter because the brain can now more accurately perceive the starting and stopping of notes, and the starting and stopping transients have a lot of high frequency energy. When the brain can't perceive something, it simply ignores it, so it then sounds unnaturally soft, in that this is not truly transparent. But sometimes when you have say a bad bright recording, or say hard headphones, having a filter that allows you to hear high frequency energy may be a bit too much. But for sure you are using an aberration to hide another problem. So my advice is this; if you use the 16FS option (orange or red) all the time, then consider getting a warmer set of headphones, or trying out EQ. Normally you should be using white or green - I run with green all the time as its useful with 192 recordings.



So this is fairly straightforward, and with conventional DAC's you can easily measure noise floor modulation. I will be showing the measurements shortly.



OK this is a quick summary of the difficulties involved an having a DAC that has no measurable noise floor modulation, and there is a great deal more besides, as noise floor modulation occurs from a myriad of problems within DAC's.



So this is why I have to filter DSD sources - as without it we would get large amounts of noise floor modulation, and other problems - gurgle noise, distortion etc.
With this filter I wanted top match the abilities of the DSD+ mode in Dave, and I believe I have - I know get that level of sound quality. But to do that I had to have incredible levels of filter attenuation - so with much better than 200 dB, I ensure that THD and noise from the analogue is entirely limited by the DSD 64 digital performance - there is no added THD or significant noise that is not present on the file.




So this is employing the knowledge gained from Dave with noise shapers, so now I am getting much better perception of depth and detail resolution. Incidentally, I have now designed and listened to dozens of noise shapers and every time I got the same result as Dave - better noise shaper performance gives better depth, and the smallest small signal error is audible in terms of depth truncation.




This is the same cross-feed on the original Hugo - indeed its the only piece of code coming from Hugo! But there was an interesting story with it. When developing products you go through many stages - and formal listening tests plays a major part. But then there is the part where you are listening for pleasure, and at these times it is valuable because you can see the scale of where the sound quality is, and its only by listening without consciously testing that one can asses musicality or the ability to get emotional with music. And that is the real reason to be doing all this.

So last December one of the prototypes was ready for listening, and I took it on many flights. I was listening to music, and bells were being played - and the depth was so convincing I thought it was in the plane, and not on the recording. This was a major surprise, as getting headphones to portray good depth has been a major issue. It turned out that the cross-feed setting was crucial - with it off, the sound-stage collapsed, and with it on, I got decent depth from headphones.




Measurements are vitally important, as if you are concerned with making truly transparent devices - and that is the only way ultimately for musicality - then measurements plays a vital part. Now its true that a good sounding device can sound better than a better measured one; but for sure, when you improve the measurements, (now matter how small the measured change is) and with all other things being equal, you will perceive an improvement in SQ.

Additionally - many manufacturers make bold claims - sometimes with the best of intentions (they genuinely believe it is better), sometimes with the intent to deceive at worst or at best to extract cash from you - and then from the measurements you can see that they are talking nonsense. Moreover, I can tell from a suite of measurements pretty much how something will sound, and moreover what is the intent and capability of the designer or design team. So although it is highly fashionable to talk about not caring about doing measurements, to me it is throwing out the baby with the bath water.




So I made some claims about noise floor modulation, and here it proves it - absolutely none, and zero an-harmonic products too.
Now I should add I often see so called measurements of my products on other threads using poor quality test equipment, and hence "proving" that xyz is not that good after all. So I should add that Hugo 2 outperforms test equipment easily. A measurement is not objective reality, it is just data subject to error done at a particular time with particular test equipment. And my DAC's require the absolute state of the art test gear - in this case the APX555. This is the only test equipment that is capable of measuring noise floor modulation, as ADC noise floor modulation is way bigger than Hugo 2 - and the APX 555 uses a special technique with 4 ADC's to overcome the ADC limitation.

We can see also the extraordinary low THD - this is only beaten by Dave.




Now one of the features I used was the second order analogue noise shaper OP stage that first appeared with Dave. The benefit of this technique is that it eliminates crossover distortion, as high frequency distortion does not significantly increase with a 33 ohm load. in the past adding a load of 33 ohms would harden up the sound - now it makes no difference whatsoever.



This shows how isolated the DAC and amp is from the power supply and each channel.



So proof again that is immune from jitter - no artifacts at all. The only thing you can see is a tiny residual at 11 and 13 kHz these are artifacts from my APX555.

I am very happy with these measurements; I am confident that no other non Chord DAC at any price comes close to this level of performance.

Rob

And this:

DSD filtering is much more advanced, and sounds and measures better too. But even if that wasn't the case, the pulse array DAC is much improved (10 elements from 4 elements), together with the analogue sections (second order analogue noise shaper output, digital DC servo). Hugo 1 > Hugo 2 is frankly a complete re-design - I have learnt a lot in the past 3 years, and that knowledge went into Hugo 2.

Regardless, glad you’re liking the new gear!

 

[Amictus]

Out of curiosity, how can you come to the generalized conclusion that it’s simply the ‘headphone amp’ that is the contributor to the improvements you hear?

Well, simply, that I have listened to music that I know through listening to the Hugo 1, comparing the headphone amp in the Hugo to the output of my Schiit Lyr 1, and now I have listened to the same music through the Hugo 2, comparing the headphone amp in the Hugo 2 to the same music fed through the Schiit device (with the same tubes) and in the first case I preferred the Lyr, in the second I much preferred the Hugo 2. It may be a generalized conclusion... but it is conclusive! Je suis comme je suis...

 

[Amictus]

Glad to hear you took the chance. Great times ahead, re-enjoying your music. If you're in fact a Grado user as @GreenBow asked, H2 is, I find, a lot easier with the highs on my PS1Ke than the old Hugo.
Enjoy.

Grados? Well... I listened using the SR60, which became the best headphone in my collection, until I tried the PS500, which became the best headphone in my collection, until I tried the GH1, which has become the best headphone in my collection... Grado magic.