Nd5xs+hugo vs Ndx+hugo vs ndx+hugo+xps

Perhaps a Forum search is in order: this must have been covered dozens of times. 

Thank you very much.^^

I have ND5xs with Hugo which is excellent.

Only you can decide whether there is a perceivable sound quality improvement using NDX instead and whether the "law of diminishing returns" applies.

I haven't added an external PSU, simply because it is not necessary and as I understand it, would be a waste of time (and money)

Others who have the NDX and Hugo, don't seem to see the need for any additional PSU. In fact one particular member, sold his Naim 555 PS ....... So quite clearly with Hugo, forget the need for external PSU's

Whether it's ND5xs or NDX ..... audition both and decide whether you can hear a noticeable sound quality improvement that is worth the additional cost ..... TO YOU .... regardless of what others opinions may be.

Hope this helps 

Purplerain .... Not sure if your Profile is out of date, but it shows that you already have NDX and XPS - so I'm a bit confused as to why you raised the Post ???!!!!!

If you still have that kit, simply sell YOUR XPS and use the funds to buy Hugo for YOUR NDX

I guess I ought to have checked your Profile first, before trying to help!

whatever you decide ...enjoy

Mr Frog posted:

I have ND5xs with Hugo which is excellent.

Only you can decide whether there is a perceivable sound quality improvement using NDX instead and whether the "law of diminishing returns" applies.

I haven't added an external PSU, simply because it is not necessary and as I understand it, would be a waste of time (and money)

Others who have the NDX and Hugo, don't seem to see the need for any additional PSU. In fact one particular member, sold his Naim 555 PS ....... So quite clearly with Hugo, forget the need for external PSU's

Whether it's ND5xs or NDX ..... audition both and decide whether you can hear a noticeable sound quality improvement that is worth the additional cost ..... TO YOU .... regardless of what others opinions may be.

Hope this helps 

Thank you for your valuable reply.^^

Mr Frog posted:

Purplerain .... Not sure if your Profile is out of date, but it shows that you already have NDX and XPS - so I'm a bit confused as to why you raised the Post ???!!!!!

If you still have that kit, simply sell YOUR XPS and use the funds to buy Hugo for YOUR NDX

I guess I ought to have checked your Profile first, before trying to help!

whatever you decide ...enjoy

Sorry about that my late profile update.

i bought ndx today.^^  and my system was 272+xps.So i have a xps now. today I saw the issue about hugo's great performance. 

Thanks for your valuable reply. 

I personally prefer the ND5XS with an XPS and the Naim DAC. It trumps the NDX with an XPS. With a Hugo the NDX + XPS may out perform it, but only by a bit. The big upgrade from the ND5 XS and the NDX is the DAC, so putting a Hugo on it may not be cost effective for the sound improvement you get back.

Certainly on the ND5 XS though you would hear an improvement. It works really well with the Naim DAC and then putting and XPS through the DAC, really peaks the performance of the ND5 XS as a streamer.

The Hugo is £1,000 less than the Naim DAC and uses the latest technology.

Good as the Naim may well be with the latest firmware, unfortunately, it can no longer compete with the Hugo.

Many members have replaced their Naim DAC with the Hugo - for very good reason.

NDX + XPS is a big improvement relative to bare NDX in my experience.

NDX + Hugo is a big improvement relative to NDX + XPS in my experience.

NDX + XPS + Hugo offers no audibly discernible improvement compared to NDX + Hugo in my experience.

So... I sold my XPS.

I own Hugo and have compared it many times to NDAC and DAC V1.

The Hugo is better in many aspects but not all, and different, and it doesn't automatically mean you should sell you NDX or NDAC for one.

I didn't sell my DAC V1 because of Hugo. Kept both 

One member owns NDAC/XPS2 and didn't sell that for a Hugo, and didn't hear these huge day and night differences.

And neither do I, on my Naim amp.

Mr Frog posted:

The Hugo is £1,000 less than the Naim DAC and uses the latest technology.

Good as the Naim may well be with the latest firmware, unfortunately, it can no longer compete with the Hugo.

Many members have replaced their Naim DAC with the Hugo - for very good reason.

 

....and some have since gone back again.

Not knocking the Hugo, which seems to represent excellent VFM, but the statement that 'it [the nDAC] can no longer compete with the Hugo' is no more than an opinion with which not all on here would agree.  

I should also disclose though, that I did buy an Chord Mojo DAC from Chord, and it is excellent !

I'm still keeping my Hugo and DAC v1

There is very little to be gained by adding an external power supply to an NDX running a digital out only.

A better combination in that respect is: NDX > nDAC with an XPS on the nDAC.

As far as the Hugo and the Naim DACs... I have owned an unhealthy amount of combinations here.... in short the Hugo excels in ways that go beyond what the NDS and the NDAC can deliver to my ears and brain - i won't describe it you just need to experience on a high end 500 series system.. or in my cases a relatively more humble 252 based system at home. Much has been written over the last couple of years on it including by me ... but I think the key is in the filter reconstruction.... it is to do with how we hear audio and the artefacts from converting to analogue to digital and vica versa... and part of this arguably is what Meridian's MQA taps into (pun not intended)

However the Naim DACs to me have a distinctive style which can be attractive and fun, and yes the NDS is probably the most neutral and in my humble opinion closest to the Hugo performance in a high end system.

But as suggested above the NDAC and the CD player DACs do sound fantastic in their way.

