Chord Hugo

[fiascogarcia]

  What headphone do you pair with your Hugo?

I've been using LCD2, HD600, K10 ciem, and soon to be Ether.  Also been using it as a DAC for a Liquid Carbon amp.

 

[Law87]

Any that are efficient and have some depth. Preferably cans that excell at se versus balanced, as there is no balanced out.

Alpha prime for closed and Beyer T1 for open

 

[joshuachew]

 

[miketlse]

I can report that Hugo works well with Sonore microRendu, Curious usb & sonicTransporter i5 (NUC) combo

 
People are also reporting that the microRendu works well in a setup including a DAVE.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave/3540#post_12710288

 

[Whazzzup]

People are also reporting that the microRendu works well in a setup including a DAVE.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave/3540#post_12710288

Wow it's the Wild West times of USB boxes (649$usd) everybody wants to shove a box in between ones iMac and your dac. TT galvanized port seems great to me. I use Hugo as portable only really, and already use quality USB cables. I'm following this developments, but I'm not sure why or how folks are getting a better flow of packets of 1 and 0 through these things.
Second issue for my 5k iMac is amarra versus audivarna etc I have not tried as I'm concerned for compatibility issues with ongoing iTunes and El Capitan ( insert next iOS name here) upgrades and other than loudness, does it make 320 k lossless better anyways. ( I'm not into dsd or high res) by the way my tunes sound great IMO.

 

[gnomen]

Second issue for my 5k iMac is amarra versus audivarna etc I have not tried as I'm concerned for compatibility issues with ongoing iTunes and El Capitan ( insert next iOS name here) upgrades and other than loudness, does it make 320 k lossless better anyways. ( I'm not into dsd or high res) by the way my tunes sound great IMO.

If you are checking out Amarra, etc., do include Pure Music (http://www.channld.com/puremusic/).  I chose it over Amarra and one or two others back in 2012 but do not see it mentioned very often.  I can report that it integrates really well with iTunes and delivers great sound quality.  The company is very responsive in keeping up with iTunes releases, answering queries, etc.  Of course, the competition has moved on as well since 2012 so not sure who would win a comparison now.  (Not sure about "320k lossless".  I use ALAC which varies between about 800 and 1400.  Pure Music is great for High Res.  In fact, I cannot hear the difference high res makes without using Pure Music.)
 
All via iMac27 / Hugo TT / Sennheiser HD800.
 
Cheers

 

[Whazzzup]

Second issue for my 5k iMac is amarra versus audivarna etc I have not tried as I'm concerned for compatibility issues with ongoing iTunes and El Capitan ( insert next iOS name here) upgrades and other than loudness, does it make 320 k lossless better anyways. ( I'm not into dsd or high res) by the way my tunes sound great IMO.

If you are checking out Amarra, etc., do include Pure Music (http://www.channld.com/puremusic/).  I chose it over Amarra and one or two others back in 2012 but do not see it mentioned very often.  I can report that it integrates really well with iTunes and delivers great sound quality.  The company is very responsive in keeping up with iTunes releases, answering queries, etc.  Of course, the competition has moved on as well since 2012 so not sure who would win a comparison now.  (Not sure about "320k lossless".  I use ALAC which varies between about 800 and 1400.  Pure Music is great for High Res.  In fact, I cannot hear the difference high res makes without using Pure Music.)

All via iMac27 / Hugo TT / Sennheiser HD800.

Cheers

Thx we have same system, well I have (800S) and soon to add gsx mk2 but nice to know. I have channel D bookmarked already. I guess I'll have to give it a test one day and finally see what's what. But my hesitation is based on the myriad of players, and the science behind it, much like these USB boxes. But I'm not putting down, just inquiring skepically.
Nice reviews of pure tho. Oldest player interesting...

