[audionewbi]

Time for someone to make an appreciation and impression thread where all the important posts are linked to in the first post so this way they don't get lost in pages of post.

i don't mind doing it this long weekend but someone with more experienced than me would be great.

 

[Crashem]

  OK, The PCM2706 is just used for the SD USB, it most categorically is not the DAC. The DAC is a pulse array DAC, which uses discrete flip-flops for the analogue OP. The noise shaper for the pulse array runs at 104 MHz, which is fed from a very low jitter crystal oscillator. The noise shaper is in the FPGA. So you are mistaken in thinking the DAC runs at 12 MHz. As to the master clock jitter requirements, this is a complex issue and not easily explained in a simple post. Certainly, the DAC implementation does have a large bearing on the sensitivity to clock jitter, so does the noise shaper characteristics, so does the signal RF noise levels. To further complicate the matter, fixed noise from jitter sources is not audible as such (in terms of SQ), as it just contributes to the dynamic range noise. What is much more damaging is noise floor modulation, and clock jitter can affect this. But I have spent a lot of effort to minimize this aspect of performance. The HD USB is isochronous, but frankly this does not matter much as the DPLL effectively eliminates source jitter anyway. On the WTA filter, yes the WTA algorithm does give roughly the same sound as a conventional half band filter that has ten times the tap length. But I have always said that increasing tap size improves performance,even with using the WTA, and I am certain that 26k is not the limit. You can hear big changes from 16k to 18k; and there was a big change from 18k to 26k. Now there has to be a limit to when the tap size will no longer improve the sound, and if I were to put a number on it (and this is entirely a guess) I would say 1M taps for an 8 times OS filter. That would guarantee accuracy to better than 16 bits, as the sinx/x coefficients are now well below the 16 bit level.  But this is a guess. It could be 100K, it might be 10M. Nobody knows. I will find out - that's what makes this so interesting at the moment.      

 
Thanks for the response.  I noticed the rough layout from the powerpoint on the Chord website after I posted and noticed where the PCM sat and hence my original assumption didn't make sense and the followup conclusion of 12mhz.
 
Is my assumption that reducing Hugo dac to its most basic format being a Delta sigma with custom digital filters remain correct?
 
Thanks again!

 

[Crashem]

Have you had a chance to compare the Toslink input to coax and USB? It would be useful to know how it fares when looking for a new source.

If anyone can compare a Fiio X5 to an MBP that would be really useful too. Does a simpler device give better sound quality?

I haven't compared the Toslink input.  Sorry.  I guess I kind of retired toslink on most of my devices a long time ago as I don't know if I even have a decent and/or working toslink cable anymore.  Or maybe I am being a coax snob as, at least back in the day, toslink could inject fiber specific jitter issues.  Personally, I would have loved to have seen a I2S input on the Hugo but space and all probably means losing such a specialized port.
 
As for the X5 to MBP (MacBookPro?) comparison, are you asking specifically as a way to feed the Hugo?  If so, then what ports would you be using on the X5 and MBP? 

 

[deadie]

The Hugo did not wow me on first listen, that is good. A wow factor, often means there is something too prominent, sometimes not. Now it is wowing me, after listening for some time and that means I am appreciating the delivery, the musical truth the Hugo conveys. Great stuff. 

 
As someone who is eagerly awaiting for his Hugo to arrive, this comment resonates with me.
 
My purchase decision was made at the recent SoCal Headfi event, where I was first introduced to the Hugo and its superlative / musical / different sound.
 
Prior to my first listen, I was skeptical of the hype surrounding this expensive little silver color glowing puck thing.  After that first listen, I was just simply confused with what I was hearing, why is it / how can it be so... different, better?  
 
For the rest of the meet, over the course of about 5 hours, I went back and forth to the Affordable Audio table maybe 6 times, each time afterwards going to some other listening station, go eat, take a break away from the crowd, etc, to make sure I was really hearing what I was hearing.
 
That experience is now a mere memory, my credit line has been tapped, so bring it on!
 
In this thread, I've read with concern about form factor issues -- about RCA's not fitting, leading to chassis re-jiggering as well as two instances of USB micro ports popping off etc, so we'll see.  
 
Regarding external amplification, to my ears, while the Hugo sounded great outputting directly to the LCD-X, this headphone truly shines when paired with a GSX-MkII or Auralic Taurus.  I'm hoping one of those amps, the Questyle CMA800R or some other amp will propel the X to its potential, while introducing minimal coloring to the Hugo's core sound. 

