[Damz87]

I had to pay extra for my lightning cable. Worst part is that I’ve now lost it

 

[chickenmcnug]

Ummm I think I got mine with it and so did pretty much everyone I know. It’s weird you paid extra


To me the S1 comes really close to the LPGT honestly. I’ve discussed this a fair bit in my previous posts as well, but the PAW S1 kinda makes TOTL DAPs a bit pointless - I’d much rather get like an AK SR25, a PAW S1 and a Hugo 2 instead of a single LPGT, which gets almost matched by the S1 and heavily outdone by the Hugo (IMHO)

I think some places had promos where you'd get it for free if you ordered by a certain date, not sure about that though. I got mine from Jaben SG.

Is that a specific Lotoo adapter or a generic other brand one?

Lotoo branded one.

 

[doctorjuggles]

Is that a specific Lotoo adapter or a generic other brand one?

Lotoo branded one.

I just tested with the adapter that came with the Ztella and it works, so I'd imagine that as long as you have one that works (allowing for Apple's constant attempts to stop any that aren't official from working) then you can use pretty much any one if you have it lying around

 

[mvvRAZ]

I just tested with the adapter that came with the Ztella and it works, so I'd imagine that as long as you have one that works (allowing for Apple's constant attempts to stop any that aren't official from working) then you can use pretty much any one if you have it lying around

Apparently any “Lightening OTG” will work with it from what Lotoo have told me about it

 

[toaster]

thx for the writeup, raz.

love the mojo with the erlky. agree it would be great if it could be plugged in to avoid dealing with the endless listen/charge cycle, as i do 100% of my listening with it at home anyway.

look forward to hearing the h2 eventually.

 

[CANiSLAYu]

Intriguing. What sort of sound quality do you get? I seem to recall that the S1 is relatively cheap at around $170 so I’m not sure what you would hope to get from that (relative to the high costs of Daps, IEMs etc. How does it compare against the LPGT? Haha I’m not expecting like for like at the price difference but I’m interested to know where it stands.

It’s not apples to apples to compare a dongle against a DAP in terms of price. A dongle like the S1 doesn’t have to worry about a powerful processor or RAM, a screen, a battery, software that requires programmers, WiFi, Bluetooth, onboard storage, etc. like a DAP. The S1 is fantastic for IEMs.

 

[arijitroy2]

@mvvRAZ Michael, did you get the Sultan yet? I am eagerly looking forward to a shootout with Sultan and the others!

 

[Wyville]

For another post on sources and DACs and whatnot - let's talk Chord

Yesterday I had the chance to demo the Hugo TT2, and it's something that I've been quite excited for for a while now, especially considering that I've been a long time fan of the Hugo 2. As to my feelings on the company as a whole, I'd say I'm quite neutral overall - on one hand I hate their Poly, 2Go, Yugo etc etc etc releases that realistically just implement features that should be pretty ****ing standard at their price point, on the other I like the look and feel of most of their devices, and well, it's one of the rare cases where their sources actually deliver something unique and not yet another "natural" sound profile.

I'm not fully sure if you can call Chord stuff "sources" and I've been wondering about the correct term for a while now so please feel free to correct me

Anyhow, let's get down to business - it's worth noting here that I haven't tried all that many DACs and tube amps and whatnot, my experience is kinda limited to Chord and a few others I've tried here and there like the RME, and MyTek - take my impressions with a grain of salt, as I've generally found that DACs are much more in the headphone territory as they're way more demanding than in ears

Most of the listening has been done on the Thummim, Andromeda 2020 and Elysium

1. The Chord Mojo

The Mojo is a DACamp that I have rather negative feelings towards. It's terrible as a portable solution, it overheats (in summer especially it becomes a tiny pocket furnace), comes with a bunch of charging issues, a terrible battery and the signature terrible Chord UI. If they actually removed the internal battery and made it desktop only I think that would be a pretty great move as you'd actually be able to use it as a desktop/HP solution and not the semi portable/transportable/desktop mess that it is currently.

The trouble with the Mojo is that it looks like something you would be using with IEMs, but it's much too powerful for most stuff I've heard, making them hiss and giving them a certain bloated warmth.

The only time I've really enjoyed the Mojo is in how it pairs with the Focal Elegia (a terrible HP that I have no idea why I bought), but it does seem to synergise extremely well with the Mojo as it makes it significantly warmer and in the process gives it a soul. Honestly I'm not much of a HP guy, most of them sound like varying degrees of meh to me, and the Mojo doesn't really perform with IEMs, so yeah, big no no from me

2. The Chord Hugo 2

I already shared some impressions of the Hugo 2 in another post, but having heard the Chord TT2 gave me a more complete picture and I can now give a better evaluation of it.

