[SearchOfSub]

I did a lot of experimentation and research many years ago with cables, making up my own, and today I still use home made cables for interconnect and LS.

The best sounding insulation is PTFE (teflon), as it sounds smooth and has excellent bass extension. The smoothness is down to its excellent RF characteristics; the bass is down to PTFE having the lowest surface energy of any known plastic - this gives it very low dielectric absorption, and this reduces low frequency errors.

I preferred OFC silver plated solid core copper. So for interconnects I buy 0.4mm PTFE solid core wire from Farnell; twist them with a drill into a single bundle of four conductors; then use four of these bundles and twist again. You then end up with a rope of 16 solid core PTFE wires - 8 for negative, 8 for positive. Incidentally, when forming the wire go backwards and forwards, so that direction is cancelled.

Next is the fun part. Pre-warm your oven to 200 deg C, and pop the twisted wire cable in the oven, leave for 15 minutes at 200 deg C, then turn the oven off, and let it cool overnight. This removes the work hardening in the copper, and as it is PTFE it can stand the temperature. The cable ends up having this new twisted shape as its natural state.

Next solder the cables to connectors, but you must use low melting point silver solder (LMP solder) again from Farnell. Some applications I add a screen.

For loudspeaker cables, do the above, but use 0.6 mm solid core wire.

I have not heard better than the above, but then I have not heard every cable out there.

So getting back to your question, if you don't want to make your own, then I would not spend more than 10% on cables. But what do I know? I make my own!

Rob 

Great info Rob thanks! Will you ever sell your own made speaker cables anytime?

 

[halloweenman]

Dear Rob Watts
 
May I ask what power amp you connect your Hugo to? I ask because I'm looking for a suitable power amp for my Hugo using PMC Twenty.23 floor-standing speakers. Anything I should add to my shortlist to audition that has the right balance of warmth/smoothness vs transparency/detail? Low to medium volume levels in a large Victorian sized living room.
 
Thanks for any advice.
 
Congratulations on a truly great sounding product with the Hugo.

 

[lobwah]

Purchased my Hugo 3 days ago. Brilliant!
 
Just wondering how much battery life people are experiencing per charge?

 

[Somphon]

  Purchased my Hugo 3 days ago. Brilliant!
 
Just wondering how much battery life people are experiencing per charge?

 
Congrats! You will enjoy it!
 
I'll let others with experienced chip in, since I never use it till it runs out of battery yet. Listening around the house for 3-4 hours have been fine so far. 

 

[lobwah]

   
Congrats! You will enjoy it!
 
I'll let others with experienced chip in, since I never use it till it runs out of battery yet. Listening around the house for 3-4 hours have been fine so far. 

Thanks Somphon, I am so impressed.
i've been away from home since I got the Hugo so its had exclusive use for the last 3 days.
I could live with just a few headphones and the Hugo and be perfectly happy. 
 
im testing the battery at the moment and i am up to 6.5 hours. 
I got 8 hours yesterday so id like to see if thats as good as it gets. 

 

[lobwah]

battery lasted 7h50min
I wasn't messing around with any of the settings and I changed headphones only once.
 
Would the quality of files being played effect the battery life?
 
Seems like the 10 hours stated on the website is not a true reflection, in my case anyways

 

[SearchOfSub]

Congrats to Chord and Rob, Hugo just won the 2014 Whathifi DAC of the year award in $2000 + price range announced couple hours ago. Nice!

 

[Rob Watts]

Great info Rob thanks! Will you ever sell your own made speaker cables anytime?

No, I have done my stint as a manufacturer, that's not something I would want to do again! 

 

[rkt31]

