Qute 2 with possibly a Chord Hugo as an headphone amp?

Posted by: Jezza on 03 October 2016

I have a unititqute 2 with a Nap 100
Speakers Kef LS50's
Grado gs1000e headphones

Query;
Whilst I love my recently purchased system I find the headphone amp on the Qute a bit underwhelming for the Grado Gs1000's and because I using a Nap100 power amp I can't connect a standard but higher quality headphone amp. So my query is could I connect say a Chord Hugo to the digital out of the Qute? Would this give me the boost in headphone quality sufficiently to improve the headphones?
Or maybe someone could suggest alternatives?
Indeed it also raised the prickly question would the Hugo be a better Dac than the Qute?

Many thanks

Jeremy  

Posted on: 03 October 2016 by Richard Dane

Jeremy, in theory that will work but a Hugo may well be overkill on the UQ2.  If you are spending that much then maybe consider a move to a Superuniti instead.

Posted on: 03 October 2016 by dayjay

Yes you can, I ran a Qute 2>Hugo>Nap100 for a couple of months and it works well.  The downside is that you have lots of redundancy on your Qute as you are essentially using it as a streamer/radio, and if you have the Hugo between the Qute and Nap100, and you will get better SQ that way, you lose the remote control volume.  On the plus side you can always build from that and change the Qute for a different streamer or a Mac etc in the future

Posted on: 03 October 2016 by NickSeattle

Not sure if FM and Analog sources exit the UQ via digital, if that matters to you.  Best verify.  I know they are not supported by Multiroom.

Nick

Posted on: 03 October 2016 by dayjay

The radio and analogue inputs are digitised and passed through to the dac, works really well actually.

Posted on: 03 October 2016 by Kermit

To me, I got a better sound out of the Qute2 headphone output, than my (departed Hugo) could ever give. The SuperUniti headphone output was (to my ears) a huge improvement over both, just a shame it doesn't sound as good via its speaker output. My headphones were Grado PS1000 and HD800s.

Posted on: 03 October 2016 by dayjay

I'm astonished by that finding to be honest.  My Hugo is several steps better with headphones than either my Qute was or my SN2, in fact the Hugo is astonishingly good in comparison.  

Posted on: 03 October 2016 by Emre

hugo is a good value if you are using headphones, you got a world class dac and headphone amp competing with the best.

i don't have any idea how it will perform with grados, i only had 325-335 or something and i could not listen it, way too forward for my taste. 

Posted on: 04 October 2016 by sjbabbey

Jezza, 

The Hugo does seem like a good solution as it frees up the preamp outputs on the UQ for your NAP100. I would advise you to audition carefully as I considered doing the same with my UQ2 and Grado GS1000s and couldn't get on with the Hugo as a HP amp. The main problem being that the Hugo is fairly light which is great for a portable DAC/HP amp but not so great for staying in one place beside or on top of your UQ2 if you move your head whilst listening.

As I say, the Hugo is worth auditioning as you may not have the same issue.