[jmills8]

I had the chance to demo the hugo although under less than ideal conditions, The place didn't even give me anywhere to sit.

I think the Hugo is definitely a better unit than the mojo. The mojo to me sounded VERY full bodied to the point where it took away from other aspects of the sound. i wouldn't call it muddied or veiled since it still had lots of detail but it definitely had a strange characteristic that is far from a reference sound.

The hugo drove my ethers beautifully for a portable unit, great detail and dynamics with a smooth sound, very analog. One thing i disliked was the lack of width in the sound stage and the biggest problem was it's noise floor, It had quite a noticeable hum/buzz when my Campfire Andromeda were plugged in. The mojo also had this problem but to a lesser extent.

The hugo is definitely an impressive unit in its own right. I imagine it would be better in a Hifi setup than a Headfi one but again it depends on peoples preference.

Overall i prefer the sound of my AK player which to me sounded. 'holographic'? Darker background and a better sense of space. i think ill be upgrading it.

That hiss is an issue with that iem. My iens have no hiss. I EQ my Hugo and I can tune it to sound just like the Mojo but it will have a wider sound stage and seperation between instruments.

 

[ubs28]

Adding an amplifier can reduce or even eliminate the hissing. The Chord Hugo + Auralic Taurus MKII has no hiss with the Shure SE846 for example.
 
But the hissing is not a big problem because when the music starts playing, the hiss will be overshadowed by the music.

 

[doraymon]

Guys I am a little confused and wanted to hear your opinion.
 
I always thought that adding an amp to the Hugo would have brought no benefits (at list for decently sensitive headphones), but I never really tried until a few weeks ago, when I decided to buy a Cavalli Audio Liquid Carbon 2.0 and pair it with the Hugo.
 
The 150h burn-in in process suggested by the manufacturer is only half way, but I started doing some A/B testing with and without the amp.
 
Now, I am a little bit confused about what I am hearing.
With some tracks I can clearly hear how the addition of the amp (like Rob Watts always sustained) kills a little of Hugo's refinement (detail, transient reproduction), while on other tracks the amp seems to "open" the sound, adding spaciousness and live to the sound without significantly loosing detail. Or at list the effect of the improved liveliness brings much more enjoyment despite a little detail loss.
 
Do I need an audiologist or what I am saying has an explanation?
 
 
CONFIGURATION:
Tracks: 24/96 AIFF or FLAC
Source: MacBook Pro running Audirvana Plus
MacBook-Hugo connection: Optical
Hugo-Liquid carbon connection: 3.5mm-3.5mm SE cable
Headphones: HifiMan Edition X V2, with SE cable

 

[elviscaprice]

  Guys I am a little confused and wanted to hear your opinion.
 
I always thought that adding an amp to the Hugo would have brought no benefits (at list for decently sensitive headphones), but I never really tried until a few weeks ago, when I decided to buy a Cavalli Audio Liquid Carbon 2.0 and pair it with the Hugo.
 
The 150h burn-in in process suggested by the manufacturer is only half way, but I started doing some A/B testing with and without the amp.
 
Now, I am a little bit confused about what I am hearing.
With some tracks I can clearly hear how the addition of the amp (like Rob Watts always sustained) kills a little of Hugo's refinement (detail, transient reproduction), while on other tracks the amp seems to "open" the sound, adding spaciousness and live to the sound without significantly loosing detail. Or at list the effect of the improved liveliness brings much more enjoyment despite a little detail loss.
 
Do I need an audiologist or what I am saying has an explanation?
 
 
CONFIGURATION:
Tracks: 24/96 AIFF or FLAC
Source: MacBook Pro running Audirvana Plus
MacBook-Hugo connection: Optical
Hugo-Liquid carbon connection: 3.5mm-3.5mm SE cable
Headphones: HifiMan Edition X V2, with SE cable

​I suspect your optical connection, although good, does still stream some electrical interference into the Hugo's DAC, thus creating a smaller sound stage than is possible with a galvanic isolated connection.  Sending the analog stream from the Hugo to an alternative amp helps to alleviate some of that loss of sound stage but at the cost of lost detail. 
 