using chord Hugo for over a month. it was introduced very late in India. listened extensively as a head phone amp with shure srh940 and in full setup with exposure 2010s2 integrated amp and kef r300 bookshelf speakers. used a cdp coaxial out and USB out of Acer iconia w4 tab as source. my conclusion is that with it sounds better and cleaner. I installed foobar with asio plugin and Hugo driver was also installed prior to that. all gain settings were switched off in foobar and chord Hugo asio driver was selected as output. the set worked flawlessly. some people reported the sound if hugo to be light but IMHO it is neutral . sound has enormous resolution but with out any edge or brightness. bass has so much texture that you start finding new bass notes, similar is for other frequencies whether vocals or treble. Hugo is a dynamic range champ. it has so much reserve dynamic power that you may need to observe caution with certain classical recordings so that ur sub or woofer of speaker may not loosen out of cabinet due to its great resolving power its easily differentiates between various source and playback softwares, like jriver even with direct link with Hugo asio driver produces a sound which apparently more detailed but is edgy and sounds processed ( that 64bit engine messes the output even with direct asio connection as with jriver my tab struggled to decode DST encoded DSD files as well as double DSD files while foobar worked without any hiccups ) in short my quest for ultimate sonic nirvana ended with this little gadget. now I have found perfect hassle free setup in the form of a windows tab as transport and chord Hugo's own supplied short micro micro USB cable. no need for expensive USB cables and expensive transport and even USB to coaxial converter, it is so simple and straightforward. also no need to buy expensive linear power supply as there is no change at all in sq whether you plug the supplied wall wart power supply or not. so don't waste time further in the quest of transpirt , cables or power supply etc and enjoy the purest form of music. BTW for those few who reported that DSD as dop playback is not that good with Hugo, I would say it is too good with foobar SACD plugin , in fact DSD playback has still better and blacker background than pcm with foobar but the difference is subtle. many people sold their expensive analog and digital gears due to Hugo are not wrong. conversely for many Hugo has given a new lease of life to other equipments like amps, speakers and headphones due its most revealing yet neutral and transparent sq.

 

[Somphon]

using chord Hugo for over a month. it was introduced very late in India. listened extensively as a head phone amp with shure srh940 and in full setup with exposure 2010s2 integrated amp and kef r300 bookshelf speakers. used a cdp coaxial out and USB out of Acer iconia w4 tab as source. my conclusion is that with it sounds better and cleaner. I installed foobar with asio plugin and Hugo driver was also installed prior to that. all gain settings were switched off in foobar and chord Hugo asio driver was selected as output. the set worked flawlessly. some people reported the sound if hugo to be light but IMHO it is neutral . sound has enormous resolution but with out any edge or brightness. bass has so much texture that you start finding new bass notes, similar is for other frequencies whether vocals or treble. Hugo is a dynamic range champ. it has so much reserve dynamic power that you may need to observe caution with certain classical recordings so that ur sub or woofer of speaker may not loosen out of cabinet

due to its great resolving power its easily differentiates between various source and playback softwares, like jriver even with direct link with Hugo asio driver produces a sound which apparently more detailed but is edgy and sounds processed ( that 64bit engine messes the output even with direct asio connection as with jriver my tab struggled to decode DST encoded DSD files as well as double DSD files while foobar worked without any hiccups ) in short my quest for ultimate sonic nirvana ended with this little gadget. now I have found perfect hassle free setup in the form of a windows tab as transport and chord Hugo's own supplied short micro micro USB cable. no need for expensive USB cables and expensive transport and even USB to coaxial converter, it is so simple and straightforward. also no need to buy expensive linear power supply as there is no change at all in sq whether you plug the supplied wall wart power supply or not. so don't waste time further in the quest of transpirt , cables or power supply etc and enjoy the purest form of music. BTW for those few who reported that DSD as dop playback is not that good with Hugo, I would say it is too good with foobar SACD plugin , in fact DSD playback has still better and blacker background than pcm with foobar but the difference is subtle. many people sold their expensive analog and digital gears due to Hugo are not wrong. conversely for many Hugo has given a new lease of life to other equipments like amps, speakers and headphones due its most revealing yet neutral and transparent sq.

 
Nice to see your first post is about lovin' the Hugo!

 

[schugh]

  battery lasted 7h50min
I wasn't messing around with any of the settings and I changed headphones only once.
 
Would the quality of files being played effect the battery life?
 
Seems like the 10 hours stated on the website is not a true reflection, in my case anyways

Same here. I seem to get about 7.5 hours.

 

[RoundRound]

Hello,
Does anyone have a link to the Color/volume/voltage chart of the Hugo? It was published  awhile ago, but I can't find it in nearly 600 pages of a thread..
 
Thanks!

 

[blackads]

The colour coding........

 

[ted_b]

  Hello,
Does anyone have a link to the Color/volume/voltage chart of the Hugo? It was published  awhile ago, but I can't find it in nearly 600 pages of a thread..
 
Thanks!

I think you meant this 
 

 

[RoundRound]

 
I think you meant this 
 

Yes indeed!
 
Thanks!