 

[dan.gheorghe]

  I have been seeing some comments describing Hugo as excellent DAC with a good headphone amp. Both comments, in my view, are wrong and way off the mark - and seeing these comments are starting to bug me, so I would like to get it off my chest. So forgive me if I am overstepping the mark - commenting on honest posts about a product I have designed, but I thought it might be useful for Head-fi'rs to read my views.
 
First, I would like to talk about what as a designer I am trying to accomplish, as it has a bearing on one's opinion of Hugo's sound. Imagine going around CES and carefully listening to all the high end hi-fi on show, so you can carefully listen to all the major high end brands available today. Next, listen center stage row 10 to an orchestra. Now, in my opinion, high end Hi-fi sounds from very bad to absolutely awful compared to live acoustic music. The key difference in the sound is variability - live acoustic music has unbelievable variations in the perception of space, timbre, dynamics and rhythm. Additionally, each instrument sounds separate and as distinct entities. By comparison, high-end audio is severely compressed - depth of sound stage is limited to a few feet (listen to off stage effects in say Mahler first - in a concert the off stage effects sound a couple of hundred feet away but on a hi-fi it is an ambient sound a few feet away). Timbre is compressed - you don't get a really rich and smooth instrument playing at the same time as something bright. The biggest problem is the dominance effect - the loudest instrument is the one that drags your attention away - this constant see-saw of attention is the biggest reason for listening fatigue, a major problem with Hi-fi.
 
So I am approaching designing of Hi-fi from the POV of accepting that there are enormous differences between conventional Hi-Fi and real music, and that I want my equipment to be as transparent as possible. Now some peoples idea of transparency is to use distortion to artificially enhance the sound, and this is a real problem with listening tests - a superficially brighter sound, giving the impression of better detail resolution, is often distortion. So a real challenge is defining what true transparency is. My definition, is to latch onto the idea of variations - if a modification makes the sound more variable, then its more expressive, and hence more transparent, even if it sounds, in tonal balance, darker or smoother and superficially less impressive. Now, if you think that your Hi-Fi sounds better than live acoustic music - then fine, we will agree to disagree. You are looking for a sculpted sound, not a truly transparent one, and I would strongly advise never to buy equipment designed by myself, as I am striving for equipment with no added sound.
 
So how does this relate to Hugo? Hugo was on the tail end of a long series of incremental improvements in digital design. I have spent the last 7 years on R and D to fundamentally improve aspects of DAC performance - improvements in the jitter rejection, RF noise filtering, noise shaper topologies, WTA filter length, analogue design plus a lot of other things. Moreover, Hugo took advantage of a big step forward in the capabilities of FPGA's - I could do important things that I knew influenced the sound but that previously were not possible due to FPGA limitations. So Hugo was at the confluence of two events - a big step forward from 7 years work in understanding digital design plus a major step forward in FPGA capability. It is just an accident that it happened with a portable headphone product.
 
So Hugo was the first instance when all these improvements came together. When I finally heard the pre-production unit with all the improvements in place I could not believe the sound quality improvements that I first heard. It completely changed my expectations of what was possible from digital audio - I was hearing things that I have never heard from Hi-fi ever - in other words, the gap from Hi-fi to live acoustic music was suddenly very much closer. Most notable was rapid rhythms being reproduced with breathtaking clarity - before piano music sounded like a jumble of notes, now I could hear each key being played distinctly. The next major change was timbre variations - suddenly each instrument had their own distinct timbre qualities, and the loudest instrument dominance effect was gone. Also gone was listening fatigue - I can listen for 12 hours quite happily.
 
But by far the biggest change was not sound quality, but on the musicality. I found myself listening and enjoying much more music, in a way I have never experienced before with a new design (and anybody who knows something of my designing career knows that is a lot of designs). 
 
So my conclusion is this: Hugo does things that no other DAC at any price point does. Now I can say readers saying, well OK he would say that anyway, it's his baby. True - I can't argue with that POV. But let's examine the facts:
 
1. The interpolation filter is key to recreating the amplitude and timing of the original recording. We know the ear/brain can resolve 4uS of timing - that is 250 kHz sampling rate. To recreate the original timing and amplitude perfectly, you need infinite tap lengths FIR filters. That is a mathematical certainty. Hugo has the largest tap length by far of any other production DAC available at any price.
 
