Where has the NDX into Hugo thread gone?

Never mind an MBA. If you proposed Chord's strategy in a GCSE exam you'd be looking at a re-sit in the autumn 

Keith

Oh we'll, I was about to post how good the Hugo is sounding after 3 days in my system 

Well I guess it's a case of making hay whilst the sun shines. Demand is much greater than expected and in a similar vein Naim are in a similar position with the Statement. I heard they have about 31 units on confirmed order which is getting on for the equivalent of 2 years production. This has to be a success but they, like Chord, will have to ensure all orders can be met. I would have thought that Chord should be able to cope with this better and train extra staff as the Hugo is infinitesimally less complex than the Statement which requires very well skilled workers to build it. But now Naim has a lot of financial muscle behind it then maybe it won't be as difficult as it may once have been.

I hope we can get the old thread back shortly, without the insulting posts of course.

+1 how about it Richard

Anyone care to guess what Chord's profit per Hugo actually is? Obviously it's early days for sales and they're probably still recovering R&D and production set-up costs. A rumoured initial  run of 5,000 translates to £7,000,000 gross less Vat and dealers margin (and distributors margins, I guess outside uk).  Maybe a profit of £100 per unit?

Graeme Foxman summed up the incomprehensible marketing strategy for me about six hours ago. Perhaps those of pussy footing around should hurry while stocks last. I just can't quite cope with the idea of owning the NDS + 555 and only using the streamer bit :-/

Keith

It's funny I had this discussion with somebody in the hifi business today.. I guess the actual raw costs  is  around £60 to £100.  i think with overheads, dealers margins , margins and tax, I hear 1 to 10 is not 

an uncommon ratio for wholesale cost of sale. So I think net profit  per Hugo could be around £40 to £100.

Simon

Still, £40-£100 per unit wouldn't be bad if you could shift 50,000 or maybe even 100,000 worldwide

Blimey, 50,000? It took Linn a decade to sell that many LP12s. I'd suggest it would be easier to to sell 5,000 at £1,000 margin. 

Keith

Yes, it was a bit tongue in cheek.  I don't know what a realistic number is - probably Chord didn't when they first released the Hugo  I heard the first run was 5,000 units - can't remember where.  I would guess they could probably double that.

Philip

+2 

Your raw cost estimates seem on the low side Simon. The Xilinx chip alone sells for about $120 (a bit less surely for bulk purchases...). Then there's the casing which adds perhaps another $100 ; then the other chips, mainboard, connectors, etc.. Then there's labour, packaging, possibly royalties to Rob Watts....

That may be true Jan, but I'm sure their margin (before fixed costs and overheads) is higher than Simon's estimate of profit. However, it's not as high as it would have been if the price tag reflected the best DAC anyone has ever heard tag (I know that no one has actually called it that apart from David Price at Hi-Fi Choice). 

Keith

Hi Graeme,

They sound more like drums because the transient information that defines the attack phase of the drum strike is being more precisely recreated. 

"As any good engineer will testify, a recording’s transient detail – in other words, the first few milliseconds of sound energy contained in an instrument’s attack phase – forms a defining part of the overall sound quality of a track. This comes as little surprise when you realise just how much auditory information the ear extracts from a transient, with a sound’s complete identity often being formed in a time period as short as three or four milliseconds. "

(from http://www.musictechmag.co.uk/.../transient-modulator)

Daniel Levitin in his excellent This Is Your Brain On Music describes the importance of the attack phase (p. 53) :

"The gesture our body makes in order to create sound from an instrument has an important influence on the sound the instrument makes. But most of that goes away after the first few seconds. Nearly all of the gestures we make are impulsive - they involve short, punctuated bursts of activity. In percussion instruments, the musician does not typically remain in contact with the instrument after this initial burst....

... The introduction of energy to an instrument - the attack phase - usually creates energy at many different frequencies that are not related to one another by simple integer multiples. In other words, for the brief period after we strike, blow into, pluck, or otherwise cause an instrument to start making sound, the impact itself has a rather noisy quality that is not especially musical - more like the sound of a hammer hitting a piece of wood, say, than like a hammer hitting a bell or a piano string, or like the sound of wind rushing through a tube. Following the attack is a more stable phase in which the musical tone takes on the orderly pattern of overtone frequencies as the metal or wood (or other material) that the instrument is made out of starts to resonate. This middle part of the musical tone is referred to as the steady state...."

The avant-garde composer Pierre Schaeffer did some experiments in the 50s where he recorded a number of orchestral instruments on tape. Then using a razor blade he cut the beginnings off of these sounds. When he played back the tapes, he found it was nearly impossible for most people to identify the instrument that was playing. Without the attack, pianos and bells sounded remarkably unlike pianos and bells, and remarkably similar to one another.

The last piece of the first quote above is worth repeating : "the sound's complete identity is often being formed in a time period as short as three or four milliseconds". This means then that better reconstruction of the transient should allow the brain to more rapidly identify the instrument. This concurs with my experience of the Hugo ; instrumental timbre is more convincingly portrayed than anything else I've heard up to now and it shows up across the board, including bass instruments. My speakers and headphones seemed to have gained an extra octave in the bass, but more importantly, far better definition throughout the bass region.

Jan

Just a practical question re inserting a DAC between a unitiserve and superuniti, this was explained before but cannot access post. I remember the  digital out is used from the serve, what input is used on the SU for the DAC?

Secondly, is choice of music from serve then controlled from N-serve app, and is the volume controlled via the remote control or can the N-serve or N-stream be used for volume. Thanks for bearing with me.

Dear Jan,

The lowest musical octave has been successfully recorded since 1926 with the introduction of the electric [electronic] microphone [Western Electric System], so hearing an extra octave means that you have been living is the recorded hell of 1925 and before up till now.

I frequently read hyperbole on the Forum - the "extra octave" is the one I baulk at the most of all!

ATB from George

Dear George

I call them as I hear them.

I would have expected a higher level of response from you. Rejecting offhand a respected and authoritative figure such as Daniel Levitin is disheartening, in the least. Have you read his book? Have you read the section on how the lower octaves in the bass are recreated by the brain?

As you say "ATB", from Jan...

P.S., I'm coming to the conclusion that the Hugo brings out the best in music and the worst in audio forum posters.

Improved bass extension can offer more than just more bass.

Playing something like solo acoustic guitar with a sub-woofer switched in and out of a good system, sounds quite different. One theory is that a sub-woofer reproduces an extra chunk of otherwise missing recorded 'acoustic' - be it real or artificial.

It's one of the reasons why a full-range loudspeaker system can add an additional sonic dimension to music replay in the home.

John.

Jan-Erik thanks for clarification.Much appreciated.

Gents, my apologies for my lateness on this.....

Did anyone try a Hugo with an NDS? I will try and demo at some point.

Hi Dusty

Someone did, however as we are waiting for our thread to be reinstated, i cant recal who. He tested a few front ends into Hugo including NDS/555/555 and found this to be the best front end out of the group. I don't think they had much of a demo, but enough to conclude Hugo added something positive to the mix.

Have to say this still surprises me.

Graeme

Yes, we need to wait for the thread to be recovered, but I believe it was @gary yeowell who has recently compared the Hugo and NDS/2x555PS

Simon