 

[gnomen]

Three cheers for scepticism -- this hobby has more than its fair share of snake oil ...  I would report that using Pure Music (or one of its competitors) as the sound engine rather than iTunes / Audio Midi gives better results for critical listening.  PM have a try-before-you-buy approach, so there's not really any risk.  You are right to worry about 3rd party add-ons staying in step with OSX and iTunes releases though.   I have had a couple of scares over the years.  The folk at PM are pretty good at keeping track of any Apple idiosyncracies but like everyone else they are at the mercy of the Big A.  Nowadays I do not upgrade without checking the PM support page first.  Good luck!

 

[Mark UX]

   
I agree very much with these two quotes, and it is simply down to the very big WTA tap length that Hugo enjoys - 26,368 taps, way way bigger than any other DAC I have seen.
 
Having all those taps means the interpolation filter does a more accurate job of reconstructing the original timing of the recording. Timing is an incredibly important cue for the brain, and we know that the ear/brain can resolve down to 4 micro seconds - so the brain via the inter-aural network is sampling at 250 kHz! Now I have been rattling on about the importance of timing for a very long time, but a recent paper in Physics Review Letters proves how important timing is:
 
http://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html
 
Don't read the paper unless you want your head to hurt.
 
Anyhow, if the interpolation filter has an infinite no of taps, then it will reconstruct the timing and amplitude of the original bandwidth limited signal perfectly. That is a mathematical certainty. So increasing tap length will give better sound, because you are reconstructing the timing more accurately. Is 26,368 the last word? No its not, there is a huge difference going from 18,432 to Hugo's 26,368, I can't imagine that increasing it further won't make a big difference. When would increasing tap length stop improving the sound - 100k? 1M? 10M? Nobody knows, but I will have a better idea soon.
 
Since Hugo has more taps than any other DAC, then the timing problems of red-book CD will be better handled by Hugo than any other DAC, and so the timing benefits of higher sample rates will get much smaller.
 
But why the suggestion that red-book has maybe better than higher sample rate recordings? I am starting to see this too, and I think the problem maybe down to the problems that high sample rate has - they have better timing resolution than red-book, but they let in a lot of HF rubbish from the ADC noise shapers. Now I know out of band noise creates big SQ problems, as it inter modulates in the analogue sections, it increases the DAC's sensitivity to jitter, with the result of more noise floor modulation, giving a harder more aggressive SQ. I hear this with DXD recordings, a brightness that sounds just like noise floor modulation. I am experimenting on filtering out this noise, to see if there is some benefit in doing this. Now red-book has timing problems, but it has no noise above 22.05 kHz (if you do the interpolation filter correctly!). So Hugo goes a very long way to fix the timing problems, so high rez recordings no longer enjoys better timing than red-book, but high rez has the downside of HF noise problems.
 
Oh and before anybody asks, will these high sample rate filters be on Hugo? Absolutely not, I have no space left on Hugo's FPGA!

 
I just joined to this forum to see if someone (perhaps Rob Watts, when he has the time) could clarify about what I am perceiving in my 2Qute DAC, and are specifically related to above post, by Rob Watts. Probably a 10% of my music library is 24/96 or higher (some times, 24/192), the remaining 90% is 16/44.1 kHz. Before I got my 2Qute DAC, I was using an Audioengine D3 DAC (as a standalone DAC). Audioengine D3 did not allow me to hear noticeable differences between my HD vs Red Book music; and I started to believe it was D3's fault. Then I discovered Rob Watts's work.....
 
I have more than 1 month hearing on a daily basis my 2Qute DAC, with the very same 10% HD / 90% Red Book music library: a consistent pattern keep coming every day: 16/44 music sounds incredible more natural, closer to live music, pristine... than my HD music. As an example, if I listen to Norah Jones 24/192 (or 24/96) versions of her music, it does not sounds as good/clear/natural as the 16/44 sampling versions.
 
This pattern happens on any genre of music. Some times, the exception to the rule as some remasters, but it would represents a tiny 2-3% of the use cases... most of the time (for not saying every time) listening to 16/44 leaves me wordless. My brain does not feel the same when listening to 24/96, 24/192 versions of exactly the same Albums (any genre).

