Hugo TT 2 DAC & 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 tabletop 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 supercapacitors 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.

Specifications

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)

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

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

Weight: 2.53kg