Chord Hugo TT 2 - A DAC, preamplifier & headphone amplifier

[Summit]

Chord seems to have redesigned the Hugo TT with:

 

• A new chassis
• A more powerful Xilinx Artix 7 FPGA
• Ability to play 768kHz PCM and DSD 512 playback
• A WTA filter with 98,304-taps (double that Hugo 2 has)
• Upgrade from a 4-element design to a 10-element design
• Six super capacitors capable of peak output of 5A, 9.3V RMS
• A new discreet output stage
• A four-stage filter controls, like in Hugo2

 

AVAILABLE: AUTUMN 2018

 

Dynamic range: 127dB ‘A’ weighted

Noise: 4 uV ‘A’ weighted (high gain), 1.7 uV ‘A’ weighted (low gain) with no measurable noise floor modulation

Distortion: 0.00008% @ 2.5 V 300Ω; 0.00016% @ 6 W 8Ω

Output power (unbalanced): (@1% THD) 288 mW RMS 300Ω; 7.3 W RMS 8Ω

Output power (balanced): (@1% THD) 1.15 W RMS 300Ω; 18W RMS 8Ω

Output impedance: 0.042Ω

Stereo separation: 9 V RMS 300Ω -138dB

Dimensions: 130mm (L) x 100mm (W) x 21mm (H)

Boxed Dimensions: 220mm (L) x 122mm (W) x 85mm (H)

 

*My observation: The output power, if the spec is correct, is much higher than for DAVE which is good for us with hard to drive headphones and for those that drive their speakers direct*

 

http://chordelectronics.co.uk/product/hugott2/

[Summit]

24 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said:

I don't get Chord strategy here at all.  Other than the power supply design, the TT2 looks nice and slightly improves on DAVE in some areas.  But if it is priced around 4K pounds, I don't see how it brings any new market share into play other than cannibalize on DAVE sales.  

They could have done a proper lower end full desktop DAC and gained far more in market share.  Forget the super capacitor design.

 

From spec and design the Chord Hugo TT2 is very close to Dave and power and future wise even better. It has two BNC inputs so can be connected to an M-scaler. Let’s see how it sound, but yes if it’s close in SQ and sells for half the price, the future for Dave is maybe not so bright.

[Summit]

16 minutes ago, mozes said:

I think that the success of TT2 will be heavily influenced by launching a dedicated M-scaler at a reasonable price. 

 

Maybe you are right, but I think the TT2 will be a success if it gets close in SQ to the Dave, with or without a reasonable priced M-scaler. With a good M-scaler at around half the price of the BLU2 the "success" will probably increase a bit more.

[Summit]

21 minutes ago, rickca said:

Does anybody know the purpose of the 2 x DX expansion inputs on the TT2?  Or the power supply specs ... it says it comes with a 12V SMPS.

 

I believe the DX inputs are for M-scaler and the DX outputs are for the coming power amp.

 

Yep one external 12V SMPS to feed the six super capacitors. If you want I guess you can use an HDplex or similar instead.

 

“The only difference between Dave's DX output (that is the digital OP to connect to a DX power pulse array amp) and a regular 705/768 kHz signal, is the DX has volume control information embedded in the user data. So when Dave is used with a DX power amp then Dave becomes a DX pre-amp, as it controls the volume. Qutest will accept the DX data, but will ignore the volume data, as Qutest does not have a volume control - it is a fixed OP DAC.”

[Summit]

6 hours ago, mozes said:

Will leave the answer to someone techy.

What I do know is that all DSD tracks sound richer with more layering under the DSD plus mode (no decimation)

 

For PCM music its best to set the Dave to PCM plus, because it will when use 164,000 taps. If the DAC is set to DSD plus while playing PCM music it will only use 88,000 taps. For DSD records it’s best to set the DAC to DSD plus. So it’s all about how many taps (and filter) that are used 164,000 taps for PCM plus and 82,000 for DSD plus.  

 

If am not mistaking Dave has an auto detector for this.

[Summit]

Rob Watts are saying that as a pure DAC the SQ from Dave is better becuse of 10 more element, but if you need to drive hard to drive HPs or speakers the TT2 has the advantage of more power. How much better is the question?

[Summit]

1 hour ago, ElviaCaprice said:

You are mistaken, there is no auto detect.  It's not just about how many taps and filter are used.  

 

Rob Watts @

“It's simply because the DSD+ filter is too big to fit with the PCM+ 164,000 tap filter. It was under 70% capacity but the design was not routable. But the low latency 82,000 tap is much smaller...”

 

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chord-electronics-dave.766517/page-30

 

ecwl @ explanation about decimation.

 

“From what I read over at Head-Fi (pages 29 & 30), I think there are actually two possible filters to choose from on the Chord DAVE. One is the WTA 164k tap filter, which Rob Watts called PCM+. And the other filter is called DSD+. He said that if the WTA 164k tap filter causes too much audio delay for video, people can use the DSD+ filter which has lower latency. He said he created the DSD+ filter so that it is non-decimating for DSD playback and obviously it must remove HF distortion and noise. But from the sounds of it, you can use either filters for DSD or PCM playback. If you use the WTA 164k tap filter (PCM+) to playback DSD, the DSD would probably be decimated to 176kHz/24-bit first and then go through the PCM+ filter as PCM but I'm speculating. This is supposedly how Hugo currently plays DSD it seems. I don't know what would happen when you feed PCM into the DSD+ filter but since Rob Watts seem to imply that you can watch video with that filter, it has to accept PCM (because how else are you going to get DSD audio stream for video). And this is where it gets a bit confusing. It sounds like if you are in DSD+ filter mode, and if you're sending PCM signals, the DAC will use a WTA 82k tap filter to lower latency. And the reason for the two modes is because he couldn't fit the WTA 164k tap filter with the DSD+ filter. So one mode has the WTA 164k tap filter and decimates DSD to some sort of PCM first. The other mode has the non-decimating DSD filter and a WTA 82k tap filter? Either way, I'm really banking on the fact that there won't be significant audio delay that my Oppo blu-ray player cannot handle, since I already asked my dealer to pre-order my Chord DAVE.”