I live and work on a small island so do not have hardly any opportunity to try out gear before I buy, a trip to the my nearest hifi store is either an hours flight or a three hour ferry ride and a four hour drive. I currently have a Unitiqute 2 (attached to a Qnap NAS streaming rebook and high res flac files transcoded on the fly into wav) and a pair of Guru QM10's and to me this sounded pretty good. I wanted to add some headphones that would give me a comparable sound to the speakers so after much reading here on the forum I bought a pair of HD800's. This was a big purchase for me especially as I was buying blind, or should that be deaf, but I was hopeful that based on what seemed pretty overwhelming opinion the HD800's would be awesome. The Unitiqute 2 only has a 3.5mm headphone out and this concerned me a little so I made sure that I ordered a decent adapter and waited with anticipation for them to arrive. They arrived and so I plugged them in, put on my favourite 24/192 track and......it just sounded - ordinary. Tracks that through my speakers sounded spacious and alive were now flat. I could not believe that it was the HD800's fault and whilst I understood that as with most gear a period of burn in was required I just did think that this would make that much difference. So, what to do. The problem was obviously the headphone amp section. I first considered the HDVD800 and the Headline with napsc but they seemed to be a lot of money for what they did and there was no real groundswell of opinion in their favour that set them apart as an outstanding piece of gear. The only answer seemed to be the Hugo and so I phoned my dealer and after the usual caveats of "you really should come along and listen" he dispatched a black Hugo with Chord coax lead. Yesterday I spent my first full day listening and wow the life is back and some. The soundstage is huge, the separation between instruments is fantastic and the realism is just phenomenal. I am now hearing things I had never heard before and last night when I turned the lights out and just sat there listening in the dark it sounded even better. The Hugo is a revelation and for me, a great investment for now and the future.
Just as an aside I would like to get a portable player and wonder if any Hugo owners can recommend one that would work well, I listen mainly to jazz and blues with some classical. Is it practical to take the Hugo out with a portable device or should I just go for one with a decent dac.
Many thanks.