NDX and Chord Hugo

Gary my post wasn't addressed at you at all.

It was for Aleg

the challenge with building up impossible expectations, is that it may cause some people to purchase unwisely.

and they might be disappointed later on.

my expecation is that it should sound amazingly good with even a Mac mini, and exceed all my expecations with an NDS. But wait a sec.

is that the NDS or the Hugo that sounds so good.

Not having a go at you Gary, really , just putting all the hugo hype where it belongs.

Rob Watts is not Chord, he designed the unit for them. I don't know if Hugo sounds better or worse than the QBD, I've not compared them.

It would be a very strange way to do things. You usually find the top of the range technology trickles down to the lesser kit, not the other way round.

I cant comment if it happens with Naim, I've not heard every device at every price point.

Graeme

Analog 

How do you know which one is their best DAC. 

Graeme

Naim is very sensible about they way they price their kit.

You pay for more and get more.

so if I wanted more with Chord I would buy the QBD76. but wait it has less taps then the Hugo.

and this is all a game of how many taps. thanks to the spartan chip with is ULV at 0.8v.

I have tried three sources so far, and prefer my NDX so far. Want to try a mac mini but waiting for the new unit to come out. I wonder how an NDX feeding Hugo would have compared to the NDS/555/555 feeding Hugo.

Graeme

Or might not. Which is a good reason to continue the discussions before any more Naim Dac owning members foolishly make their own minds up having compared them in their own homes 

So no more controlling behaviour calling for threads to be locked or opinions censored, ok?

My issue is not what you described.

Please remember this is a Naim forum, and while it's ok to discuss other products, per the rules allowed, please remember to show some respect to the sponsor of this forum. 

I don't think Naim are that keen to lose all their potential DAC V1, NDAC or NDS customerson their own forum to the competition.

Hi Gary

Very interesting post. Presumably, you had a demo at a dealer who was demonstrating how good the Hugo is and how much difference the front end makes? 

If so, did you compare Hugo to the NDS DAC and does the dealer agree that the Hugo improves the NDS? 

Keith

I disagree, and you did ask (propose) for the thread to be locked. And more, "crap", "bollocks" language is hardly respectful of Naim's forum or membership. So please keep to the principles you espouse. I'm interested in the debate and want to hear more, I'm sure Naim are too, any manufacturer who sticks their head in the sand will be buried in it next week.

Gary's observation chimes with an earlier thread of mine regarding which streamer is feeding the dac. (Albeit the NDAC in my case but now using the NDX/Hugo).

G

Keith, that is something i cannot say for certain. Yes we compared the Hugo/NDS2x555 to the NDS2x555PS standalone. 

I know the dealer very well and i was not there for a Hugo demonstration, but for something entirely different. As such, and as he knows i'm not in the market for an NDS, it was more of another set of ears and an interesting comparison. From the very quick demonstration of the NDS and then NDS with Hugo, i'd say that i had a preference for the inclusion of the Hugo, as did my dealer, but it would be fair to say that both flavours were very interesting, and aspects of each could be said to excel. It is entirely possible that within another system and piece of music, a different conclusion could be drawn. On the day however i genuinely felt i was listening to a special product, and one that was capable of really showing the differences of the source, and this was where we spent most of the time analysing.

I certainly believe you but isn't this very disappointing ? It seems to imply that digitalized audio data cannot be reconstructed in a robust fashion. I would have expected that, assuming reasonable buffering capacity and knowledge of the original sample rate, a renderer should be able to reconstruct an analog signal independently of the details of the player's implementation. More precisely: I would have expected that two player versions that fulfill the same specification and differ only in implementation details would imply, downstream, possibly different recovery costs but finally the same analog signal.

Analog as....le I never said anything about NDS-s, so don't me into your shit either.

People short start to learn that digital audio is not just about the bits (the digital part) but also about timing and recreating timing aspects and also about analog aspects of processing and transfer as well.

it has become a bit of a naive utopia to believe that "bits are just bits and as long as the bit come across error-free all will be equal".

Thanks Gary.

A helpful reminder that the hardware upstream from the DAC also plays a key role. Perhaps the NDS + Hugo isn't as bonkers as it seems.

I think we have an awful lot to learn yet about how this works.

I'd love to see a comparison between all the Naim streamers feeding Hugo. 

Aleg, I'm not a believer in general and not a "bits are just bits and as long as the bit come across error-free all will be equal" believer in particular. I was yous wandering what you mean by "huge differences" and what logical consequences can we draw from such differences which, again, I am neither questioning nor positing.

I would be interested to hear a comparative of these 3:

1) Qute2 (as I own one) > Hugo (as it's supposed to be rather good) >  NAP 250.2

2) Devialet 120

3) SuperUniti

Now the 1st option would involve me buying Chord AND Naim, the second would not involve a Naim purchase, 3rd option I have. Recent posts may reveal a weakness in option 1) but may still outperform 2) 

Just as an example, different versions of the software did have an effect on clarity and microdetails, on the amount of HF 'hearable', on the length of decays, the control of bass (booming, blooming, micro details, control), forward vs recessed presentation. For some these may be subtle, I find them huge given width of these effects.

This program is programmed in assembler and changes were to do (a.o.) with choice of statements, aligning data with buffer sizes, aligning commands to  memory positions, amount of bytes to be transferred in one go with each statement.