2. RF noise has a major influence in sound quality, and digital DAC's create a lot of noise. Hugo has the most efficient digital filtering of any other production DAC - it filters with a 3 stage filter at 2048 FS. The noise shapers run at 104 MHz, some 20 times faster than all other DAC's (excepting my previous designs). What does this mean? RF noise at 1 MHz is 1000 times lower than all other DAC's, so noise floor modulation effects are dramatically reduced, giving a much smoother and more natural sound quality.
 
3. The lack of DAC RF OP noise means that the analogue section can be made radically simpler as the analogue filter requirements are smaller. Now in analogue terms, making it simpler, with everything else being constant, gives more transparency. You really can hear every solder joint, every passive component, and every active stage. Now Hugo has a single active stage - a very high performance op-amp with a discrete op-stage as a hybrid with a single global feedback path. This arrangement means that you have a single active stage, two resistors and two capacitors in the direct signal path -  and that is it. Note: there is no headphone drive. Normal high performance DAC's have 3 op-amp stages, followed by a separate headphone amp. So to conclude - Hugo's analogue path is not a simple couple of op-amps chucked together, it is fundamentally simpler than all other headphone amp solutions.
 
This brings me on to my biggest annoyance - the claim that Hugo's amp is merely good. Firstly, no body can possibly know how good the headphone amp in Hugo is, because there is not a separate headphone stage as such - its integrated into the DAC function directly. You can't remove the sound of the headphone amp from the sound of the DAC, it's one and the same.
 
Struck by these reports, I decided to investigate, as I see reported problems as a way of improving things in the future. I want to find weakness, my desire is to improve. So I tried loading the OP whilst listening on line level (set to 3v RMS). With 300 ohm, you can hear absolutely no change in sound. Running with 33 ohm, you can hear a small degradation - its slightly brighter. This is consistent with THD going from 0.0004% to 0.0007%. Note these distortion figures are way smaller than desktop headphone amps. Also note that with real headphones at this level you would be at typically ear deafening 115dB SPL. Plugging in real headphones (at much lower levels) gives no change in sound quality too. This has been reported by other posters - adding multiple headphones to Hugo does not degrade sound at all.
 
So how do we reconcile reports that desktop headphone amps sound better? I don't believe they do, its a case of altering the sound to suit somebody's taste. Now as I said at the beginning of this post, that is not what I want to do - I want things to sound transparent, so that we can get closer to the sound of live acoustic music. Adding an extra headphone amp will only make things worse as extra components degrades transparency. Another possibility is that people are responding against Hugo's unusually (for a headphone amp) low output impedance of 0.075 ohms. Now, compared to headphone amps of 2 to 33 ohms impedance, this will make the sound much leaner with less bass. Additionally, the improvements in damping can be heard as a much tighter bass with a faster tempo. So if you find your headphone too lean, the problem is not Hugo's drive - your headphone is just been driven correctly.                 
 
Just to close to all Hugo owners - enjoy! I hope you get as much fun from your music as I have done with Hugo. 

 
Thank you for the input and info. Also congrats for this product which I see it to be a game changer.  Indeed, the DAC section is great and, in my experience, was only bested  by much more expensive dacs. I would use it as a desktop DAC without any second thoughts. However, I won't be giving up  my desktop amps for it. While the amplification was very clean and transparent and very suitable for portable use and even with the big boys like LCD-X and HD800, the later ones did benefit a lot from a more powerful desktop amp, adding more energy, control, dynamics,  etc
This is what I am hearing, but I appreciate the challenge you would face trying to unravel this. I used Burson Conductor / Soloist and Decware Taboo MK3 while reaching the conclusions above.

 

[SleepyOne]

 
In this thread, I've read with concern about form factor issues -- about RCA's not fitting, leading to chassis re-jiggering as well as two instances of USB micro ports popping off etc, so we'll see.  

 
The revised chassis Hugo's audio output RCA hole size is approx. 13mm diameter. 

 

[deadie]

The revised chassis Hugo's audio output RCA hole size is approx. 13mm diameter. 

 
Thanks, that's good news, my Audio Arts will hopefully now fit.  

 
 
Otherwise I was looking into something slimmer like the previously mentioned Kimber Hero / Timbre.

 

[bangkokkid]

For those of who are thinking about attending AXPONA next week in Chicago, we will have several Hugos available for demo and a limited number of units available for immediate purchase at 10% off retail price. A really exceptional deal for something that is sold out everywhere!
 
Details on the show can be found here: http://www.axpona.com
 
Use the code AXP51A to receive 20% off the price of any single-day or show pass.

