SaddleSC
100+ Head-Fier
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- Jan 21, 2014
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Hi all. I’ve been reading up a bit and following this thread in the last week or so.
Recently i bought a niimbus us4 to drive my susvaras. i also have the utopias and hekse
As one can do here I am also now looking at dacs and weighing them up with the metrum hex dac that I have and really enjoy.
i have demoed the tt2 a couple of times a while ago and enjoyed it. In my brief demos i found them pretty similar in quality but slightly different but they were brief demos and before i bought the us4.
(the plan was to make this post shorter than what this is)
i am looking at whether the tt2 and niimbus will work together.
however in reading this thread i am thinking (please confirm if my thinking is correct):
1) even though the tt2 is well loved, the tt2 (only?) really shines with the hms;
2) the usb is not as good as the optical input. i am using usb out from my imac at the moment;
3) i may need to look at RF issued and look at an external battery, or is that more for the hms. Does rob watts not believe so - I haven’t totally to understood the (maybe) difference in opinions;
4) upgraded bnc cables are highly recommended for the hms tt2 link.
are these 4 points correct or common?
if so, me looking at the tt2 as an option is not as easy or as “cheap” as i was hoping to stretch my budget to as as to consider it.
so i either have to start saving and come back to it later or decide to look at other simpler/ less expensive options
if it was as simple as tt2 is great by itself and does shine and later i could come back to the hms for a “turbo boost” in quality (that is mot a must have) that would be good but reading this thread has raised my above concerns and giving me a more complicated but perhaps a more accurate picture of where things are at
any help on my concerns will be much appreciated
(apologies for the novella)
thanks
peter
I have/had many of the same questions. My Hugo TT2 arrived last week and I have been enjoying it quite a bit. I like to use external amps so have been testing it against my Qutest all week and IMO when A/B'd this way, there is a much more prominent difference between the TT2 and the Qutest than I imagined there would be. I am also doing a lot of listening on the internal headphone amp and it has power to spare to drive anything I own.
Well, to make a long story short...tomorrow my M Scaler should arrive and I will be doing extensive comparisons between Qutest + M Scaler vs TT2 Solo vs TT2 + M Scaler. I will post my impressions to this thread after I have some listening under my belt. I am very skeptical that the M Scaler will be as transformative as people say, but I just NEED to hear it for myself. It will need to meet a very high bar to not be returned at the end of my evaluation period, but I am optimistic based on what I have read.
To answer one of your questions right now...the TT2 is amazing as a standalone DAC and as a one-box listening device. I do not think you are being hamstrung in any way by waiting to add the M Scaler at a later time. I will follow up this weekend with some initial thoughts once I get everything set up with the M Scaler, but because of my love for external amps, I am interested to see how the Qutest + M Scaler stacks up to the solo TT2...stay tuned!
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