So it seems the unit from CES went to a dealer in Mountain View, CA (Audio High) so if you are near the area I encourage you to audition Hugo. I spent about an hour or so yesterday with the unit:
First set-up:
Sooloos Music server feeding audio to Hugo through coax; Hugo used as DAC/AMP and LCD3 headphones on the other end. The server was loaded with CD quality (44.1/16) and high definition albums (the server will not show the sampling frequency so I'm not sure of the exact freq/bit however I know some of those albums are available at least at 96/24).
I started just sampling some CD quality songs and was very impressed with what I was hearing that I started looking for any album I was familiar with and found Al DiMeola's Friday Night at San Francisco. The first track: Mediterranean Sundance sounded AMAZINGLY GOOD... extreme detail and clarity in the music and the sense of "I'm there"... this was already a higher level of performance compared to my current mobile set-up (AK100+L3+LCD3) and even compared to my office set-up (MacBookAir->Audiophileo2->Music Fidelity M1DAC and M1HPA->LCD3).
I brought my L3 headphone amp to the store to try Hugo as DAC-only but didn't bother connecting it to Hugo since I was already getting top-performance out of the system and I just wanted to keep enjoying more music (for me the best sign that I'm in front of a good system).
Second Set-up:
After 30 mins or so I wanted to try DSD content so I brought my MacBookAir with Pure Music and connected it to Hugo via USB replacing the Sooloos server, it took me a few tries to set it up properly until I saw Pure Music sending DSD audio and was back in business. I played a few DSD64 tracks from "Fiona Hawkins-Blue Deam", "Poncho Sanchez - Watermelon man", "Holly Cole-Temptation" , "John Legend-Get lifted", "Bob Ravenscroft-Re a person I met", "Pink Floyd-Shine on you crazy diamond", and others... DSD performance was a slight improvement to the already awesome performance I was getting with PCM with the same level of clarity but an even more natural and organic sound.
The only comparison I can make is against my home system where I play DSD content: "MacbookAir -> Playback Designs MPD3 -> EAR HP4 -> LCD3". And I can say that I was not missing my home system at all with just my MacbookAir feeding Hugo and directly to my LCD3's. Of course I didn't make any A/B comparisons real-time here but with the limited time I had with Hugo playing DSD (about 30 mins) I can say that I enjoyed MORE listening to the system with Hugo. It's ability to keep me engaged with zero fatigue and 100% enjoyment kept me wanting to listen to more and more music... IMO this is the best quality of any system.
In summary I was really impressed by this DAC/AMP combo and I'm taking one home
I encourage everyone to try and audition this fine peace of Engineering by yourselves. I'm happy this level of audio quality can now be available in a portable package