How is this possible?
 
Congratulations for your incredible work, Rob Watts!

 

[miketlse]

   
I just joined to this forum to see if someone (perhaps Rob Watts, when he has the time) could clarify about what I am perceiving in my 2Qute DAC, and are specifically related to above post, by Rob Watts. Probably a 10% of my music library is 24/96 or higher (some times, 24/192), the remaining 90% is 16/44.1 kHz. Before I got my 2Qute DAC, I was using an Audioengine D3 DAC (as a standalone DAC). Audioengine D3 did not allow me to hear noticeable differences between my HD vs Red Book music; and I started to believe it was D3's fault. Then I discovered Rob Watts's work.....
 
I have more than 1 month hearing on a daily basis my 2Qute DAC, with the very same 10% HD / 90% Red Book music library: a consistent pattern keep coming every day: 16/44 music sounds incredible more natural, closer to live music, pristine... than my HD music. As an example, if I listen to Norah Jones 24/192 (or 24/96) versions of her music, it does not sounds as good/clear/natural as the 16/44 sampling versions.
 
This pattern happens on any genre of music. Some times, the exception to the rule as some remasters, but it would represents a tiny 2-3% of the use cases... most of the time (for not saying every time) listening to 16/44 leaves me wordless. My brain does not feel the same when listening to 24/96, 24/192 versions of exactly the same Albums (any genre).

How is this possible?
 
Congratulations for your incredible work, Rob Watts!

 
I can only quote my own experience:
 
At the start of this year I was planning to get a Mojo and explore HD music. Eventually I bought a Mojo, plus explored many jazz CDs (so usually acoustic and close miked, and mainly jazz trios or quartets) and I was taken aback by the amount of detail that was already available in well mastered 16/44 CDs. It has made me rethink whether there really is a need to chase HD music for most people and types of music.

 

[Mark UX]

I fully agree @miketlse. I am starting to suspect that music labels are using HD music as a placebo, in order to justify their higher prices, and boost sales: how can you possibly know if a record studio actually did a master in 24/192, or if them simply up-sampled a plain 16/44 master to 24/192, and label it as "24bit / High Resolution"?.

With mediocre o lower-quality DACs, you **might** get confused by not clearly differentiate HD vs red-book music in terms of SQ, and buy the placebo...
 
But with DACs like the ones designed by Rob Watts, the placebo is over...... you CAN hear that the so called HD music is NOT necessarily better/more natural than red-book, and it applies 95% of the cases (in my 1 month of experience using 2Qute).

 

[miketlse]

  I fully agree @miketlse. I am starting to suspect that music labels are using HD music as a placebo, in order to justify their higher prices, and boost sales: how can you possibly know if a record studio actually did a master in 24/192, or if them simply up-sampled a plain 16/44 master to 24/192, and label it as "24bit / High Resolution"?.

With mediocre o lower-quality DACs, you **might** get confused by not clearly differentiate HD vs red-book music in terms of SQ, and buy the placebo...
 
But with DACs like the ones designed by Rob Watts, the placebo is over...... you CAN hear that the so called HD music is NOT necessarily better/more natural than red-book, and it applies 95% of the cases (in my 1 month of experience using 2Qute).

 
I have started with the Mojo, and already I am pondering a strategy for christmas - probably in the short term involving a 2Qute or Hugo TT, feeding my Arcam amplifier, and maybe replacing the Arcam in the long term. I think DAVE must wait a while, even though so many people regard it as state of the art. 

 
I do not dismiss HD completely, because there are many very interesting posts by Rob Watts on this forum, describing DAC theory and importantly the psychacoustical interpretation of this sound by the brain. In some respects there is a benefit to having higher sampling rates and bit depths - because even the acoustic frequencies which a human cannot hear on their own, intermodulate to some extent with the frequencies which most people can hear, and then affect the music transients. However for much everyday listening, I think that there is still much mileage in 16/44. Also there are many posts on the Chord threads from people who find previously unlistenable MP3s to now sound amazing when placed back through a chord dac.
 
