CHORD Hugo TT2 Review (DAC & HP Amp)

[PeteL]

Another ridiculously overpriced piece of crap from CHORD... why am I not surprised anymore..

Piece of crap?

 

[voodooless]

Piece of crap?

He probably meant scrap (metal)

 

[JSmith]

JSmith

 

[AdamG]

For $$$ Seven Thousand Dollars after tax/shipping I expect SOTA in all respects no compromises. You can buy a truck load of Kit for Seven Grand. Amir minimizes product’s price impact his assessment. But I and most other potential customers do. Factoring in Price for what you get here. Headless Panthers on Parade all day.

So many manufacturers in the Audio World more than willing and eager to take advantage of uninformed consumers. Amir working hard every day to change this industry to a more transparent and objective approach. One Product at a time, Slowly eating the Elephant a bite at a time! While surrounded by nefarious and devious actors whom wish us to fail. Keep calm and carry on Amir!

 

[formdissolve]

I also tend to think Amir has some beef with Chord Electronics. The confusing light show takes getting used to but is actually quite easy if you know the colors of the rainbow. It is always red lowest, then to yellow, green, blue, purple and white, which indicates the highest. So red is both lowest volume and lowest sampling rate, 44.1 kHz, and white highest volume and DSD sampling rate. And form and lights follow function. Why colors for the Hugo and Mojo? It doesn't use that much energy. Not important for a desktop/TableTop device but this one is designed like the original portable Chord.

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A lot of posters complain about the price but it is build like a tank. You can at least see where part of the money went into.

My biggest complaint about a lot of the cheaper Toppings and other cheap offerings is the pops and clicks when turning on or off and switching sampling rates. I never heard that with the Chord Hugo 1 & 2 and also not with the Cutest (or was it the 2cute, it was just before Covid19 outbreak) in a limited headphone test session.

@amirm Wouldn't it be better to compare SINAD at 2V for unbalanced and 4V and maybe a maximum SINAD for those devices with more powerful outputs? A lot of receiving equipment can't handle overvoltage so those high numbers are not that relevant. Also, how would you be able to hear that noise floor? Maybe with very sensitive IEM's? What kind of difference would you hear with the Topping D70?

Forcing a user to go through such hoops to learn what is what is not a good UX or design language. I agree that with time anyone can learn and memorize what the colors mean, but a lot of the world is also color blind (including people with $6k+ to spare), so that needs to be taken into account. I can get past the 90s toy look of the device, but usability is more important to me. Look at their Huei phono preamp.. that has to use so many colors that some end up looking very similar and causes frustration and confusion. That said, I do prefer physical buttons like this (or anything from others that use physical buttons) than accessing settings through endlessly deep menus on a screen.

I'm also seeing more and more people on here looking for great performing devices at a reasonable cost. Not everyone looking for great sound makes a massive salary or has a a huge nest egg to pull from. $6k or £5k etc is a hell of a lot of money for the vast majority of folks out there.

 

[Orion76]

Do they offer an upgraded power supply for a few thousand?

 

[Billy Budapest]

A mix of SOTA performance in some respects and decent performance in others, but far overpriced.

 

[DHT 845]

Interior loooks like $299 DAC, only chassis is hi-end like, thick aluminium (?)

 

[SuicideSquid]

Divide that price by 20 and it might be worth considering. I just don't understand who out there would drop over $6k for this - at least when we talk about "high-end" Marantz SACD players or boutique power amplifiers, they usually look good and have exceptional build quality, even if they don't measure any better than a product that's 1/10th the price.

 

[DonR]

For $$$ Seven Thousand Dollars after tax/shipping I expect SOTA in all respects no compromises. You can buy a truck load of Kit for Seven Grand. Amir minimizes product’s price impact his assessment. But I and most other potential customers do. Factoring in Price for what you get here. Headless Panthers on Parade all day.

So many manufacturers in the Audio World more than willing and eager to take advantage of uninformed consumers. Amir working hard every day to change this industry to a more transparent and objective approach. One Product at a time, Slowly eating the Elephant a bite at a time! While surrounded by nefarious and devious actors whom wish us to fail. Keep calm and carry on Amir!

Yes, it would be far less objectionable if the price was an order of magnitude lower.