Remedy:  USB 2.0 audio with galvanic isolated power for an Intona.  Your sound stage will become much bigger with the detail.

 

[WCDchee]

Guys I am a little confused and wanted to hear your opinion.

I always thought that adding an amp to the Hugo would have brought no benefits (at list for decently sensitive headphones), but I never really tried until a few weeks ago, when I decided to buy a Cavalli Audio Liquid Carbon 2.0 and pair it with the Hugo.

The 150h burn-in in process suggested by the manufacturer is only half way, but I started doing some A/B testing with and without the amp.

Now, I am a little bit confused about what I am hearing.
With some tracks I can clearly hear how the addition of the amp (like Rob Watts always sustained) kills a little of Hugo's refinement (detail, transient reproduction), while on other tracks the amp seems to "open" the sound, adding spaciousness and live to the sound without significantly loosing detail. Or at list the effect of the improved liveliness brings much more enjoyment despite a little detail loss.

Do I need an audiologist or what I am saying has an explanation?


CONFIGURATION:
Tracks: 24/96 AIFF or FLAC
Source: MacBook Pro running Audirvana Plus
MacBook-Hugo connection: Optical
Hugo-Liquid carbon connection: 3.5mm-3.5mm SE cable
Headphones: HifiMan Edition X V2, with SE cable

You are hearing right.

Regardless of what some people say, hear it for yourself. The sound does get better in some ways.

 

[doraymon]

​I suspect your optical connection, although good, does still stream some electrical interference into the Hugo's DAC, thus creating a smaller sound stage than is possible with a galvanic isolated connection.  Sending the analog stream from the Hugo to an alternative amp helps to alleviate some of that loss of sound stage but at the cost of lost detail. 

Remedy:  USB 2.0 audio with galvanic isolated power for an Intona.  Your sound stage will become much bigger with the detail.

Mmmh to my understanding the optical connection provides galvanic isolation.
Is this not the case?

 

[x RELIC x]

Guys I am a little confused and wanted to hear your opinion.

I always thought that adding an amp to the Hugo would have brought no benefits (at list for decently sensitive headphones), but I never really tried until a few weeks ago, when I decided to buy a Cavalli Audio Liquid Carbon 2.0 and pair it with the Hugo.

The 150h burn-in in process suggested by the manufacturer is only half way, but I started doing some A/B testing with and without the amp.

Now, I am a little bit confused about what I am hearing.
With some tracks I can clearly hear how the addition of the amp (like Rob Watts always sustained) kills a little of Hugo's refinement (detail, transient reproduction), while on other tracks the amp seems to "open" the sound, adding spaciousness and live to the sound without significantly loosing detail. Or at list the effect of the improved liveliness brings much more enjoyment despite a little detail loss.

Do I need an audiologist or what I am saying has an explanation?


CONFIGURATION:
Tracks: 24/96 AIFF or FLAC
Source: MacBook Pro running Audirvana Plus
MacBook-Hugo connection: Optical
Hugo-Liquid carbon connection: 3.5mm-3.5mm SE cable
Headphones: HifiMan Edition X V2, with SE cable

Mmmh to my understanding the optical connection provides galvanic isolation.
Is this not the case?

Optical connection can not stream any electrical noise as it's literally pulses of light so there is no RF or electrical noise being sent to the Hugo with optical. The thing that's increasing the sense of soundstage is likely the coloration of Liquid Carbon. Nothing wrong with that if you like the sound. Rob has always maintained that the smoother (less lively) sound is the cleanest in regards to lower noise and distortions so the Liquid Carbon is adding some noise or distortion (you literally can not add something and have it subtract distortion), but whatever sounds right to you is what matters.

