CHORD Hugo TT 2 Argent silver

THE NEXT GENERATION OF TABLETOP DACS

The Chord Electronics Hugo TT2 DAC has been radically redesigned from the ground up. It features beautiful new casework by Chief Designer, John Franks, as well as 5 times the processing power of the original Hugo TT — double that of the multi-award-winning Hugo 2. Hugo TT 2 includes 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. This powerhouse DAC supports most headphones, including harder to drive ones like the Sennheiser HD800S and most planar magnetic headphones, such as the Audeze LCD-3 and LCD-4.

Compared to the 256-tap filters of traditional chip DACs, Hugo TT 2 is an infinitely more 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. That doubles the power of its multi-award winning transportable brother, Hugo 2 (49,152). Hugo TT 2 also upgrades from a 4-element design to a 10-element design, which works in harmony with the radically upgraded FPGA and code to deliver unrivaled audio.

A brand-new, high-powered discrete output stage coupled with second-order noise-shaping integration between the DAC output and filter massively reduce distortion. Further improvements have also been made to the power delivery. Chord Electronics Hugo TT2 DAC 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 a peak output of 5A, 9.3V RMS.

Hugo TT 2 also brings home the beloved 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.

Chord Electronics

Engineering without limits means uncompromising standards for Chord Electronics. The British professional audio company took flight in 1989 when founder and Chief Engineer John Franks found inspiration in his junior engineer job at an avionics company. Aviation electronics demands reliability, performance, and superior attention to detail. That’s exactly what Franks brings to Chord's digital products. His comprehensive knowledge of power supply design and an ethos of doing things ‘right’ regardless of cost and effort sets Chord apart from competitors.  This is reflected in the new and innovative Hugo M Scaler upscaling component.

The BBC received the first Chord amplifiers, followed by world-leading artists and studios, including Abbey Road, Sony Music (New York), and The Royal Opera House. Chord’s audio prowess generated demand for a domestic range. This audiophile-approved range encompasses the design, engineering and build standards the finest professional equipment requires. Today, Chord applies proprietary technologies to all of its British-made products. As a result, you can expect studio-grade audio performance across the entire Chord range encompassing amplifiers, DACs and music streamers from the Mojo 2 to the DAVE DAC.