 

[podeschi]

 I have been seeing some comments describing Hugo as excellent DAC with a good headphone amp. Both comments, in my view, are wrong and way off the mark - and seeing these comments are starting to bug me, so I would like to get it off my chest. So forgive me if I am overstepping the mark - commenting on honest posts about a product I have designed, but I thought it might be useful for Head-fi'rs to read my views.
 
First, I would like to talk about what as a designer I am trying to accomplish, as it has a bearing on one's opinion of Hugo's sound. Imagine going around CES and carefully listening to all the high end hi-fi on show, so you can carefully listen to all the major high end brands available today. Next, listen center stage row 10 to an orchestra. Now, in my opinion, high end Hi-fi sounds from very bad to absolutely awful compared to live acoustic music. The key difference in the sound is variability - live acoustic music has unbelievable variations in the perception of space, timbre, dynamics and rhythm. Additionally, each instrument sounds separate and as distinct entities. By comparison, high-end audio is severely compressed - depth of sound stage is limited to a few feet (listen to off stage effects in say Mahler first - in a concert the off stage effects sound a couple of hundred feet away but on a hi-fi it is an ambient sound a few feet away). Timbre is compressed - you don't get a really rich and smooth instrument playing at the same time as something bright. The biggest problem is the dominance effect - the loudest instrument is the one that drags your attention away - this constant see-saw of attention is the biggest reason for listening fatigue, a major problem with Hi-fi.
 
So I am approaching designing of Hi-fi from the POV of accepting that there are enormous differences between conventional Hi-Fi and real music, and that I want my equipment to be as transparent as possible. Now some peoples idea of transparency is to use distortion to artificially enhance the sound, and this is a real problem with listening tests - a superficially brighter sound, giving the impression of better detail resolution, is often distortion. So a real challenge is defining what true transparency is. My definition, is to latch onto the idea of variations - if a modification makes the sound more variable, then its more expressive, and hence more transparent, even if it sounds, in tonal balance, darker or smoother and superficially less impressive. Now, if you think that your Hi-Fi sounds better than live acoustic music - then fine, we will agree to disagree. You are looking for a sculpted sound, not a truly transparent one, and I would strongly advise never to buy equipment designed by myself, as I am striving for equipment with no added sound.
 
So how does this relate to Hugo? Hugo was on the tail end of a long series of incremental improvements in digital design. I have spent the last 7 years on R and D to fundamentally improve aspects of DAC performance - improvements in the jitter rejection, RF noise filtering, noise shaper topologies, WTA filter length, analogue design plus a lot of other things. Moreover, Hugo took advantage of a big step forward in the capabilities of FPGA's - I could do important things that I knew influenced the sound but that previously were not possible due to FPGA limitations. So Hugo was at the confluence of two events - a big step forward from 7 years work in understanding digital design plus a major step forward in FPGA capability. It is just an accident that it happened with a portable headphone product.
 
So Hugo was the first instance when all these improvements came together. When I finally heard the pre-production unit with all the improvements in place I could not believe the sound quality improvements that I first heard. It completely changed my expectations of what was possible from digital audio - I was hearing things that I have never heard from Hi-fi ever - in other words, the gap from Hi-fi to live acoustic music was suddenly very much closer. Most notable was rapid rhythms being reproduced with breathtaking clarity - before piano music sounded like a jumble of notes, now I could hear each key being played distinctly. The next major change was timbre variations - suddenly each instrument had their own distinct timbre qualities, and the loudest instrument dominance effect was gone. Also gone was listening fatigue - I can listen for 12 hours quite happily.
 
But by far the biggest change was not sound quality, but on the musicality. I found myself listening and enjoying much more music, in a way I have never experienced before with a new design (and anybody who knows something of my designing career knows that is a lot of designs). 
 
So my conclusion is this: Hugo does things that no other DAC at any price point does. Now I can say readers saying, well OK he would say that anyway, it's his baby. True - I can't argue with that POV. But let's examine the facts:
 
1. The interpolation filter is key to recreating the amplitude and timing of the original recording. We know the ear/brain can resolve 4uS of timing - that is 250 kHz sampling rate. To recreate the original timing and amplitude perfectly, you need infinite tap lengths FIR filters. That is a mathematical certainty. Hugo has the largest tap length by far of any other production DAC available at any price.
 
2. RF noise has a major influence in sound quality, and digital DAC's create a lot of noise. Hugo has the most efficient digital filtering of any other production DAC - it filters with a 3 stage filter at 2048 FS. The noise shapers run at 104 MHz, some 20 times faster than all other DAC's (excepting my previous designs). What does this mean? RF noise at 1 MHz is 1000 times lower than all other DAC's, so noise floor modulation effects are dramatically reduced, giving a much smoother and more natural sound quality.
 
