[InstantSilence]

Hi guys, new member here and new audiophile in general! I’m looking to buy a Hugo TT2 but not sure if I should get new or used. Any thoughts?

Used sir,
Open box or soemthing
As much as it's so good and clean sounding. It's not worth half its price to me.
With that said. I wouldn't trade it for nothing haha
Get used. Make sure you demo first.
If you are new get a mojo or qutest and get an additional amp.... Get away cheaper...

 

[nwavesailor]

If you do find a nice clean used TT2, go for it and get a copy of the original invoice. This will allow you to have the Chord transferable warranty coverage if needed. Good luck with your TT2!

 

[ra990]

Having a strange issue with my TT2, when I noticed some noise in the music that I know shouldn't be there, I power cycled everything and before anything even came on, while the TT2 was showing CHG, my Susvaras started making loud clicking and popping noises and I had to immediately disconnect them. I tried the front outputs and they sound fine, but on stock power supply, with nothing connected, just my susvara to the XLR outs, same thing. I have an email out to the Sound Org, not looking forward to another long repair. Wish me luck.

 

[ra990]

Well, with my recent XLR issue, I'm forced to drive the Susvara from the front headphone outputs and I can safely report that it cannot drive the Susvara without distorting beyond +12H volume. So with the Susvara, it is pretty much required to use the balanced XLR outs of the TT2, which have no problems with them and drive them beautifully.

 

[nwavesailor]

Best of luck with your TT2! Hopfully TSO will have an idea for you to try.

 

[andrewd01]

Hi guys, new member here and new audiophile in general! I’m looking to buy a Hugo TT2 but not sure if I should get new or used. Any thoughts?

In general I always think it is better to buy hifi products used at a huge discount to new price (typically 50%). However with Chord gear I notice that the used prices being asked are a very high fraction of the new price. I often see Chord products for sale at 80-90% of the new price. With used prices this high it makes more sense to pay a little bit more and get the piece of mind of having a brand new product with warranty.

 

[bpcans]

In general I always think it is better to buy hifi products used at a huge discount to new price (typically 50%). However with Chord gear I notice that the used prices being asked are a very high fraction of the new price. I often see Chord products for sale at 80-90% of the new price. With used prices this high it makes more sense to pay a little bit more and get the piece of mind of having a brand new product with warranty.

andrew01, I got TT2 and MSC both slightly used. Payed $6.5K for both.

 

[zedeatslead]

@InstantSilence @nwavesailor Found an openbox TT2 @~$4500 so I just pulled the trigger. Comes with full warranty. Was that too much?

 

[InstantSilence]

@InstantSilence @nwavesailor Found an openbox TT2 @~$4500 so I just pulled the trigger. Comes with full warranty. Was that too much?

Full warranty, open box, sounds like a dealer buy, not private sale. For that you got like 1k off.. Reasonable I guess... Definitely better than brand new and likely sub 50 hrs of usage.
Not bad.

 

[zedeatslead]

@bpcans wow that sounds like a fantastic deal! Is pricing like that usual or did you get exceptionally lucky?

 

[bpcans]

@bpcans wow that sounds like a fantastic deal! Is pricing like that usual or did you get exceptionally lucky?

zedeatslead, extremely lucky and I’ve been buying audio gear from the same guy since 1976.

 

[griff500]

andrew01, I got TT2 and MSC both slightly used. Payed $6.5K for both.

You did well there. I paid somewhere around £6,500 or so (about 9,000 USD) for my TT2 and M-Scaler but they were new in sealed boxes.

 

[118900]

deleted

 

[alxw0w]

I'm currently saving for 1266tc and plan to use them with TT2/HMS combo. From everything I have read and people on this forum yes the TT2 can drive them well. You will gain bass but lose transparency from using the rear XLR's on the TT2.

"gain bass but lose transparency" but is this that simple ?
Maybe one thing you will got is lose transparency which also can be seen as gain in bass.

Things are not so easy when it comes to perception of the sound. I'm still having a headache when comparing some of the audio components.
Has particular component better bass ? Maybe its just bloated ? Maybe its output impedance is higher hence damping factor is lower. Is "bigger" bass depending only on power ? And finally what is "bigger" bass ? Does it mean bass goes deeper or is bigger acoustically? or softer muddier ?
I don't know I only know one thing there is a lot of things that influence your sound perception.
One thing that shows me that raw power doesn't particularity mean "better" bass (again what is better ?)

Once I was using some low end Harman Kardon integrated amplifier. I used it only as a power amplifier (bypassing it's preamp) - pre amp and dac was Hugo 2.
Back then my speakers were: bowers and wilkins dm602 s3.
Once I changed my power amplifier to clone of high end dartzeel power amplifier.
My bass perception changed dramatically.
At first I was shocked: "omg my bass disappeared what is going on. I have more power now I should get "better" bass".
Clone was rated about 140-150wats into 8ohms and Harman was about 70wats into 8ohms.
So doubling the power but my bass was like 2 times weaker.

Anyway after listening for some time and comparing each amplifiers I realized that I gained a lot of transparency in sound. I wasn't losing any bass. With Harman
I was just losing transparency. Bass was bloated not fully controlled. Music sounded like it has this coat. Mids were recessed. And I get it some people like this.
If I invited 10 random people and have them listen to both amplifiers and compare. I'm sure 10/10 would have said that Harman is better because of perception of bass.
Once transparency improved everything sounded leaner better controlled. Also the dynamics were like squashed. At least it sounded a bit like this - everything was more even sounding.

I don't want to criticize anybody's taste in music reproduction. As I said I'm still having headaches when comparing some of the gear and trying to evaluate their overall sound quality.
One thing is for sure: it's hard and once your personal preferences step into place it's even harder.

 

[Jacobean]

RW correctly pointed out the merits of the factory supplied SMPS for the HMS. However I have just had a housebound weekend listening to different power supplies with the HMS and my ears have concluded that whilst the supplied SMPS is very good IMHO it is possible improve on it. The session was prompted because I had to hand separate 15v, -15v and 5v voltage outputs on a range of power supplies for switching between them on a high end DAC (some of you might guess what I was doing).

The power supplies I used were the factory supplied SMPS, a SMPS similar to the one in Dave, adding ferrited DC cables between the SMPSs and HMS, a Sean Jacobs DC3 LPS and finally a Sean Jacobs DC4 LPS. These LPS have earthed chassis for safety but the output is not linked to ground and is floating. To my ears there was a progression of sound quality through the power supplies apart from the first two which were effectively the same to my ears. For all this I judged sound quality by top end smoothness as well as a reduction in bass muddiness and greater perceived bass depth.

For sure, there is a frustration when people report more 'detail' or a 'bigger soundstage' or some such and claim this is better when in reality they are just noise artifacts from inferior power supplies but equally what I heard over the weekend was enough for me to order a DC4 supply for my HMS from Sean Jacobs at Custom HiFi Cables.

Would you say that the Sean Jacobs DC3/4 solves the issue in terms of the negatives in using linear power supply (around the 2ghz range as Rob describes) for the HMS , as they employ a floating output rather than it being earthed? This would mean a DC3 could be used for the HMS and the supplied SMPS on the TT2?