Chord Hugo ?

I know what you mean, the head-fi community is quite active. One problem here that will probably prohibit the Chord Hugo from penetrating the market too much is that it is simply not big enough nor "audiophile" enough. It doesn't benefit from an expensive power cord, its just simply fabulous. Its a game changer. Fr instance, I see all the time old dacs trade hands here for multiples of the cost of the new Hugo and I just shake my head in disbelief. A few of the dacs I've owned: Benchmark, McIntosh, Mytek, Playback, Audio Research, Naim, LM, Cary and while they are all excellent and enjoyable the Chord is pretty special.

The people in our hobby have traditionally been reluctant to adopt products that have have small or outside the box/unconventional form factors. Maybe some of the newer entrants to our hobby are less wed to the milled aluminum remote control as a critical arbiter of quality? Maybe the 100 pound slabs of milled aluminum casework are no longer necessary for great sound? What is being done inside the Hugo was not possible even a few years ago. The FGPA would have, according to the designer, required a power supply weighing over 100 pounds to power the processing requirements of the previous generation FGPA technology. We will see what the future holds but the Hugo is the real deal.

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.