Some of Rob Watts posts are found in post #3 of this thread, but he also answers questions on this thread http://www.head-fi.org/t/800264/watts-up   

 

[Whazzzup]

 

  I fully agree @miketlse. I am starting to suspect that music labels are using HD music as a placebo, in order to justify their higher prices, and boost sales: how can you possibly know if a record studio actually did a master in 24/192, or if them simply up-sampled a plain 16/44 master to 24/192, and label it as "24bit / High Resolution"?.

With mediocre o lower-quality DACs, you **might** get confused by not clearly differentiate HD vs red-book music in terms of SQ, and buy the placebo...
 
But with DACs like the ones designed by Rob Watts, the placebo is over...... you CAN hear that the so called HD music is NOT necessarily better/more natural than red-book, and it applies 95% of the cases (in my 1 month of experience using 2Qute).

 
I have started with the Mojo, and already I am pondering a strategy for christmas - probably in the short term involving a 2Qute or Hugo TT, feeding my Arcam amplifier, and maybe replacing the Arcam in the long term. I think DAVE must wait a while, even though so many people regard it as state of the art. 

 
I do not dismiss HD completely, because there are many very interesting posts by Rob Watts on this forum, describing DAC theory and importantly the psychacoustical interpretation of this sound by the brain. In some respects there is a benefit to having higher sampling rates and bit depths - because even the acoustic frequencies which a human cannot hear on their own, intermodulate to some extent with the frequencies which most people can hear, and then affect the music transients. However for much everyday listening, I think that there is still much mileage in 16/44. Also there are many posts on the Chord threads from people who find previously unlistenable MP3s to now sound amazing when placed back through a chord dac.
 
Some of Rob Watts posts are found in post #3 of this thread, but he also answers questions on this thread http://www.head-fi.org/t/800264/watts-up   

are we confusing hd ports of Hugo TT which is galvanized and is fantastic, the hd port on hugo which allows 384 32 bit like TT, and HD tunes? I use exclusively apple lossless 320 kps which i find the price quality of lossless an absolute sweet spot and don't use high res files.. I use 384 32 bit and find this best I have no issues listening through sd port of hugo with 48 16 bit. But i can differentiate the steps up to 384 32 bit, which is preferable to my ears.
Also the TT may  be the sweet spot for price quality for chord by the way. Dave is just not in my price target range, although I'm sure its worth it.

 

[miketlse]

  are we confusing hd ports of Hugo TT which is galvanized and is fantastic, the hd port on hugo which allows 384 32 bit like TT, and HD tunes? I use exclusively apple lossless 320 kps which i find the price quality of lossless an absolute sweet spot and don't use high res files.. I use 384 32 bit and find this best I have no issues listening through sd port of hugo with 48 16 bit. But i can differentiate the steps up to 384 32 bit, which is preferable to my ears.
Also the TT may  be the sweet spot for price quality for chord by the way. Dave is just not in my price target range, although I'm sure its worth it.

 
How the brain detects the neural signals and inteprets them as music is not specific to any specific dac/port/manufacturer.
 
I agree that the TT may lie in a sweet spot.

 

[Amc1]

Had the same problem, sent it to Chord Electronics for battery replacemnet (through the UK dealer). 
 
Got it back after a month (+) and for the first 30 minutes everything seemed ok until in a second the sound became muddy and really distorted from my left speaker.
Tried it with my Rs1 grado headphones - same distorted sound from the left can.
Made an urgent phone call to Chord Electronics - they ask me to contact my dealer again.
Spoke with the dealer, he asked me to let the batrry die and then give it a 24 hours charge.
Don't really understand the logic there but gave it a try.  
Now waiting for it to recharge (still got 12 hours to go).
Did anyone experience same diffuclties?
Is it possible that replacing the old battery caused deamge to the Hugo sound unit?
Please help...