I had the Liquid Carbon and paired it with the Mojo now and again, and yes, it's an enjoyable amp. Enjoy the music!

 

[elviscaprice]

"USB, Ethernet, and Firewire are all asynchronous interfaces where the DAC clock is the "master". All three of those interfaces have the ability to be essentially "perfect" in technical terms of getting the data to the DAC chip. But, how well they are implemented will make for differences in performance. SPDIF interfaces (optical, coax, AES) are technically inferior as the embedded clock must be extracted, and then its differences with the DAC clock have to resolved. But, a really good SPDIF implementation can trump a poor USB implementation."  From Barrows
 
You are correct, Doryman, I meant to say inferior clocking.
 

 

[x RELIC x]

"USB, Ethernet, and Firewire are all asynchronous interfaces where the DAC clock is the "master". All three of those interfaces have the ability to be essentially "perfect" in technical terms of getting the data to the DAC chip. But, how well they are implemented will make for differences in performance. SPDIF interfaces (optical, coax, AES) are technically inferior as the embedded clock must be extracted, and then its differences with the DAC clock have to resolved. But, a really good SPDIF implementation can trump a poor USB implementation."  From Barrows

You are correct, Doryman, I meant to say inferior clocking.

 

Yes, implementation is key, but I'm sure that without very careful and controlled listening tests one may not notice the tiny difference in jitter between sources with Rob's DACs. Personally, I don't think the difference that doraymon is hearing is down to jitter. At least, that's my $0.02.

Originally Posted by Rob Watts View Post

The reasons why sources and digital interconnects sound different are well understood - see some of my posts. In a nutshell it is not jitter (all my DACs are completely immune to source jitter) but down to RF noise and distorted currents from the source flowing into the DAC's ground plane. The RF noise inter-modulates with the analogue electronics, creating random noise as a by product, which creates noise floor modulation, and that makes it sound brighter or harder. The correlated or distorted currents very subtly add or subtract to small signals, thus changing the fundamental linearity, which in turn mucks up depth perception.

But I also agree in that lots of people hear changes that are not there - I for one have never heard any difference with optical cables (assuming all are bit perfect) with my DAC's, but lots of folks claim big differences. Placebo, or listening with your wallet, plays a part here. Then there are cases of people preferring more distortion... Listening tests must be done in a very controlled and careful fashion, particularly if you are trying to design and develop things.

Rob

Originally Posted by Rob Watts View Post

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

There are two problems that USB has against toslink - and one benefit. The benefit is that timing comes from Mojo - but with toslink the incoming data has to be re-timed via the digital phase lock loop (DPLL) and this is not quite as good - but you will only hear the difference via a careful AB test, so it's in practice insignificant.

The downside with USB is the common ground connection. This will mean RF noise will get into Mojo, making noise floor modulation worse. Now I go to very careful lengths to remove this problem by using lots of RF filtering, and double ground planes on the PCB, but even minute amounts of RF is significant. The other problem is down to the way that digital code works - which is in twos complement. So zero is in 24 bits binary is 0000_0000_0000_0000_0000_0000. If the signal goes slightly positive then we get just one bit changing to: 0000_0000_0000_0000_0000_0001. But if it goes 1 bit negative all the bits change to: 1111_1111_1111_1111_1111_1111. Now the problem with this is that when a bit changes, more power is needed, and this injects current into the ground of the PC - and the ground will get noisier. Unfortunately the noise is worst for small signals. Now the problem with this is that it then couples through to Mojo's ground plane, and the distorted signal currents will add or subtract to small signals - thus changing the small signal linearity. This in turn degrades the ability of the brain to re-create depth information, and so we hear it in terms of depth being flattened. What is really weird about depth perception is that there seems to be no limit to how accurate it needs to be, so the smallest error is significant.

