Review: Chord Hugo TT2 DAC — high resolution extravaganza

The updated Chord Hugo TT2 digital-to-analog converter inherits the features of its predecessors but has received a noticeably more powerful decoding system (five times more than the original Hugo and twice as powerful as Hugo 2). Enclosed in a stylish compact case by John Franks made of milled aluminum, the device turned out to be very impressive on our test bench - throughout the review stage, we did not cease to be amazed by the capabilities of this little one.

Design

The engine of the Chord Hugo TT2 is a Xilinx Artix 7 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) custom coded by Rob Watts – it consists of 86 cores, each running in parallel at 208 MHz, and the overall system design is now based on ten elements. As result, the time reconstruction filter, 16FS WTA 1, operates with 16x oversampling and an accuracy of 98,304 weighting coefficients (taps). Disclaimer - Hugo 2 operated with 49,152 taps.

Technology

The Chord Hugo TT2 uses a brand-new discrete output stage with second-order noise-shaping integrated between the DAC output and filter, which together with a powerful FPGA provides impressive technical characteristics - distortion does not exceed 0.00008%, channel separation reaches 138 dB and a dynamic range is 127 dB. The system is upgradeable using an external proprietary scaler Hugo M Scaler (filtering with a one million weighting taps).

The model is equipped with High End level preamplifier and headphone amplifier sections – the output power reaches 288 mW at 300 Ohm or 7.1 V at 8 Ohm with unbalanced connection and reaches 1.15 V at 300 Ohm and 18 V at 8 Ohm with a balanced connection (output impedance - 0.042 Ohm). The DAC is powered by an external Li-Po battery power supply at 5A, 9.3V RMS using six super capacitors.

Chord Hugo TT2 offers a full set of interfaces: USB Type-B, a pair of coaxial BNC-based connectors, a pair of optical interfaces and a Bluetooth AptX module. The outputs here include XLR, RCA, a pair of 6.5 mm jacks for connecting headphones and one 3.5 mm minijack, as well as two DX BNC (they are reserved for the future). The device can receive PCM signals with parameters up to 32 bit / 768 kHz, DSD - up to DoP 512 or pure DSD512 (only in the Windows environment).

Test system

The device is very sensitive to warming up and full conclusions about its sound quality should be made no earlier than after 100 hours of operation. During testing, a system with a Roon ROCK server, a CH Precision L1 preamplifier, a Gryphon Mephisto power amplifier and Wilson Audio Sasha DAW acoustic systems was used).

Listening

The Chord Hugo TT2 delivers a silky and very agile sound on such complex material as Maria Joao Pires's Chopin - The Nocturnes on Deutsche Grammophon - we were particularly impressed by the analog nature of the reproduction and the timbral precision that the device provided. This allowed us to fully immerse ourselves in the musical canvas, with no inclinations to the microdynamics, again.

Switching to Infected Mushroom - Vicious Delicious demonstrated excellent rhythmic characteristics. Although in terms of the length of low-frequency notes and bass resolution, the device did not offer a flurry of detail, as devices with a five times higher price tag do, the Chord Hugo TT2 was able to draw all the musical plans of the most complex compositions without a hint of "mush".

Finally, Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 - From the New World performed by the Chord Hugo TT2 provided us with a mercury delivery with amazing plasticity and an absolutely non-fatiguing sound character. The textural richness of the sound was amazing.

Conclusion

In its price range and even with a "step up", the Chord Hugo TT2 guarantees to satisfy almost all audiophile desires - our applause for a truly high-tech digital-to-analog converter.