Chord Hugo Optimisation < Mac / Mini

Good to know the Chord Hugo did it for you. It appears that there are many users who match Chord DACs with Naim amplifiers. There seems to be a huge following with these Chord units in other parts of the world particularly the States.

I hope someone would be able to help you out with your cable questions soon. I would be interested to know as well. I hope the USB connection will be the preferred option, over the optical.

There is a thread on the streaming forum which may help address your question.

Peter

Glad the Hugo works for you, I love mine.  There are lots of threads covering this subject and some strong opinions.  my response would be;

1.  USB cable did not make as much difference for me as all other tweaks.  I use an £80 one and the difference has been subtle.

2.  If using USB than I would recommend as a no brainer the Jitterbug which, at £40 is a bargain.  Makes things just a little more real and less digital.

3.  I would also recommend the UpTone USB regen which gave the biggest improvement on my Hugo set up.

4.  Different power supplies for your Hugo are a waste of money - don't bother

5. Good quality cables, however, are a must.  I've tried both a Chord Anthem reference and a TQ Black cable between my SN2 and Hugo - both are excellent but the TQ Black is better and cheaper

6. If using a Mac then Audirvana + is easily, from my experience, the best sounding piece of software and a no brainer especially if you leave ITunes out of the equation.

Have fun

dayjay posted:

Glad the Hugo works for you, I love mine.  There are lots of threads covering this subject and some strong opinions.  my response would be;

1.  USB cable did not make as much difference for me as all other tweaks.  I use an £80 one and the difference has been subtle.

2.  If using USB than I would recommend as a no brainer the Jitterbug which, at £40 is a bargain.  Makes things just a little more real and less digital.

3.  I would also recommend the UpTone USB regen which gave the biggest improvement on my Hugo set up.

4.  Different power supplies for your Hugo are a waste of money - don't bother

5. Good quality cables, however, are a must.  I've tried both a Chord Anthem reference and a TQ Black cable between my SN2 and Hugo - both are excellent but the TQ Black is better and cheaper

6. If using a Mac then Audirvana + is easily, from my experience, the best sounding piece of software and a no brainer especially if you leave ITunes out of the equation.

 

Have fun

Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond.

I use a iMac with AV+ already but soon to get a Mac Mini. I have a Chord Shawline RCA cable from Hugo to XS2. But will try some others. Looking for more analogue sound all round. 

I'll checkout a jitterbug and the regen.

Cheers

Adam

ThatsNotMyNaim posted:

7) Can we not talk about the TT or higher please as I can't afford it! thanks. Even with Galvanic Isolation.

Cheers

Adam

But how much does it cost to optimise the Hugo.

Micro Mini £? USB cable (£80) Jitterbug (£40), Uptone, £? TQ Black cable £? Or the latest must have device the Micro rendu £?.

The question is, is a bare TT without optimisations on a par sonically to the Hugo with optimisations and is there much difference in price.

Three is a very big difference in price between a fettled Hugo and a TT.  UpTone was, if I remember rightly about 150 quid.  The TT would also need the USB cable and the TQ Black cable so the difference is the Jitterbug and the Regen which would cost 200 quid with the Hugo TT is 3 grand compared to 1500 for a Hugo.  I have seen conflicting views on whether the TT sound much/any better than the Hugo whether is sounds 1300 quid better would depend on the listener but not for me I suspect.

Fair point (generally) and I get your point... but in this case 3k is a hell of a alot. 

Does the TT have a power supply or is it also battery powered? I fear mains mess (same as Qute) if it does have a PSU.

ThatsNotMyNaim posted:

Fair point (generally) and I get your point... but in this case 3k is a hell of a alot. 

Does the TT have a power supply or is it also battery powered? I fear mains mess (same as Qute) if it does have a PSU.

TT - Bigger battery than Hugo - Greater dynamic range, remote control etc. Sounds superb into a 250DR. Albeit with optimised cables.

G

You could search on this topic for past posts by Wat (he occasionally still drops in)...

I’m not actually suggesting an un optimised TT is as good as an optimised Hugo, I don’t know, I haven’t heard either. But, as time goes by the list of devices that improve the sound of the Hugo grows and grows. From my point of view, and probably a lot of others, this is a good reason not to buy a Hugo. I already own a streamer (SBT), a NAS, USB cables, and an old chord RCA/din cable. All I want to do is slot a DAC between the SBT and preamp, without the need for additional cables and devices.

Edit. Just read a thread that suggests I'd also need something called ROON.

GraemeH posted:

ThatsNotMyNaim posted:

Fair point (generally) and I get your point... but in this case 3k is a hell of a alot. 

Does the TT have a power supply or is it also battery powered? I fear mains mess (same as Qute) if it does have a PSU.

TT - Bigger battery than Hugo - Greater dynamic range, remote control etc. Sounds superb into a 250DR. Albeit with optimised cables.

G

Without optimised cables (supplied with TT or costing about £30) does it sound better than the Hugo with optimised cables.

Take it easy. I had a deliberately modest PC with a Hugo and it sounded wonderful. The TT sounded surprisingly better, but the straight Hugo was still superb, so don't get too worried about silly money cables and the like - let your Hugo bed into your system and your soul, and then get into tweakery. Maybe run your PC from batteries meantime, and arguably use a PC rather than a MAC as the there is an ASIO driver for windows which Mr Watts has hinted might be better. I thought an Olimex galvanic isolater made my Hugo sound a little bit nicer, as did Mr W,  but it's no biggie. If I still had a Hugo nowadays I would possibly try an Intona USB isolator as it will work for high res stuff, which the Olimex did not. But please, don't think you have to mess about with daft money cables or the like to get the joy of a Hugo, and be very suspicious of anyone who says that an expensive cable can make a Hugo into a TT.