So with toslink we do not get these problems as there is no common ground - so no RF noise, no distorted signals on the ground, and it will sound smoother with better depth against a noisy PC. But the problem can be almost eliminated by using a power efficient USB source that is battery powered - such as a mobile phone. But with noisy PC's the only way of solving it is to use galvanic isolation on the USB - but this draws power from the source, and we can't do that with mobile devices. All of Chord's desktop DAC's have galvanic isolation on the USB, and then you can't hear whether its a noisy PC or a mobile phone. [COLOR=FF00AA]In this case, USB sounds slightly better than optical, because we have the (tiny) timing benefits of USB.[/COLOR]

I hope that explains - its a complex subject.

Rob

 

[elviscaprice]

I would also add the impedance of the power source in the Hugo, lipo batteries, as also adding all so slightly to the problem.   Hopefully soon, when my LPS-1 arrives I will be able to test further a more robust power source also galvanically isolated in comparison to the lipo batteries.
 
I think the difference in USB to optical is much greater than was first observed by Rob, since we more recently have found better solutions to handling of USB audio.

 

[fiascogarcia]

  Guys I am a little confused and wanted to hear your opinion.
 
I always thought that adding an amp to the Hugo would have brought no benefits (at list for decently sensitive headphones), but I never really tried until a few weeks ago, when I decided to buy a Cavalli Audio Liquid Carbon 2.0 and pair it with the Hugo.
 
The 150h burn-in in process suggested by the manufacturer is only half way, but I started doing some A/B testing with and without the amp.
 
Now, I am a little bit confused about what I am hearing.
With some tracks I can clearly hear how the addition of the amp (like Rob Watts always sustained) kills a little of Hugo's refinement (detail, transient reproduction), while on other tracks the amp seems to "open" the sound, adding spaciousness and live to the sound without significantly loosing detail. Or at list the effect of the improved liveliness brings much more enjoyment despite a little detail loss.
 
Do I need an audiologist or what I am saying has an explanation?
 
 
CONFIGURATION:
Tracks: 24/96 AIFF or FLAC
Source: MacBook Pro running Audirvana Plus
MacBook-Hugo connection: Optical
Hugo-Liquid carbon connection: 3.5mm-3.5mm SE cable
Headphones: HifiMan Edition X V2, with SE cable

The LC adds some warmth compared to the sound of the Hugo alone.  For me, there are some tracks where the bass and lower registers play a more important part in the composition of the song, and those are the tracks that I feel are improved with the body that the LC adds to the more neutral sound of the Hugo.  I've not really noticed a significant reduction in detail or clarity using the Hugo/LC vs using the Hugo alone. I've also personally found marked improvement in sq if I adjust the Hugo's volume ball to the green color level when playing through the LC. IMO

 

[doraymon]

  The LC adds some warmth compared to the sound of the Hugo alone.  For me, there are some tracks where the bass and lower registers play a more important part in the composition of the song, and those are the tracks that I feel are improved with the body that the LC adds to the more neutral sound of the Hugo.  I've not really noticed a significant reduction in detail or clarity using the Hugo/LC vs using the Hugo alone. I've also personally found marked improvement in sq if I adjust the Hugo's volume ball to the green color level when playing through the LC. IMO

Interesting.
With the green colur level on he Hugo what is your listening level with the LC?

 

[Whazzzup]

Line level out is blue

 

[doraymon]

Line level out is blue

Sorry for the ignorance, but what level is Line Level? 2V?

 

[kelly200269]

​I suspect your optical connection, although good, does still stream some electrical interference into the Hugo's DAC, thus creating a smaller sound stage than is possible with a galvanic isolated connection.  Sending the analog stream from the Hugo to an alternative amp helps to alleviate some of that loss of sound stage but at the cost of lost detail. 

Remedy:  USB 2.0 audio with galvanic isolated power for an Intona.  Your sound stage will become much bigger with the detail.

Optical connections CANNOT 'stream electrical interference'. Sorry, but absolute tosh.