Chord - Hugo TT 2
DAC, Preamplifier & Headphone Amplifier
Hugo TT 2 has been radically redesigned from the ground up, not only with beautiful new casework by Chief Designer, John Franks, but with 5x the processing power of the original Hugo TT and double that of the multi-award-winning Hugo 2. Hugo TT 2 distils over 20 years of digital development by Rob Watts and takes advantage of the very latest technology.
As expected, it delivers radically improved technical specifications and measurements across the board and exhibits drastic sonic benefits over its predecessor with 768kHz PCM and DSD 512 playback. Hugo TT 2 sets a new benchmark in table top audio, only being eclipsed by DAVE.
Delving deeper, in comparison to the 256-tap filters that traditional chip DACs may run at, Hugo TT 2’s beating heart is a powerful Xilinx Artix 7 FPGA, custom-coded by Chord Electronics’ Rob Watts, with 86x 208MHz cores running in parallel to create an advanced 16FS WTA 1 filter with 98,304-taps. Double that of its multi-award winning transportable brother, Hugo 2 (49,152). Hugo TT 2 also benefits from an upgrade from a 4-element design to a 10-element design, which works in harmony with the radically upgraded FPGA and code to deliver unrivalled audio.
A brand new high-power discreet output stage coupled with second-order noise-shaping integrated between the DAC output and filter is also employed to massively reduce distortion. Further improvements have also been made to the power delivery. Hugo TT 2 eschews the Li-Po battery power supply of the original and ushers in six super capacitors capable of delivering huge, linear dynamic currents when the music demands it with peak output of 5A, 9.3V RMS.
Hugo TT 2 also brings home the much loved four-stage user-selectable filter controls introduced with Hugo 2 and retains the three-stage user-selectable digital crossfeed function for headphone users who want to improve the perception of depth, similar to that of speakers.
Materials: Precision machined aluminium casing with steel ball bearing buttons, gloss black acrylic signal window, glass viewing portal, and dot matrix display. Available in a choice of two colours – silver, and satin black
Tap length filter: 98,304-tap 16FS WTA 1 – 10 element design
Connectivity (input): 1x USB Type-B, 2x Coax BNC, 2x Optical & Bluetooth
Connectivity (output): Stereo XLR, Stereo RCA, 2x 6.5mm Headphone jack & 1x 3.5mm Headphone jack
Connectivity (digital output): 2x DX BNC (expansion outputs)
Weight: 2.53kg
PCM support: 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz, 192kHz, 358.8kHz, 384kHz, 705.6 and 768kHz
DSD support: DoP DSD 64 to DSD 512 – native via Windows
Volume control: Digital
Line-level mode: Activated within the menu
Driver support: Driverless with Mac OS X and Linux, driver required for Windows OS
Dynamic range: 127dB ‘A’ weighted
Noise: 4 uV ‘A’ weighted (high gain), 1.7 uV ‘A’ weighted (low gain) with no measurable noise floor modulation
Distortion: 0.00008% @ 2.5 V 300Ω; 0.00016% @ 6 W 8Ω
Output power (unbalanced): (@1% THD) 288 mW RMS 300Ω; 7.3 W RMS 8Ω
Output power (balanced): (@1% THD) 1.15 W RMS 300Ω; 18W RMS 8Ω
Output impedance: 0.042Ω
Stereo separation: 9 V RMS 300Ω -138dB
Dimensions: 235mm x 223mm x 46mm