The Hugo 2 has that signature terrible UI where nothing makes sense and you actually have to look up a manual to understand what does what, but aside from that, it is one of the best sounding piece of gear on the market right now, and even better considering just how many great deals there are on the forums for one.

It has a distinctly bright tonality, with extreme definition and detail, and some boost in the upper midrange as well as the treble region. Where it pairs well, it does an overwhelmingly good job - most of my current IEMs sport warmer tonalities, with flatter or even slightly recessed upper mids, and the Hugo 2 is able to bring a certain balance to the signature as a whole. Normally speaking bright can be associated with thin, but I didn't find that that was the case here - the texture is really good, without causing any bloat or excessive thickness.

It does sound "unnatural" but not in a bad sense. I wouldn't call it clinical personally, but it is outrageously technical and that paired with the brighter, upper midrange forward tonality of the Hugo 2 I can definitely see how it can come across like that. The staging is extremely wide, but a touch two dimensional - I'm a bit of a width person myself, so it works well for my tastes. To add to that, the level of separation is incredible to the point where it can be perceived as disjointed - I for one am absolutely loving it, but it depends on just how much you enjoy technical ability over a warmer and smoother presentation

It does hiss slightly with more sensitive IEMs, and you don't get too much volume control, but well considering just how much more technical it is than something like the RME ADI2 DAC, and the fact that you can get both at the same price point nowadays, I'd say it's a pretty good deal all in all.

The one thing about the Hugo 2 as I was discussing with a friend last night, is it really forces you to listen to it no matter what IEMs you have hooked up. It has a bright and very dominant tonality that expresses itself in every pairing that I've tried - this isn't a necessarily bad thing, but it isn't the best DAC to evaluate gear on as you aren't really only hearing the IEMs any more. It also makes it quite pairing specific, where it does extremely well with certain things, and not all that well with others

All in all, easily recommended if you have a warm IEM that you want to push to the absolute edge of technical ability, while also balancing its tonality somewhat

3. The Chord Hugo TT2

The first thing that needs to be mentioned here is that getting a heavily discounted TT2 is significantly harder than it is getting a heaving discounted Hugo 2. There's rather few on the FS forums from what I've seen and they sell at pretty high prices. That can't not be evaluated, because you're essentially paying 4x more than what you'd be paying for a Hugo 2

I went into the store expecting a similar, but directly better Hugo 2, and in a way it is - The TT2's tonality is less dominant and gives IEMs a bit more "space" to perform as they were built to, with a similar, but even more exaggerated level of technical ability than the Hugo 2. The staging is similarly wide as the Hugo 2 (maybe a bit wider even), but stretches higher and deeper as well, creating the most overwhelmingly grand presentation I've heard to date. The detail retrieval was also nothing short of extraordinary, letting me pick out things that I haven't noticed until now using sources like the LPGT and even Hugo 2

On the more negative side, it does thin out the sound a little - while the Hugo 2 is very well textured, the Hugo TT2 sacrifices some of that in favour of some more technical ability. This is something that I'll need to evaluate further, as I only had the Thummim and Elysium with me, and I tried the store's Andro 2020 to test for hiss and see how they perform with it. That brings me to the next point - the Hugo TT2 does not hiss whatsoever with sensitive IEMs (or well, below what I can detect anyhow), and that's a huge plus for me, especially considering that both the Hugo 2 and Mojo do. I'd absolutely love to see a low gain option as a standard on Chord devices.

The other thing that I didn't absolutely love is that the soundstage didn't seem to have a clear boundary of sorts - I know that doesn't quite make sense because it should be a distinctly positive point, but I do prefer hearing more clearly where things are and not having them sort of "transcend" space

The tonality is a touch bright, but mostly expressed in the upper treble Imo - the bass is very fast, which plays well with warmer monitors, but I can imagine wouldn't do all that well with something like the A18t which has pretty overloaded treble as is. I'm currently waiting on my A18S and A12t - I'd be extremely curious to see how these do with the TT2

4. Conclusions

I can't reasonably recommend you to purchase a TT2 at 4x what you can get a Hugo 2 for. It does push out ridiculous performance out of your gear, and it is better suited for IEMs than anything else by Chord that I've tried myself, but regardless of all that - it's a heavyweight price that they're asking for. It would be what I'd go with if I was interested in seeing what my stuff sounds like on its own, but with every ounce of performance squeezed out of it. I might end up saying that again when I try the Dave at some point, but well, I most certainly hope I won't be dropping 12-13k for a device like that down the line

The Hugo 2 is to me the Chord sweetspot. You get extremely high performance (easily the best thing I've tried for under 2000$), while also enjoying some of that "Chord house sound." I would advise for you to demo it first because it does play exceptionally well with some stuff and not all that well with others

The Mojo... ehhh it's time for an update/refresh if you ask me

Did you get the TT2 already? Very nice! Seems things keep moving very fast with you.

