Chord Hugo ?

Dear RGS

I you can hold on for a few days I can let you know.

My shop Audio Doctor in NJ just signed on to sell the Hugo,
and we do sell the Auralic Vega, M2 Tech, Naim, Amr, Meitner, Emm Labs, Esoteric, Aqua Hifi, NAD, Lumin and many others.

We ordered the Hugo for both its dac and its headhphone capability, we will be putting our Hugo on line in the next few days so I can easily answer your question.

Better than a Lampi L7??/ Who said so? I never saw that on the thread. AL owns the Hugo and rates it below the Direct Stream which is below the LAMPI L5!

I have heard favourable comparisons of the L7 to Trinity!

Hugo has great tech, but so-so implementation. Battery limits the dynamics.
When the Desktop Hugo comes out with waaay more taps, then we can start talking. It is reportedly a bit thin sounding now. Heck one hugo owner says he prefers his Qute with a Teddy Pardo PSU.

Wisnon - your summary does an injustice the overwhelming number of positive comments on the Head HiFi thread. The "thin" and "like my Qute better" comments are rare, maybe 1 per each of those. Remember, this is a $2,400 DAC. A Lampi L5 with DSD is 3 times that. Is it the best DAC out there? Probably not. But by most accounts it is remarkable at its price and competes well with DACs at 3 times its price.

It does not seem like Chord is going to do a Qute like packaging of the Hugo technology. I believe the next version is going to be a lot higher price.

The Hugo does both 64 and 128 DSD and by most reports it sounds very good. For those interested, it does convert DSD to PCM. It needs to do that because of how it implements volume and headphone crossfeed. Rob Woods has explained this is detail on the Head HiFi thread.