Chord Hugo TT coax/usb

Yes, I have, I prefer the SPDIF (assuming that is what you mean by 'coax') when used with a Naim streamer transport and I seem to prefer this across multiple DACs. I tried USB with the Melco and other USB sources... and for whatever reason ... all very good, but sounds just a little lacking or 'dry' ... so in my experience if you are interested if you want the best SQ I need to suggest SPDIF with a quality transport.

If you check out Rob Watts posts elsewhere, his opinion is that:

"For both tt and Dave, usb is best, closely followed by optical, then last is coax."

He also says:

"Normally dacs are sensitive to source jitter, but my dacs are not, due to the DPLL which eliminates incoming jitter, buffers the data and creates a local clock sychronisation. So you are just left with benefits of optical which is galvanic isolation, which reduces noise floor modulation thus making it sound smoother and darker. With usb we have galvanic isolation too, but the clock is allready local as timing for usb comes from the dac."

musica posted:

I have recently purchased a HTT and am enjoying the music it produces. The source is a NDX connected by coax which is the only connection available on the NDX. As a point of interest has any member with a HTT been able to test the difference in sound quality between using coax or the HD USB input. I appreciate that to be valid it would mean using a source with the choice of coax or USB output. I would be interested in any in any results. Thanks

philip

I haven't, though I would observe that it might depend on the source and cables as well as the inputs themselves. 

If anyone has tried it I would be interested in learing how The TT and other Chord DACs perform on the Uniti Core's SPDIF output compared to other sources (by whatever connection) - though this risks going off-topic if not the TT, being more an assessment of Core.

likesmusic posted:

"Normally dacs are sensitive to source jitter, but my dacs are not, due to the DPLL which eliminates incoming jitter, buffers the data and creates a local clock sychronisation. So you are just left with benefits of optical which is galvanic isolation, which reduces noise floor modulation thus making it sound smoother and darker. With usb we have galvanic isolation too, but the clock is allready local as timing for usb comes from the dac."

This is exactly the same technique that Naim and most DAC manufacturers use these days (and have done so from late 90s in my opinion). However it is slightly misleading because transport noise (and the sample data contained in the transport framing protocol is far from a smooth constant stream .. it goes in bursts) . Anyway these framing protocols cause system crosstalk which all systems are effected by to greater or lesser extents. To entirely reduce cross talk is a bit like producing perpetual motion.

A disadvantage of USB2 is that in order to asynchronously signal, the balanced serial signal lead is forced to become unbalanced ... this will induce an earth return current pulse in the shielding and other couplings... this is normally bad... whether it's this that affects USB SQ I have no idea...

It strikes me that USB and s/psdif are both stupid ways to transfer data to a DAC. For stored music in all cases the correct clock speed is known and fixed, it is present in the metadata of the file. So it is just stupid to entangle the data with a clock signal in the case of s/pdif and make the receiving DAC hunt around and try and lock on to the correct frequency, and it stupid in a different way to transmit it it in tiny packets over USB, when it could be sent in lovely large chunks, and clocked out of memory at the receiving end. Squeezebox Touches did this years ago, Linn and naim caught up, (though by some accounts naim are still having problems) - its a pity Chord haven't. Still, they make beautiful sounding DACs!

likesmusic posted:

It strikes me that USB and s/psdif are both stupid ways to transfer data to a DAC. For stored music in all cases the correct clock speed is known and fixed, it is present in the metadata of the file. So it is just stupid to entangle the data with a clock signal in the case of s/pdif and make the receiving DAC hunt around and try and lock on to the correct frequency, and it stupid in a different way to transmit it it in tiny packets over USB, when it could be sent in lovely large chunks, and clocked out of memory at the receiving end. Squeezebox Touches did this years ago, Linn and naim caught up, (though by some accounts naim are still having problems) - its a pity Chord haven't. Still, they make beautiful sounding DACs!

I can't comment on the best means of conveying a rendered stream of digital music to a DAC, however the Chord products seem to be able to create a great analogue sound from it.