3. The lack of DAC RF OP noise means that the analogue section can be made radically simpler as the analogue filter requirements are smaller. Now in analogue terms, making it simpler, with everything else being constant, gives more transparency. You really can hear every solder joint, every passive component, and every active stage. Now Hugo has a single active stage - a very high performance op-amp with a discrete op-stage as a hybrid with a single global feedback path. This arrangement means that you have a single active stage, two resistors and two capacitors in the direct signal path -  and that is it. Note: there is no headphone drive. Normal high performance DAC's have 3 op-amp stages, followed by a separate headphone amp. So to conclude - Hugo's analogue path is not a simple couple of op-amps chucked together, it is fundamentally simpler than all other headphone amp solutions.
 
This brings me on to my biggest annoyance - the claim that Hugo's amp is merely good. Firstly, no body can possibly know how good the headphone amp in Hugo is, because there is not a separate headphone stage as such - its integrated into the DAC function directly. You can't remove the sound of the headphone amp from the sound of the DAC, it's one and the same.
 
Struck by these reports, I decided to investigate, as I see reported problems as a way of improving things in the future. I want to find weakness, my desire is to improve. So I tried loading the OP whilst listening on line level (set to 3v RMS). With 300 ohm, you can hear absolutely no change in sound. Running with 33 ohm, you can hear a small degradation - its slightly brighter. This is consistent with THD going from 0.0004% to 0.0007%. Note these distortion figures are way smaller than desktop headphone amps. Also note that with real headphones at this level you would be at typically ear deafening 115dB SPL. Plugging in real headphones (at much lower levels) gives no change in sound quality too. This has been reported by other posters - adding multiple headphones to Hugo does not degrade sound at all.
 
So how do we reconcile reports that desktop headphone amps sound better? I don't believe they do, its a case of altering the sound to suit somebody's taste. Now as I said at the beginning of this post, that is not what I want to do - I want things to sound transparent, so that we can get closer to the sound of live acoustic music. Adding an extra headphone amp will only make things worse as extra components degrades transparency. Another possibility is that people are responding against Hugo's unusually (for a headphone amp) low output impedance of 0.075 ohms. Now, compared to headphone amps of 2 to 33 ohms impedance, this will make the sound much leaner with less bass. Additionally, the improvements in damping can be heard as a much tighter bass with a faster tempo. So if you find your headphone too lean, the problem is not Hugo's drive - your headphone is just been driven correctly.                 
 
Just to close to all Hugo owners - enjoy! I hope you get as much fun from your music as I have done with Hugo. 

 
Thank you for the input and info. Also congrats for this product which I see it to be a game changer.  Indeed, the DAC section is great and, in my experience, was only bested  by much more expensive dacs. I would use it as a desktop DAC without any second thoughts. However, I won't be giving up  my desktop amps for it. While the amplification was very clean and transparent and very suitable for portable use and even with the big boys like LCD-X and HD800, the later ones did benefit a lot from a more powerful desktop amp, adding more energy, control, dynamics,  etc
This is what I am hearing, but I appreciate the challenge you would face trying to unravel this. I used Burson Conductor / Soloist and Decware Taboo MK3 while reaching the conclusions above.

Thanks to Chord for creating a truly magnificent product, in form and function. I have high end analogue set up (spiral groove SG 1.1 with Goldfinger statement into arc reference gear etc). The Hugo driving my Audeze headphones is the first experience I have had where I could say bye bye to my analogue front end and be happy. The comment " there is not a separate headphone stage as such - its integrated into the DAC function directly. You can't remove the sound of the headphone amp from the sound of the DAC, it's one and the same" is so very true. I don't hear superior sound from my expensive headphone amps except my ALO studio six with expensive nos tubes in it. The Hugo both dac and amplification are world class. And I consider myself super picky and hard to please. Very grateful to Chord for bringing this product to market.

 

[SleepyOne]

   
Thanks, that's good news, my Audio Arts will hopefully now fit.  

 

 
From your pic those probably ok for revised chassis Hugo. The coaxial hole remains small - luckily it fits my Stereovox XV2 coaxial cable.
 

