Your recipe for state of the art RBCD playback?

[Jud]

Also it is known that Hugo's filtering of PCM redbook is superior to any upsampling being performed within the PC before sending to the Hugo.

 

It is known? Not saying it couldn't conceivably be the case, but settled and not subject to disagreement?

[4est]

How the Hugo DSD>PCM internally has no bearing on a different algorithm doing PCM>DSD on a beefy computer into a DSD DAC.

Yeah, I new I was going to get some grief from my post, lol. I don't disagree that dacs that upsample within the dac could benefit from upsampling within the PC to the native rate in which the dac upsamples internally, has some benefit. Where I disagree is converting PCM to DSD and upsample to a DSD dac. Although I've never heard this sound, I can tell you it doesn't go well for the Hugo from DSD to PCM internally. Also it is known that Hugo's filtering of PCM redbook is superior to any upsampling being performed within the PC before sending to the Hugo. But according to Rob Watts this same filtering does not apply to hi resolution PCM, so there may be some benefit to upsampling and filtering of non redbook PCM to the Hugo. How is HPQ on filtering of PCM? I'll have to give it a try.

[wisnon]

It is known? Not saying it couldn't conceivably be the case, but settled and not subject to disagreement?

LoL

[wisnon]

At least it converts everything to high rates (first 90.3MHz, then 104MHz), so I was incorrect about 8x interpolation followed by conversion to DSD-type format internally like most DACs.

 

One thing that puzzles me a little is that it uses noise shaping, which is usually done to combat quantization noise of one-bit or low-bit streams from sigma-delta modulators. If the 90 and 104MHz bitstreams are multi-bit PCM, why the noise shaping?

 

Dunno, but on the headfi hugo thread at about page 32, Rob makes a lengthy explanation…perhaps it says there.

[alubis]

I have been using Hugo for more than a year and I think Hugo is great with pcm. However, Hugo is very sensitive to the types of transport.

IMO, it is understandable since Hugo is designed for portable use. In my experience Hugo is best feed with low powered transport rather than computer. I got best result with Android smartphone (usb audio player pro app) and Beaglebone black (running Rune or volumio) rather than mac mini (heavily tweaked) or macbook pro.