So..as I have said several times before.. one size doesn't fit all.. its why we have multiple inputs on our Naim NAcs. For immersive listens I use the Hugo... for a heavy blues listening sessions with friends around for a drink or three I would have used the NDAC/555PS and now I use my CDX2 mk1... its sublime... as it has the rocky blues slightly compressed small venue sound which really goes so well with that genre.

There is also Mojo to test instead of Hugo lots of people saying that there is no difference at all in DAC section...

the Hugo is more airy and open than the Mojo, but the Mojo counters that with more smoother and warmer sound. Apparently the digital filters are very similar, almost identical, but Mojo can decode 768KHZ digital, Hugo cannot. Not that there is any such music out there at that rate anyway.

Rob Watts did reduce the noise on Mojo (after some reports of Hiss on the Hugo with some headphones), so instruments have little more weight on the mojo.

Matter of preference, I still prefer the Hugo, but some will prefer Mojo.

As Simon says, the Naim sources have that "live venue sound" - and that is the "Naim" sound that Salisbury have designed... which is why some people went from Hugo back to NDAC... I think one forum member prefers to have the Naim DAC - SN2 and Ovators.

started trying dacs with the arcam black box   ending with the ndac until the hugo , dont even think about them anymore  .ndx plus hugo  mcru power supply will take some beating i think.

My streaming experience started with an ND5XS. I was then persuaded by the dealer to add the XP5XS - an improvement, but really quite minor. Then I added added a Hugo, using the ND5XS just as renderer, and sold the XP5XS - a significant improvement.

Next, quest to replace a noisy NAS led me down a path first with a Mac Mini acting as a NAS, then running Audirvana on the MM and feeding the Hugo via a usb/spdif isolator/convertor (Gustard U12), which gave even better SQ than the ND5XS into Hugo (already better than ND5XS+XP5XS), and overall significantly cheaper than ND5XS+XP5XS and separate silent NAS, making it an excellent upgrade - if only I had known and gone there first!

Yes, when you get the seperate DACs, they are sooooo dependent on the transport... doing some evaluation here on transport sources in development and they have a bizarrely significant effect on downstream DACs like the Hugo in terms of balance and focus of the sound performance.

As I have said before with digital, the synchronous digital SPDIF / asynchronous USB source is probably almost if not as important as the DAC itself.

if using a Hugo, I think  you would be increasingly missing out on some of the Hugo experience by using lesser transports.. and I am reliably informed the NDX/XPS2DR improves this further over the NDX into the Hugo.. But I have decided to live without that..as said above that would be firmly into the territory of diminished returns.

HI Simon, you are right I tried a few weeks ago, my iPhone through USB into NDAC, and was quite taken aback with the poor result, and my friend Paristhea heard it too,  we were shocked. It sounded digital and quite bright.

Same song through optical was much better. All the digital glare was gone, and it sounded much superior.

Strange, really, but true.

However I find the Hugo and Mojo have no problems coping with iPhone feed....

Analogmusic, did you try the Mojo in your main set up? And if so, how did you connect it in? 

As I peruse the high end sites and reviews, I see the FGPA technology seems to be coming the future of DAC technology. From the ultra high end to the Hugo, off the shelf chips are seemingly bettered.

AussieSteve posted:

As I peruse the high end sites and reviews, I see the FGPA technology seems to be coming the future of DAC technology. From the ultra high end to the Hugo, off the shelf chips are seemingly bettered.

+1 ... Exactly what I mean't by my previous comment (unfortunately for which I was effectly berated), when I wrote;

"Good as the Naim may well be with the latest firmware, unfortunately, it can no longer compete with the Hugo"

As I understand it, the Naim DAC uses 'off the shelf chips', whereas the Chord Hugo uses the latest FGPA technology. Clearly the Naim can only be improved by Firmware upgrades to a certain level, since the DAC chips used will be its restricting factor.

Yes, the Naim DAC is absolutely excellent, but certainly not worth £1000 over the cost of a Hugo - unless money is no object to you - and you 'need' a black 'Naim sized' matching box for the rest of your system. 

Personally, I prefer to  spend the £1K on music!

Now, if Naim release a replacement DAC using FGPA (or better) ... that may be a different story. Let's wait and see 

Mayor West posted:

Analogmusic, did you try the Mojo in your main set up? And if so, how did you connect it in? 

I did, and I connected it via 3.5mm headphone to DIN cable, (available on ebay)

I still say the Hugo is better, not by that much, but enough to matter.

As for Mr Frog, well many years ago, the founder of naim said this "We found that digital filters in the early days weren't particularly accurate—nor are the cheaper modern ones. So we devised an active filter which bolts on the end of the digital filter and compensates for shortcomings in the digital filter—so the overall performance of the two together is a proper time-aligned filter."

and this

"Filters have fairly extreme current requirements. The minute you take the load off the internal supplies and you power that separately, you make a worthwhile improvement. People assume that the next DAC technology will make a huge improvement, but that's not necessarily true—in some ways it's the least important part of a CD player. Things like the environment in which the analog stage is working can be more important than the DAC you're using."

This is there on the stereophile review of the CD 3.5

One of my friends who is forum member heard 272 against my Hugo into 272, and preferred his 272.

Of course I prefer Hugo, but it is down to preference, not these night and day differences people talk about.

I am grateful to Chord for releasing such products like Hugo and Mojo, but Naim digital sources are still very musical and enjoyable.

Cheers for that Analog :-)