 

 

 

[Stormfriend]

I haven't compared the Toslink input.  Sorry.  I guess I kind of retired toslink on most of my devices a long time ago as I don't know if I even have a decent and/or working toslink cable anymore.  Or maybe I am being a coax snob as, at least back in the day, toslink could inject fiber specific jitter issues.  Personally, I would have loved to have seen a I2S input on the Hugo but space and all probably means losing such a specialized port.

As for the X5 to MBP (MacBookPro?) comparison, are you asking specifically as a way to feed the Hugo?  If so, then what ports would you be using on the X5 and MBP? 

Yeah, I compared Toslink to coax in a blind test about 20 years ago and preferred the coax every time, which has definitely made me a coax snob. But these days I haven't noticed an obvious difference when comparing them with more modern sources. I know the Hugo spec says coax can handle higher bit rates but those don't really matter to me, I mostly care about the quality of RBCD as that accounts for 99% of my music collection.

I'm finding the Toslink output on the MacBook is less clear than USB, but less hassle too so I tend to use it in preference. To be honest I'm not hugely impressed with the MBP as a source. Amarra was my preferred software but it's pricey and the interface is a bit clunky so I've not bought it yet. I was wondering if anyone had compared the Fiio to it as that would be a simpler solution and not a great deal more expensive. There are some pro audio recorders with digital outputs too and as I only use files and folders for navigation they would work for me. What I don't know is how they compare to the computer based transports I've tried (including a PC with SoTM battery powered USB card which is currently my best option). I did buy an Aune X5 SD card transport but it has a clouded midrange, although the treble and bass are clean. My iPad with CCK works very well but I think I can improve on the overall transparency, plus I want to use that for other stuff and having a cable attached is limiting. If Bluetooth worked better I might have just gone with it though; my Hugo spends all it's time sat on an equipment rack using the battery to provide electrical isolation.

To answer your second question, 'the best outputs' to see what they're capable of, which I assume would be coax on the Fiio and USB (yuck) on the MBP. It's about finding a common reference.

 

[Rob Watts]

  Mr. Watts, how does the current QBD76 compares to the Hugo? Besides offering balanced outputs is there something else in it that makes it superior to the Hugo?
 
When the QBD76 was launched there were mentioned 4096 taps for the WTA filter, but now I saw 17000 taps quoted; was this a recent software update within the Spartan3 FPGA that the QBD76 uses? Are there planned any hardware updates on the QBD76 for it to also include the Spartan6?

The QBD has 16 elements on the pulse array, not 4 on Hugo, and has balanced outputs. But of course it is seriously rivalled by Hugo, so I am currently working on it's replacement, which will feature all of the improvements made over the last 7 years (QBD76 is 7 years old now) that has gone into Hugo, plus much more taps, plus the benefits that the QBD76 currently has (primarily the 16e pulse array).
 
Now when QBD 76 was under development it was initially planned to use 4096 taps with the same filter structure as in the DAC64, which was 1024 taps. But on listening to various filter options, I noticed something which at the time seemed very odd - it did not tally with my understanding of how the filter worked - the tap length of secondary stages made a big difference to the sound. So this led to a major overhaul of the WTA filter, which ended up being a flat 8 times over sampled (OS) structure, rather than the previous 2 times WTA followed by a 4 times OS filter. This realisation, that the secondary filters were important, gave much more insight into what the interpolation filter needed to do, and opened up more avenues for improvement. This led to a complete change into the WTA algorithm itself, with loads of listening tests to fine tune the recipe. Eventually it got to 18k taps, with the algorithm (or recipe if you like) that Hugo enjoys today. Note that all production QBD76 had the 18k filter, all this work happened at the prototype stage.       

 

[OK-Guy]

  The Hugo did not wow me on first listen, that is good. A wow factor, often means there is something too prominent, sometimes not. Now it is wowing me, after listening for some time and that means I am appreciating the delivery, the musical truth the Hugo conveys. Great stuff. 

 
looking forward to your full thoughts, great to see you're enjoying it mate.

 

[audionewbi]

It would be nice if Mr Watts can explain whether the optical input will sound different to coaxial one for red-book quality. People seem to claim go get better result with coaxial. 

 

[OK-Guy]

Thanks, that's good news, my Audio Arts will hopefully now fit... Otherwise I was looking into something slimmer like the previously mentioned Kimber Hero / Timbre.
 

 
I was speaking to Chord Company earlier (not the Hugo's Chord, separate comps'), they will have a range of cables for the Hugo imminently it appears (RCA, USB etc.), hopefully to suit all pockets, website below:
 
http://www.chord.co.uk/products/analogue-interconnects-rca/