When people say expensive or optimised cable, there are two scenarios here. First is the cable that connects the source (Mac or CD player) to the DAC. The other cable connects the DAC to the preamp/amplifier.

I wager the digital cable (USB, optical or coaxial) that goes between the source and DAC is the one that is of least importance. A cheap but decent one will do the job reasonably well. It is the RCA to DIN interconnect linking the DAC to a Naim preamp/amplifier that is the important one, and it may be worthwhile to spend a bit more on this cable.

Is my understanding correct?

dayjay posted:

Glad the Hugo works for you, I love mine.  There are lots of threads covering this subject and some strong opinions.  my response would be;

1.  USB cable did not make as much difference for me as all other tweaks.  I use an £80 one and the difference has been subtle.

2.  If using USB than I would recommend as a no brainer the Jitterbug which, at £40 is a bargain.  Makes things just a little more real and less digital.

3.  I would also recommend the UpTone USB regen which gave the biggest improvement on my Hugo set up.

4.  Different power supplies for your Hugo are a waste of money - don't bother

5. Good quality cables, however, are a must.  I've tried both a Chord Anthem reference and a TQ Black cable between my SN2 and Hugo - both are excellent but the TQ Black is better and cheaper

6. If using a Mac then Audirvana + is easily, from my experience, the best sounding piece of software and a no brainer especially if you leave ITunes out of the equation.

 

Have fun

Your experience has proven that costlier cables may not necessarily sound *better* than a cheaper cable. I was thinking about one of the Chord RCA to DIN interconnects but they are surely costly (Shawline, Signature & Sarum Tuned Aray).

fatcat posted:

Micro Mini £? USB cable (£80) Jitterbug (£40), Uptone, £? TQ Black cable £? Or the latest must have device the Micro rendu £?.

I think the latest 'must have' device might be the Rednet 3 or D16.

Hi That's,

In terms of converters, in my system they do make a positive difference after my microRendu (mR).

I have listened extensively to the Gustard U12 and the Audio Breeze U8 (Talema), I have a Mutec MC-3 +USB on its way.

I have listened to these with my Oppo 105D (via USB and spdif from the converters) and Bel Canto 3.5vb (via AES, i.e. spdif with galvanic isolation).

In short, both the U12 and U8 sound good, and better than the Oppo's USB input. The U8 in my system is clearly better. In fact I was feeling somewhat dis-satisfied with my Bel Canto as the Oppo is very good, and sounded more dynamic and detailed than the BC. With the U8 the BC appears to have equalised those deficient areas.

On a thread in the Streaming section I copied a ranking produced by a poster in Head-fi, my ears support his observations so far.

As to cables: I bought a £50 USB cable for the comparisons above. However, I found that the U8 does not need USB power so I took a bog standard USB cable and converted it to be data-only. Sounds just as good to my ears, slightly different, perhaps sharper.

Interesting that you find that the Hugo is less strident with upper frequencies, that has been commented upon in some reviews - sweeter. Before settling back down from my DAC dissatisfaction I was actively considering listening to the Hugo, amongst others, because of this, and its very active support here and elsewhere.

If you are interested in another approach, bypassing USB, then have a look at Rednet 3 / D16, using Audio Over IP. Funnily enough the advocates still end up using devices like the Mutec MC-3+ & MC-3+ USB. Hours of reading!

M

Sorry, missed this thread until now.

The best output from any computer is likely to be via a dedicated USB bus (i.e. Reserved for that and nothing else. Computer soundcard outputs - electrical or optical SODIF suffer the soundcard and so are best avoided. But if you have no Isolator between the computer and Hugo the optical output is probably your best bet as the reducio. In sound quality using the soundcard is likely to be less than the adverse effect of a nousy electrical connection.

Also the less the computer has attached, and the less it has to do the better, so don't expect best sound quality while multitasking on the computer. One very neat solution is a Mac Mini runnina Audirvana. The MM is easily set up to run 'headless' with no monitor or keyboard, and with  bluetooth and IR turned off, and set up a dedicated USB bus. Audiv has an optimised mode which hogs the computer for itself, as well as facilitating the best setup with output via USB. 

Hugo is very susceptible to electrical/RF noise - it does NOT have galvanic isolation on USB input because it was originally designed for mobile use connected to the likes of an iPhone, and GI would apparently make it draw too much current from the iPhone. Unless you are very lucky with your computer output it therefore absolutely must have some form of isolation from a computer source, as even with fancy linear power supplies replacing the stock ones computers are very noisy environments. There are many isolators on the market: I, and a number of others, use the Gustard U12 which is inexpensive and very effective, converting the noisy usb output to cleanSPDIF. Usb cable before the isolator need be nothing special - any decent data cable will do as any additional RF picked up will be removed. If the isolator is to SPDIF not USB (e.g Gustard), the cable needs to be a well screened 75Ω one with good connectors - i.e designed for digital or RF - and not a standard audio RCA interconnect. I use a Van Damme, but haven't compared others.

Thanks for the info. 

I'm currently trialling an Innuos Zenith. Pretty nice indeed. Will try the Melco before returning to Macs and Isolators.

Cheers

Interesting to learn what you think of Melco. I tried the N1A into Chord Dave (through Bryston amp and PMC Fact 12), comparing with my Mac Mini/Audirvana (no isolator as Dave has built in). I didn't hear any obvious difference - but I stress it was a brief comparison at tail end of  a DAC audition, and not a proper audition of the Melco, so I'm not suggesting tbere aren't subtle differences. And others have said they have heard immediately evident differences between them (usually suggesting Melco is better), though invariably it seems with slightly different MM/Audiv setups and/or into different DACs.