[kbuzz]

After struggling with my small loft listening room for a few years, I have determined that the space will never have fair let alone good or very good acoustics.  On the positive, this now lets me focus my attention on stepping up my HP set up. I would appreciate any assistance/suggestions or comments.  The goal here is now to obtain a HP system which will make me forget about a full size rig.
For that reason I am focusing on the (IMHO absurdly expensive) Hugo for two reasons.  One, if I go with a transportable dac/amp I will not be restricted to my loft and can use the rig all over the house- particularly if I obtain a set of closed back HPs.  
 
Second, if the Dac in the Hugo is a good as purported to be, I can also inject it into my regular speaker system, despite the crummy room, for those occasions when I went to escape to the loft.  
I am in need of a good dac anyway although I find my MODI excellent. 
 
The plan would be to continue to use my trusty two decade old Senn HD600's since I enjoy them a great deal and then add a higher level closed back HP in the near future and if funds allow add a top quality permanent HP tube amp into the loft system.  I thinking about an Ether C or Audeze, depending on how I like each with either the Hugo.
 
I am concerned that the cost of the Hugo may or may not get me to a subjective level of quality to rival a speaker system. Also has anyone tried the Hugo with the HD600's. Im sure as its a very popular can. So am I on the right track?  Would you advise scrapping the Hugo and trying to score a used IFI Micro amp/dac and allocating the funds now/quicker to a new set of closed cans?  Yes- I have read the Hugu v ifi nano threads
 
I am also intrigued by the ALO Tube CDM amp/dac but am unsure if the Wolfsan dac in that unit gets to level of the Hugo and or if its “good enough” to use as a dac for my cd player/macbook  and streamer in the speaker system. In other words not that much better the Modi I currently have.
 
For reference, the majority of listening will be lossless red book rips (with experiments in dsd and hi rez downloads to follow way down the line). I listen to rock, jazz and a lot of hard drive stored live music music which is not always of the best quality. I am not adverse to buying used.  Traditionally, I have favor tube amps, but have also enjoyed the Red Wine Audio and D-sonic Class D type amps.  I don’t mind solid state so long as it does not add to sibilance- which as I hit 50 im getting a little sensitive to. 
 
So I thank you in advance for any comments, considerations suggestions etc. 

 

[Rearwing]

I have the Hugo and it is everything that I wanted it to be......and a little more! However, there are a couple of downsides, one is that I have upgraded my headphones, as it seems to reward more, the better the equipment used. The second is that it really does highlight poorly recorded or mastered music, which can be a bit of a downer.

 

[Rearwing]

I should have added, I also have the HD600's but I have now upgraded to a custom pair of planars; and  the iFi stack and the iDSD. They are all good, but the Hugo overall is my go to listening station, I feed it with an AK100 via an optical cable. I am hoping that this is my long term project.....for my wallets sake.