Chord Hugo 2

Grade inflation is no longer just in school... To abuse the immortal words of Garrison Keillor, "Welcome to Head-Fi, where all the amps are strong, all the headphones are good-sounding, and all the DACs are above average."

 

Don't forget, "all opinions have equal weight and are equally meaningful."

 

Don't talk to me about grade inflation. I'm old school. I practice grade deflation. It's also referred to as reality. To get it, earn it.

 

Hey, some people rate estats highly. I don't see what's so fishy about it

 

I believe @Torq has (or had) both the iDSD BL and the Mojo together (at some point)?
(Found it: http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...ortable-dac-amp-comparisons.3886/#post-118942)


FWIW, I go iFi silver > Mojo, but only because it matched my sonic preferences and use case. Not as full in the mids as the Chord, but with a bit more depth and a good deal more width in the headstage, slightly crisper imaging, and had better performance off straight-up USB due to the built-in purifier. The 3D crossover is fun with movies and some tracks, as is the bass boost. Also, the fact that you can charge a smartphone off it saved my ass when I nearly got lost in an unfamiliar part of town once.

What I kinda want to see is a comparison between iDSD Silver and the Black Label. Kinda doubt I'll go down that path, but am curious how much of an effect the refinements in design have had.

 

Well this thread is almost dead, and I was wondering if you had a chance to listen H2 and compare with other gears. Some new SBAF intel it’s good until I decided myself to understand HF opinions as a delusional matter...

 

Nope still have one ordered... I'll be at RMAF with my iems so I'll try it then. If by some miracle it finally arrives (like a month+ late) to my dealer in the next couple days I'll get it in person from him as he'll also be at RMAF. It should be soon... According to Chord it'll arrive two weeks ago... So that's neat. It'll be fun talking to Chord reps while being salty about their awful supply chain on top of their awful prices

 

Yes, that too

 

For me, I didn't like the form factor of the BL - it is a dense, long brick. The Mojo is a much shorter dense brick. Also the BL needs a female USB-A cable (assuming you're using USB, which I would going portable) which makes it even longer. The Oppo has the advantage of not requiring the Apple dongulatorCable™ and it has about a perfect form factor, but I didn't care for the sound - was edgy with IEMs and stuffy with my AFOs (had to use higher gain setting). Mojo is smaller than you think, BL is larger than you think. If you're an iPhone user, the dongulatorCable™ is a pita unless you want to go for a high-priced off-shore hack.

No perfect solution. But there is no perfect anything, so chasing perfection is a fool's errand. I should know as I have a massive fool points tally...

 

I'm just going to leave this link here and slowly back away...

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/watts-up.800264/page-23#post-13772429

(several pages with slides from Watts' RMAF presentation)

 

1997 called and they want their PowerPoint gradient backgrounds returned.

 

I was there for that presentation. To be honest it was pretty cool. He talked a lot about why he himself didn't understand why 1 million taps made such a difference.

He's really passionate in person, he comes across far more confrontation-ally on the forums than in person. He's not in charge of Chord's pricing, so I don't really have a problem with him. I generally like the way Chord products sound, it's just too much. So his designs clearly aren't invalid. Even here people know DAVE is a good dac. Just like 5x too much money haha.

My Hugo 2 is also finally with in my grasp. Not going to post impressions for a while, but I have Mojo and Yggdrasil/Raggy to compare with directly.

(Though no, it's not going to be a head fi 5 stars...)

 

I also find the technical stuff really interesting. He has a tendency though to present subjective "results" of his listening tests as fact, e.g.

• R2R (especially NOS) must sound bad because of timing errors. etc. I'm guessing he doesn't own a Yggdrasil
• Watts technology = greater depth. Interesting that @HitmanFluffy described the headstage of DAVE as "flatter than Keira Knightley". Clearly we don't all hear things the same way.

 

Yeah... That's where the whole talk falls apart for me. I actually think his approach to the sampling theorem is more valid than the complete opposite approach (apodizing).

But, claiming he keeps hearing "morez depth" for each decrease in small signal modulation (350dB...) is not enough evidence.

 

Hope you are enjoying your hugo2. When you have a solid opinion, please share with us a hugo2 vs Yggdrasil dac comparison. I don’t trust head fi reviews... I’m a bit paranoid

 

My takeaway is that British audio on the whole is to be disregarded.

 

You sell it and buy something else. You might end up with a better dac and more money in your pocket. Win win.

Seriously, I would not dream of trying to tweak the power supply of a Hugo2.