The Chord 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 Chord Hugo TT and double that of the multi-award-winning Hugo 2. The Chord 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. 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. 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 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 jacks, 1x 3.5mm headphone jack Connectivity (Digital Output): 2x DX BNC (expansion outputs) Weight: 2.53 kg PCM Support: 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz, 176.4 kHz, 192 kHz, 358.8 kHz, 384 kHz, 705.6 kHz, 768 kHz 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: 127 dB ‘A’ weighted Noise: 4 µV ‘A’ weighted (high gain), 1.7 µV ‘A’ weighted (low gain), 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; 18 W RMS 8Ω Output Impedance: 0.042 Ω Stereo Separation: 9 V RMS 300Ω -138 dB Dimensions: 235 × 223 × 46 mm
