Chord Hugo 2

Certainly.

It shouldn't be a step backwards ... depending on the PSU I guess. I'm skeptical it'll make an audible difference in the sound though. I couldn't tell a difference between Hugo and 2Qute, for example, and the differences there were, fundamentally, the same as between Hugo 2 and Qutest.

 

I remember

 

Try page 4 in this thread at the very top.

 

Thanks bengo. I had even 'liked' it at the time but missed it under the 'spoiler' when I was scrolling through yesterday.

Still hilarious.

I do like my Hugo2 and demo'ed Dave for a good hour in relaxed listening in a shop with my own headphones (HD800S).

Source was just my phone via USB OTG.

I was expecting improved transparency (obviously bigger and better power supply and analogue sections in Dave vs Hugo2) but I never thought I'd be talking about improved depth with headphones but this was something I noticed, even compared to my Hugo2. I don't know if this is real/reasonable (with headphones) or just my ear/brain imagining things to justify the price difference.

The price is of Dave is out of my league for the moment sadly. I would have liked to hear the difference Blu2 makes with the Hugo2 but the shop didn't even know this combination was possible and they didn't have the right cables for it.

 

I just picked up a Hugo 2 to use with my laptop and headphones. Wondering if its possible to use the Hugo 2 solely as a headphone amp (bypassing the DAC)? I have a two channel turntable / speaker setup and would like to see if the Hugo 2 can be used as a headphone amp by connecting it to the preamp using RCA cables and an RCA to 3.5mm splitter / adapter.

 

No I'm 100% sure you can't do that.

 

You can't do that, no line in.

 

Just to double-check, were you serious?

 

He's serious. Also, purr1n is taking value into account.

I guess the Hugo2 might be more resolving than typical delta-sigma, but it made my ears hurt (more than any other DAC except maybe Benchmark DAC2), so it's kind of irrelevant.

It seems to me like all that FPGA tech only starts to make sense and actually sound really good once you get to DAVE. I would prefer to listen using my smartphone (which doesn't have sufficient power for big cans) than Hugo2, so it's not hard to believe that Fulla2 would be better in most respects.

Maybe someday Chord will make a pocket-sized DAVE that doesn't overheat, that would really be something and would certainly justify the £2k price tag.

 

When I see an audio company spouting about FPGA tech being their products it simply means to me that we don't make enough product to warrant having custom ASICs manufactured, which is more than likely true for high end audio manufacturers.

Now I'm not saying that the use of FPGAs is a bad thing, and respect to those who do homebrew their own DACs via FPGAs, but it's not an automatically superior technology, in fact an ASIC has many advantages in use over an FPGA, not least that they are faster and consume a lot less energy for a given die size and application. However they're not financially viable for low production runs, nor are they upgradeable should an issue arise.

As far as the enduser is concerned it should really make no difference between FPGA and ASIC as long as the same logic has been used in both.

 

The loaner unit I tried must have been a unicorn, as it sounded fuller in the mids and smoother in the treble, while retaining the strengths. I bought one, because I loved the sound of the loaner unit. But mine and my friend's units don't sound like the loaner at all. I wonder if the loaner unit had an older code. I tried replacing it with a WooAudio WA8, but its micro&macro dynamics were terrible.

I haven't tried the Fulla 2, but after trying many Schiit gears, I have realised, Schiit's sound is not my cup of tea (still interested in trying a Gungnir Multibit and Yggdrasil someday though).

 

I can attest to this. I bought my fulla 2 when it was first released. It had a scratchy pot and super tight USB ports. I lived with it like that until April 2018 when the USB port died on the back. I sent it in to Schiit for warranty service and they replaced the entire board. The board now says V. 1.2. After getting it back it sounds significantly better than before, good enough that I'm now using it in place of Modi Multibit and Jotunheim to feed HD650's with few complaints. The most obvious thing to me that they changed was capacitors in the amplifier section.

 

Along with your comment above where you talk about Mojo, did you find the treble moving from Mojo to Hugo 2 to improve or was it worse?

I've found my experience with Chord to be pretty damn linear with the tap count. I don't like Hugo or Mojo, Hugo 2 sounded significantly better to me. I haven't heard TT or TT 2. DAVE is excellent to me, and DAVE + Hugo M Scaler is the best I've heard. Full disclosure I own that last combo now though. I've wondered if it's because I also tend to like Utopia / Focal speakers. I think there's a smoothness to the sound that other dacs don't have as much of that may not be very welcome on Planars or E-Stats. But to me Utopia has a natural harshness that's reduced a bit with the higher tap count dacs.

I know my preferences are pretty against the norm here, but it made me curious to see if you hear the improvement from Mojo to Hugo 2 I do or if maybe my ears are just drinking too much Kool-Aid. To me cymbals on Mojo sound incredibly artificial, harsh, and grainy while Hugo 2 was an improvement over that.

 

I don't think the Mojo is too bad from sound point of view considering what it costs, however it's the rest of the package that sucks.

The hissing and whining when charging just shows bad electronic design, which we're apparently supposed to accept as completely normal despite every other electronics manufacturer out there managing to design completely silent charging circuits.

The apparent high incidence of battery failure/expansion also seems to be an issue. I had to remove an expanded and failed battery from my Mojo, and when doing so I found a thermal transfer pad directly between the battery and the main board - basically it looked as if the battery was being used as a heatsink for the FPGA, which is a big big NO. You cannot do this with a LiPo cell and expect it to survive for long.

It's these things that have nixed any idea that I had about going up higher in the Chord range - If they can't get the basics right in a product that already costs $500 then I have little confidence in the product range further up.