NDX and Chord Hugo
Posted by: Foxman50 on 18 April 2014
I have been contemplating adding a DAC to my NDX/XPS2 to see (or should that be hear) what it can bring to the party. And so thought it about time i made inroads into Having a few home demos. After looking around at products that are within my budget i came across the Chord Hugo DAC.
Although it is meant to be a portable headphone unit, it can be used as a full line level fixed DAC.
The dealer lent me a TQ black digital coax lead, which have twist grip plugs. This was required as the present batch of Hugo's have a case design fault that wont allow any decent cable to fit, soon to be rectified. Thankfully the TQ just manages to hang on to the coax port.
Once all connected and gone through the minimal setup procedure of the Hugo, what does the red LED mean again, i left it to warm up for half an hour.
Poured a beer and sat down for an evenings listening.
What was that, where did that come from, that's what that instrument is. OMG, as my little'n would say, Where is it getting all this detail from.
After spending last night and today with it, all i can say is that it has totally transformed my system from top to bottom. I never considered my NDX to be veiled or shut in, not even sure that's the correct terms. All i can say is its opened up the sound stage and space around instruments. Everything I've put through it has had my toes, feet and legs tapping away to the music.
Even putting the toe tapping, the resolution the clarity to one side, what its greatest achievement for me has been in making albums that I've had trouble listening too enjoyable now.
One added bonus is that it has made the XPS redundant. I cannot hear any difference with it in or out of the system.
While i thought a DAC may make a change in the degree of the jump from ND5 to NDX, i was not prepared for this. Anyone looking at adding a PSU to there NDX may want to check this unit out first.
For me this has to be the bargain of the year.
Hugo up and running. All very straightforward.
G
Initial thoughts????
Biting my tongue....difficult...but I need to let it settle, get the DC1 in place (cheapo QED while I wait for the order), and play a good selection at the weekend. Then I'll feel I have the authority to properly evaluate it in public.
G
Hi Graeme, congrats on your purchase! You should like the sound of the new unit but expect some small changes in the coming weeks. May I suggest that you dig into your music library and reach for your preferred old songs played hundreds of times. This way, you will immediately discover what it's all about! 
A new review from a pro-audio website here.
There are a couple of typos (prevention instead of presentation and floors instead of flaws) and the reviewer gets wrapped in his own words at one point. Other than that, it's all good.
OK, well I'm off to listen to some Infected Mushroom
I cannot afford it, but is it a DAC V1 killer?
Will have to try this eventually!
ATB from George
Don't know George but for me it just sound right. 
I too don't like the word killer, but it is the source that has got me closest to my music so far, and each day I listen to a new album/track and I stop dead in my tracks and listen intrigued for many (but not all) of them. Yes I am in probably the honeymoon period, and overtime I will probably take this for granted with the bar having been raised.
I have enquired locally if I am unusual, but I understand one or two others with Naim amplification have also substituted NDSs and NDACs for the Hugo.. So I would appear not unique.. Well not in that sense anyway.
The term I have heard from the trade is that the Hugo is 'inconvenient'....
Simon
I cannot afford it, but is it a DAC V1 killer?
Will have to try this eventually!
ATB from George
Don't know George but for me it just sound right.
+1
The term I have heard from the trade is that the Hugo is 'inconvenient'....
Simon
Is that by other manufacturers and none Chord dealers
Graeme
I cannot afford it, but is it a DAC V1 killer?
I'm a non-violent person, and all this talk of V1 and killer in the same sentence makes me uneasy.
The DAC V1 is a lovely device that connects a lot of people to a lot of music. So does the Hugo. So does my Naim DAC (which I'm not intending to sell). Each provides a slightly different, but equally intriguing view of music. Then there's the feature set to consider. For example, does the Hugo have enough digital inputs for your needs? No Will your cables fit? No
I cannot afford it, but is it a DAC V1 killer?
Will have to try this eventually!
ATB from George
Don't know George but for me it just sound right.
+1
Sounding 'right' is exactly how I described my first encounter with it to a fellow PFM'r last night.
G
PS Audio with their new DAC receives first review, as already mentioned in this forum it uses FPGA chips as well. I do not know if PS uses same setup...... seems there are interesting times ahead of us.... PS rated something like "new reference piece", costs more than Hugo (~6000&euro
.
ralf
Which DAC and source did you use? As that is certainly not my experience or a view I have expressed before. DSD through Hugo, for example, sounded far less digital than I hear through a Naim DAC.There is nothing wrong with a digital sound if you prefer that approach, it is just me really preferring the more analogue sound of DSD.
The reason I ask what DAC is that some DACs convert DSD to PCM internally, so you may have been hearing the digital sound of PCM rather than true DSD. If sounded just like your V1 then it is probably not pure DSD. They noticeably sound different. Preference for one or the other is in the ear if the beholder.
Hugo does it as pure DSD, which is why I hear it as step up from my Naim DAC. I think it might be good if you hear Hugo, as I and other think the difference is far from small. To me going from PCM to DSD is like moving up two levels in the Naim hierarchy. Go on give it a go, you know you want to .
I think when you hear Hugo with DSD, you'll think why didn't I try this before, but of course, you may find you like the digital approach more. Do you prefer LP12 to a Naim CD player? I do, but not everybody does. So not everybody will prefer DSD. Some would say DSD focuses on the music, whilst PCM is more HiFi, but I'm not sure I know what that means.
Anyway - i have said more than enough on the subject. It would be great to read your views when you have had a chance to hear Hugo.
Wat -
Your quote in blue is not true. According to Rob Watts, the Hugo's designer, it accepts DSD, but converts internally to PCM.
...Firstly an explanation of the pros/cons of the formats:
1. PCM Pro: excellent resolution of small signals, very small signals do not disappear into the dithered noise floor.
Cons: Timing. Ear/brain can resolve 4uS, CD innately is at 22uS.
2. DSD Pro: Samples at 0.34 uS, albeit at not very good resolution, so has much better timing innately
Cons: resolution. Noise shaper noise is not the same as dithered noise, any signal below noise shaper noise floor is lost.
Now the timing issue can be resolved by the DAC interpolation filter, and with an infinite tap length filter, timing is completely reconstructed. So red-book is capable of very much better performance, if you improve the interpolation filter. But with DSD, the encoding means that low-level details are lost in the noise shaper noise floor, and they are lost forever. So DSD has a compression in depth and instrument separation, due to poor resolution, but does not innately have timing problems. Check out 2L website, and compare the DXD recording to the DSD64 or DSD128 - to my ears, the loss in transparency of DSD is not small.
Getting back to design of the DAC. Now I run my DAC's with a very simple single stage active analogue section, with only 2 caps and 2 resistors in the direct signal path - and I do this for transparency. But this means the digital RF noise in the 100k to 1M band must be very low, so the digital source must be filtered - and DSD is at -20dBFS at 100kHz. So I can't put raw DSD into the DAC, or it will sound very hard. So the DSD is filtered, which converts it to regular PCM.
If I were doing a DAC for only DSD would I do it this way? Yes, I think I would, as simple analogue is always the best.
ATB.
Hook
PS - My apologies if this was corrected earlier in this thread. Am still in the process of catching up, both here and over in the Head Fi thread.
Left mine running with Jazz24.com for the dog to enjoy whilst at work today <