 

[SuicideSquid]

For $$$ Seven Thousand Dollars after tax/shipping I expect SOTA in all respects no compromises. You can buy a truck load of Kit for Seven Grand. Amir minimizes product’s price impact his assessment. But I and most other potential customers do. Factoring in Price for what you get here. Headless Panthers on Parade all day.

So many manufacturers in the Audio World more than willing and eager to take advantage of uninformed consumers. Amir working hard every day to change this industry to a more transparent and objective approach. One Product at a time, Slowly eating the Elephant a bite at a time! While surrounded by nefarious and devious actors whom wish us to fail. Keep calm and carry on Amir!

I went with "not terrible" because it measures well and does what it's supposed to do. There are plenty of devices in the audiophile world that cost $7,000 and do nothing, or worse than nothing. If it was $500 I'd give it a "fine". Headless panther, for me, is reserved for products that measure poorly or have some kind of major design flaw that renders them near useless.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

Do they offer an upgraded power supply for a few thousand?

No they don't , not only that, but advise against such things regularly.
No external clocks either.
As measurements has shown, they don't need it either.
The only outbox they do is mScaler.
There are no extras, no upgrades, nothing.

 

[Kevinfc]

I’d guess for under $1000 you could get a beautifully made custom case for the Topping device and pocket the five grand.

 

[Kennyknetter]

Performance wise, it looks like a 300$ DAC AMP combo with an upgraded output voltage and an upgraded filter. Cool but a bit weird and non user friendly design. Odd with a high noise floor and an external power supply beside the SOTA output voltage and filter. Looks like they put the money in the wrong places. It should go for 700 bucks or so.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

Amirm said he wouldn't buy it, not that dac is generally not recommended

I'll buy one used for £2.5k, any day.
At full price? No.

 

[DonR]

No they don't , not only that, but advise against such things regularly.
No external clocks either.
As measurements has shown, they don't need it either.
The only outbox they do is mScaler.
There are no extras, no upgrades, nothing.

Doesn't stop others from doing it £400.00 : https://www.mcru.co.uk/product/linear-power-supply-for-chord-hugo-tt2-dac/?v=3e8d115eb4b3

or for an extra £141.67 you can get an "up-graded" version that gives you:

a Furutech rhodium plated IEC inlet, Hi-Fi Tuning audiophile fuse, UP-OCC cabling for the dc cable and an IsoTek Systems EVO3 Initium power cord

PT Barnum is looking down (or up?) and smiling.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

Doesn't stop others from doing it £400.00 : https://www.mcru.co.uk/product/linear-power-supply-for-chord-hugo-tt2-dac/?v=3e8d115eb4b3

or for an extra £141.67 you can get an "up-graded" version that gives you:

a Furutech rhodium plated IEC inlet, Hi-Fi Tuning audiophile fuse, UP-OCC cabling for the dc cable and an IsoTek Systems EVO3 Initium power cord

PT Barnum is looking down (or up?) and smiling.

Haha!
Try Farad powersupplies .

L2-S Chord Dave modification assembly, 80cm, GX16-4 to Molex connector - Farad

Lighten up your Dave! We have made a special power supply upgrade for the Chord Dave for use with our Super3 power supplies.

www.faradpowersupplies.com

Rob Watts strongly advises against them. On Headfi, people strongly disagree with him.

 

[DMill]

Great review. Seems to work pretty good. I truly hate the look of it. They should've charged more for it. My guess is a Hugo customer wants the bragging rites of owning the most expensive gear.

 

[pkane]

No they don't , not only that, but advise against such things regularly.
No external clocks either.
The only outbox they do is mScaler.
There are no extras, no upgrades, nothing.

Watts doesn't know what he's talking about. Everything's better with a $4k power cord upgrade and an outboard LPS for another $1k. Of course, you'll need two of each, one for the mscaler and the other for the DAC. Add a USB reclocker for another $600 (with its own LPS, of course), add an audiophile USB cable (say, $800 x 2), and you might get to something that's just starting to sound decent... Of course, all of this is true, and fully verified and confirmed by many a sighted listening test.

 

[DonR]

Rob Watts strongly advises against them. On Headfi, people strongly disagree with him.

Probably the only time they do.