ЦАПы — Chord Hugo TT2

The Hugo TT 2 is a desktop DAC, preamplifier and headphone amplifier from Chord Electronics of Kent, England, sitting above the portable Hugo 2 and below the DAVE in the brand's converter range. It is finished in silver or satin black, and the casework combines machined aluminium, steel buttons, an acrylic window, a glass portal and a dot matrix display.

Key specs that matter

Inside, a Xilinx Artix 7 FPGA with 86 parallel 208 MHz cores executes a 98,304-tap 16FS WTA 1 filter written by Rob Watts, double the tap count of the Hugo 2. PCM is accepted from 44.1 kHz up to 768 kHz at 16 to 32 bit, and DSD from DSD64 over DoP up to native DSD512 on Windows. Performance figures from Chord include a dynamic range of 127 dB A-weighted, distortion of 0.00008% at 2.5 V into 300 ohm and 0.00016% at 6 W into 8 ohm, stereo separation of -138 dB and an output impedance of 0.042 ohm. Balanced output reaches 18 W RMS into 8 ohm and 1.15 W into 300 ohm, while the unbalanced side gives 7.3 W and 288 mW into the same loads. The unit measures 5.2 x 23.5 x 23.8 cm and weighs 2.53 kg.

Engineering and use context

Digital inputs cover one USB Type-B, a pair of BNC coaxial sockets and a pair of optical inputs. Outputs include stereo XLR and RCA, two 6.5 mm headphone jacks, one 3.5 mm jack and two DX BNC expansion outputs intended for the Hugo M Scaler upsampler. The pulse array output stage moved from a 4-element to a 10-element design. Power comes from a 15 V 4 A external switching supply feeding six super capacitors that can deliver 5 A peaks, and consumption is 30 W at full output and 10 W in standby. Users can choose among four filter settings, three levels of digital crossfeed for headphone listening, a digital volume control or a fixed line level mode. Noise is rated at 4 microvolts in high gain and 1.7 microvolts in low gain, both A-weighted. The warranty period stated by Chord is three years, and the M Scaler can be stacked on top of the TT 2 because both share the same footprint.

Pairing

Because its balanced stage produces watts rather than milliwatts, the TT 2 can drive demanding headphones directly and can also run efficient loudspeakers in a small room of about 20 m2 without a separate amplifier. In a larger system its variable XLR output can feed a power amplifier directly, removing the need for a preamplifier.

Alternatives

The Chord DAVE is the brand's higher-tier DAC in the same desktop category.