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Chord unveils new £3,996 Hugo TT 2 DAC and headphone amp combo

By Kenny Yeo - on 21 May 2018, 9:47am

Chord unveils new £3,996 Hugo TT 2 DAC and headphone amp combo

(Image source: Chord)

Chord unveiled its new Hugo TT 2 DAC and headphone amplifier combo at the recently concluded Munich High-End 2018.

For those not familiar with Chord’s offerings, ‘TT’ stands for ‘table top.’ So yes, the Hugo TT 2 is essentially the desktop-bound of the more portable Hugo 2 DAC and headhpone amp.

The highlight here is the DAC chip, which is based on the new Xilinx Artix 7 FPGA chip. According to Chord’s digital guru, Rob Watts, it has five times the processing power of the model it replaces.

This has allowed Chord to fit within the Hugo TT 2 a digital filter with 98,304 taps - double that of the transportable Hugo 2. In plain speak, the greater the number of taps the more faithful the reconstructed analog signal. There is also a four-stage digital filter to allow users to slightly alter the sound to their preference.

The Hugo TT 2 will support PCM playback up to 768kHz and DSD up to 512. Digital inputs include USB, two optical TOSLINK, and two optical coaxial. It even supports Bluetooth (aptX) streaming.

The other big change is the battery, or rather the lack of it. The first generation Hugo TT had a built-in battery. In the new model, Chord has eschewed the battery in place of supercapacitors. This gives it the capability to deliver greater power to drive headphones.

(Image source: Chord)

Output power through the balanced headphone connection is rated at a whopping 18W into 8 ohms and 1.15W into 300 ohms. Over the single-ended output, expect to get 7.3W into 8 ohms and 288mW into 300 ohms. This allows the Hugo TT 2 to confidently drive any non-electrostatic headphone in the market today.

Headphone users can also tweak the sound slightly with a built-in three-stage digital crossfeed function.

The Chord Hugo TT 2 is priced at £3,996 (~S$7,247) and will be available locally later this year around September. Local pricing has yet to be determined so stay tuned.

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