With all the hundreds of units shipped, it's not encouraging to see comments about line out quality being inferior etcetera. i know everybody here is an enthusiast and would've thought there would be more positive feedback on the product. After all this time, I can honestly say I am not having much confidence in the product now despite the supposedly quality components. Backing 3 infinities + LPS isn't exactly pocket change and for this thing to sound worse than the X5 is not acceptable. Looks like it's time to post this stuff up for sale when I actually get it and try to get some of what I paid back. First and last time I back crowd funded anything.
To be clear, it is not an issue with the line out but rather, the inputs. The spdif and coax inputs are extremely poor, 64mbps mp3 files kind of poor to me. The USB, while much much better, definitely doesn't sound like 2.4k USD.
Having said that, I strongly believe my unit to be faulty as it has been noted by a couple of other forum members that the other inputs are very compareable to the usb input. Comments from friends whom I trust too seem to indicate a higher level of resolution than I have heard from my unit. As such, I feel that my unit might really just be a dud and I am keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that things will get better when I get a replacement.
To me, going from a portable (x5 + pure 2) rig to a desktop rig should really blow my socks off. The hugo does that. My xfi did not, sadly. I am hoping that this will change
