Chord Electronics Hugo TT 2

Chord Electronics Hugo TT 2

Developed from the multi-award-winning transportable Hugo 2, the Hugo TT 2 is bigger, better and more advanced in every way. TT 2 sets a new benchmark for desktop DACs, eclipsed only by the flagship DAVE.

Hugo TT 2 has been radically redesigned from the beginning, not only with beautiful new housing by lead designer, John Franks, but also with 5x the processing power of the original Hugo TT and double that of the multi-award winning Hugo 2. Hugo TT 2 distills over 20 years of digital development by Rob Watts and utilizes the very latest technology.

As expected, it delivers radically improved technical specifications and measurements across the board and shows drastic sonic advantages over its predecessor with 768 kHz PCM and DSD 512 playback. Hugo TT 2 sets a new benchmark in the desktop field, eclipsed only by DAVE.

Digging deeper, compared to the 256-tap filters on which traditional chip DACs can run, the beating heart of Hugo TT 2 is a powerful Xilinx Artix 7 FPGA, custom coded by Rob Watts of Chord Electronics, 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 Hugo 2 portable brother (49,152). Hugo TT 2 also benefits from an upgrade from a 4-element design to a 10-element design that works in harmony with the radically improved FPGA and code to deliver unparalleled audio.

A brand new high-performance discrete output stage combined with second-order noise shaping integrated between the DAC output and the filter is also used to significantly reduce distortion. Further improvements in power delivery have also been made. 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 a peak power output of 5A, 9.3V RMS.

Hugo TT 2 also brings the beloved four-stage, user-selectable filter controls introduced with Hugo 2 and retains the three-stage user-selectable digital crossfeed feature for headphone users looking to improve the perception of depth similar to speakers.

Hugo TT 2 can be upgraded at any time with the addition of M Scaler, the1M-tap digital upscaling device.