Agreed, I'd love to see them play in the actually portable IEM market - DAPs, dongles and whatnot. Realistically these are headphone DACs and amps that I'm testing and applying to IEMs when they feel more designed for full sized headphones to me

A DAP from Chord is unlikely to happen. There was a discussion about it a few years ago and Chord basically made their position clear by declaring the DAP dead and arguing that the Mojo/Poly pair was the way of the future. Not sure if they were right, but with the 2go they seem set on this direction.

Headphones are generally speaking completely beyond me. I own a few pairs (Elegia, Elear, Rosson RAD-0), but never use any of them. I've heard good stuff about the DX220 MAX (@aaf evo is a big fan), but the size and multiple batteries and whatnot are a dealbreaker for me personally. The R8 I'm quite interested in, but I don't know if I'll get the chance to demo it soon

Shanling is also working on a transportable, the M30, which is modular and has Korg 6P1 tubes. It also has 5 batteries and is big (26 x 21 x 4.5 cm), but pretty interesting as an alternative to the DX220 Max.

 

[mvvRAZ]

@mvvRAZ Michael, did you get the Sultan yet? I am eagerly looking forward to a shootout with Sultan and the others!

Not yet - I did send Jim an email earlier today though, so hopefully it's going to be soon now!

Did you get the TT2 already? Very nice! Seems things keep moving very fast with you.

A DAP from Chord is unlikely to happen. There was a discussion about it a few years ago and Chord basically made their position clear by declaring the DAP dead and arguing that the Mojo/Poly pair was the way of the future. Not sure if they were right, but with the 2go they seem set on this direction.

Shanling is also working on a transportable, the M30, which is modular and has Korg 6P1 tubes. It also has 5 batteries and is big (26 x 21 x 4.5 cm), but pretty interesting as an alternative to the DX220 Max.

I haven't bought it yet, but I did demo it yesterday and I *really* enjoyed what I was hearing. These days I can't demo anything safely haha, I keep wanting to purchase it

 

[Deferenz]

Does anyone have a link to that specific Lotoo lightning adapter (to connect S1 to a MacBook with thunderbolt c) ? I have tried doing a search but I’m not finding anything.

 

[Wyville]

I haven't bought it yet, but I did demo it yesterday and I *really* enjoyed what I was hearing. These days I can't demo anything safely haha, I keep wanting to purchase it

Nice! Maybe demo the Dave, you know... just in case. I do wonder if given your preferences a high quality tube amp might not be an interesting avenue to explore. From what I understand amps like the Feliks Audio Euforia AE are pretty good even with sensitive IEMs. (Never tried it myself though.)

 

[Wyville]

Does anyone have a link to that specific Lotoo lightning adapter (to connect S1 to a MacBook with thunderbolt c) ? I have tried doing a search but I’m not finding anything.

You mean this one?

 

[chickenmcnug]

Does anyone have a link to that specific Lotoo lightning adapter (to connect S1 to a MacBook with thunderbolt c) ? I have tried doing a search but I’m not finding anything.

You'd be better off with an off-brand cable. The Lotoo cables either dont have or has very poor shielding which makes the S1 very noisy when near your phone (the weaker your data connection, the noisier it gets)

I believe some people have mentioned cables that work on the S1 thread but I cant recall what brand it was, you'd have to dig a little.

 

[Wyville]

You'd be better off with an off-brand cable. The Lotoo cables either dont have or has very poor shielding which makes the S1 very noisy when near your phone (the weaker your data connection, the noisier it gets)

I believe some people have mentioned cables that work on the S1 thread but I cant recall what brand it was, you'd have to dig a little.

Agree, the Lotoo cable is not the best and I have had issues with it as well. I also can't get the S1 to work with my phone (Sony XA2) and from what Lotoo showed me it requires a specific cable for it to work (they bought an XA2 to try it out themselves).

 

[mvvRAZ]

Nice! Maybe demo the Dave, you know... just in case. I do wonder if given your preferences a high quality tube amp might not be an interesting avenue to explore. From what I understand amps like the Feliks Audio Euforia AE are pretty good even with sensitive IEMs. (Never tried it myself though.)

The store actually has the Euforia to demo. The trouble is my IEMs are pretty warm as is, so I’m currently balancing that by using brighter, more technically proficient sources. I started off in the hobby by doing the opposite but so far this is working better for me