Chord Electronics Hugo TT 2
The Chord Electronics Hugo TT 2 marries incisive detail and dynamic authority with a smooth, emotionally involving balance. The Ear admired its warmth, agility and exceptional quietness, while Passion for Sound found its holographic imaging and resolution exceptional. This is a supremely capable DAC, preamp and headphone hub for ambitious systems.
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Deliciously Crispy
Sound Quality
94/100
Build Quality
91/100
Features Connectivity
90/100
Value for Money
94/100
Pros
Highly resolved, spacious and precisely layered sound with convincing holographic imaging.
Combines fast, articulate dynamics with a smooth, slightly warm-neutral musical balance rather than sterility.
Powerful, versatile DAC/preamp/headphone amplifier with broad digital connectivity and the ability to drive demanding headphones.
Cons
Menu-based input switching and small display can make everyday ergonomics frustrating.
No front-mounted balanced headphone connection, requiring adapters or use of the rear XLR outputs for balanced headphone cables.
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What Reviewers Are Saying
SOUND QUALITY PERFORMANCE 94/100
Reviewers consistently describe the Hugo TT 2 as clean, fast, richly detailed and highly engaging rather than clinical. Its slightly warm-neutral balance, strong dynamic expression and expansive imaging make it suited to revealing headphones, active speakers and ambitious two-channel systems alike.
Tonal Balance and Musicality
95/100
The Ear finds a rare balance of insight, agility, warmth and palpability that connects emotionally with music, while Pursuit Perfect System calls the presentation smooth, easy and exceptionally well balanced. Convince Me Audio describes it as "seductive" and "soul grabbing," and reviewers repeatedly note that its clarity does not turn sharp, sterile or fatiguing.
Resolution and Detail
95/100
Detail retrieval is a recurring strength: Pursuit Perfect System praises its clarity, organisation and resolution, while What Hi-Fi? calls the presentation wonderfully detailed and expressive. More emphatically, Pursuit of the Perfect System describes an "ultra detailed" and "absolutely fantastic" layered soundstage, while Passion for Sound hears cleaner imaging, greater resolution and more fully resolved vocal textures than the Qutest.
Digital Performance
93/100
Reviewers hear very clean transients and impressive control on dense material, with Convince Me Audio praising its ability to separate every instrument in demanding recordings without overlap. Pursuit of the Perfect System specifically reports a lower noise floor with clearer, cleaner note starts and stops, while 13th Note characterises the sound as non-smearing, incisive and natural.
Assessments of Build Quality, Usability, and Overall Propositions.
Build Quality
91/100
The aluminium chassis, fit and finish, and connection quality receive consistently strong praise. What Hi-Fi? calls it solid and luxuriously finished, while Audiophilepure highlights superb craftsmanship; reviewers also appreciate the improved display legibility and carefully executed physical controls.
Features Connectivity
90/100
The Hugo TT 2 is unusually versatile, serving as a DAC, variable-output preamplifier, powerful headphone amplifier and, in appropriate setups, a compact speaker-driving solution. It offers dual optical and BNC-coaxial inputs, USB, aptX Bluetooth, RCA and XLR outputs, three headphone sockets, selectable filters, a format display, PCM 768kHz and DSD512 support; the main ergonomic omission noted is a balanced four-pin headphone output.
Value for Money
94/100
At roughly $4,100-$5,695, it is a substantial purchase, but reviewers repeatedly argue that its performance and breadth of use justify the outlay. What Hi-Fi? calls it potentially Chord's best-value DAC and says the price step over the Hugo 2 is easily justified, while The Ear doubts that a rival at the price matches its combined feature set and performance.
Reviews & Sources
Professional reviews and sources for this product's Watt'n Potatoes analysis.
Online Reviews & Mentions
YouTube Reviews
Forum Mentions
No forum mentions found yet
Specifications
- 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)
- 288 mW RMS 300Ω; 7.3 W RMS 8Ω
- Output power (balanced)
- 1.15 W RMS 300Ω; 18W RMS 8Ω
- Power consumption
- Full power – 30W Standby – 10 W
- Output impedance
- 0.042Ω
- Stereo separation
- 9 V RMS 300Ω -138dB
- Dimensions
- 5.2cm (H) 23.5cm (W) 23.8cm (D)
Manufacturer's Description — Chord Electronics
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 table top 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 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.
Hugo TT 2 can be upgraded at any time with the addition of M Scaler, our 1M-tap digital upscaling device.
‘Plays with Audirvāna’ hardware products are certified to play music from Audirvāna software over USB or network with the best level of integration and audio performance.
HUGO TT 2 – 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
Connectivity (output): Stereo XLR, Stereo RCA, 2x 6.5mm Headphone jack & 1x 3.5mm Headphone jack
Connectivity (digital output): 2x DX BNC (expansion outputs)
Weight: 2.53kg
PCM support: 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz, 192kHz, 352.8kHz, 384kHz, 717.6kHz, and 768kHz. 16 – 32bit
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
Key Features
Roon tested
Included Accessories
Hugo TT 2 Quickstart guide
Safety instructions
15V 4A Switching barrel type power supply
IR remote control
Type-A USB to Type-B USB cable
Optical cable
2x AAA batteries
Verified Dealers
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Authorized dealers for Chord Electronics Hugo TT 2
- Absoulute Audio plus Video — in-store — Aiken, South Carolina, United States (website)
- In Living Stereo — in-store — New York City, New York, United States (website)
- The Music Room — online and in-store — Erie, Colorado, United States (website)
- 110Hz — online and in-store — Kielce, Województwo świętokrzyskie, Poland (website)
- Accent On Music — in-store — Mount Kisco, New York, United States (website)
- Acoustic Designs Inc. — in-store — Scottsdale, Arizona, United States (website)
- Acoustic Sounds — online and in-store — Salina, Kansas, United States (website)
- Acoustic Streams — in-store — Lower Drift, England, United Kingdom (website)
- Acoustica — online and in-store — Chester, England, United Kingdom (website)
- Ajasom — online and in-store — Amadora, Lisboa, Portugal (website)
and 202 more verified dealers