Where has the NDX into Hugo thread gone?

Cue letter "F of course! [Beitkopf edition - other editions vary].

ATB from George

Source: Hifi Choice

Watts comments at length on this topic in post 5229 (page 349) in the Head Fi thread.

ATB.

Hook

But George, I have cold fusion in my audio system, well actually cold fusion powered by batteries... But what the heck.. I love and it has brought me closer to my music.

PS Tom Jones is still crooning away and sounding good.

Hi Hook,

Any chance of a link please?

I tried searching but missed.  I'd find discussion of this interesting.

Thx H.

Hi Louis-Andre

Thanks for sharing your experiences and glad you have found what is right for you.

I am unsure the technology will evolve until recordings are mastered and reproduced better. To me it seems DAC technology is pretty mature. I think the main differentiators are still how it is powered and the analogue stage. Your enjoyment of your TDAC might support the former theory at least.

ATB, MM

I'm curious to see how many of us have switched to the Hugo, and from what?

Answers on a postcard please.

(in my case, Naim DAC + 3rd party XPS).

Jan

Simon

Forum rules prohibit live links to other forums, but if you google "head fi chord hugo page 349", it will be the first match.  

ATB.

Hook

Thanks Hook,

That still didn't find it, BUT it brought up a page of What Hi-Fi that did have a link I could use.

Why Google is censoring Head Fi for me I don't know!

Uugh! Computers!

The article is well worth while, and it's easy to see how people misinterpreted this as sampling (in fact it's phase detection - it's more analogous to the quadrature detector in an FM radio, but multi-stage).

Following this thread and the earlier one, I thought I try async USB again from my MacBook... 

Actually it's very good isn't it? Playing my Qobuz FLAC streams via XBMC... in fact it sound bloomin' incredible.. I am sure it wasn't this good this before??? But I have just installed the two latest Mavericks maintenance releases since the last try.. And I wonder if that is anything to do with it.?

oh well the vagaries of computer audio... At least UPnP streaming is consistent.. But I can't knock the performance of async USB this morning.

Simon

Have you read the presentation from the Chord website? If not, suggest you do.

"Rob says that - in simple terms - the brain samples sound in real time every 4 microseconds, whereas CD refreshes its frames every 22 microseconds. Its CD's inability to work as fast as the brain that causes its problems in the time domain, why it doesn't sound natural. And the unique design of the Hugo addresses precisely this failing."

Source: Hifi Choice

I remember Sugar Sugar with a happy heart! Thanks for the nostalgia trip!

Also I found the async USB means to be top line. Better than co-ax SPIDF by a small degree on the DAC V1 with current generation MAC Mini. I also have kept pace with the OS updates, and I do sometimes find a tiny change for the better, but nothing so big as to get excited enough to comment here on it, though over the time of several steps, the change may actually have been more significant if made in one jump!

I am not down on the Hugo, and development is always to be welcomed. It is just that I am entirely happy with what I have. This actually a first for me in the now thirty years of actually using replay that I bought myself. That cannot be a bad thing really! When the V1 is up for a service, then it will either be serviced or changed for something probably better and not necessarily more expensive either!

What got my eyes seeing red a few pages back was claims that somehow there was the seeming appearance of an extra octave of music in the bass! As I retired bass player, I do know quite well what is going on on the bass line of music. Tubas, organ pedals, cellos, bassoons, even the double bassoon, and also the rather rare bass clarinet.

I did some experiments with WAV downloads and played using iTunes of pure sine waves at 20 hertz, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. So far the only way to find if something was going on was to place my ear against the frame of the ESLs and then the sensation was as if one were to do the same to the cabin wall in a ship. A sense of a rumble without pitch as such, just the sense of powerful machinery working in a huge ship-hull/ At 31 Hertz the sound emerged audibly from the speaker. 32 was louder, and 33 Hertz was clear. This is significant as the fundamental of the 16 foot "C", which is the lowest note in music, was pitched nicely enough for me to know that most organs are tuned just a tad sharper than this mathematically idealise note. In fact my maths brings the result 32.9 Hertz for this note.

Then I listened to 42 Hertz which is the low "E" on the double bass, then 55, which is the low "A", and a very kind note on the double bass. Then 110 Hertz, then 220, and then 440 which is the standard tuning "A" Then 880, 1760, 3520, and 7040 .... all octaves of the "A"  By now any sense of pitch was dying out out as no musical instrument plays a fundamental note in the 3000-4000 Hertz range. The violin can play some high harmonics in this range as a special effect, not often asked for in music.

I then went stepwise by the one thousand from 8000 Hertz to 14000. I could still tell there was sound though by now quite faint.

I did put in 14080 Hertz as an octave of "A" but could not define the pitch as different from 15000 Hertz. I could still detect 16000 Hertz, but not 17K to 20K Hertz.

I set the gain as being not loud on the 440 Hertz tuning "A" sample. No doubt I could have set the volume louder, but what would be the point.

The point of this exercise was to determine if I could hear the fundamental bass note of the lowest music on my system, and I could. And I could also hear the highest musical notes. 

Frank said that I can hear the notes in my head, and this is true or else I know that I could never know if what I was hearing when playing was justly tuned so as to correct tuning when playing. But he should know that as a cellist himself. There is no help for the player on a violin family instrument as there are no frets to guide the left hand. Thus the player must know and internally hear the notes so as to correct what comes out of the instrument if the left hand is not quite in the right place!

ATB from George

It actually states the Hugo can not reconstruct the information perfectly, 1 million taps are required for that. Having only 26 thousand taps it claims to make a good estimation, as suggested by George.