Chord Hugo - seems to make no difference to my Sonos, caspian, D7

tommyt

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Hi all,

I just today bought a Chord Hugo to see if it would improve the quality of my Sonos (which I've thought to be generally pretty good but sometimes a bit veiled) and I've been listening to a range of music tonight comparing the output straight from my Sonos to that coming from the Hugo and I haven't heard any difference at all.

System consists of Sonos Connect, Roksan Caspian M2 amp, Spendor D7s with cambridge audio series 500 interconnects, vandamme 75ohm coax cable and atlas hyper 3 speaker cables.

I've been listening at low volume levels to a selection of Nina simone, the xx, kings of convenience, talking heads, bastille, jungle, ben howard, Goldfrapp All streamed via Qobuz at 44/16 Flac, except the Goldfrap which was flac streamed from a mac mini.

I set the Hugo up about 5 hours ago, turned it on, plugged it in, turned off the crosstalk, volume matched it with straight Sonos signal as best I could and left a radio station signal running through it for 5 hours.

I've tried flipping mid song and listening to whole songs and then switching and repeating the song. I did a similar experiment comparing my roksan with my harmon kardon AVR630 a few weeks ago and found noticeable differences when repeating the same song from the beginning. I suspect switching mid song is harder to tell.

The Roksan felt noticeably more open and had better control on complicated passages. But I really can't spot anything different with the Hugo in the chain.

Do you think it needs running in time? From what I've read and heard about the product I was expecting it to be at least an noticeable difference if only subtle in the scheme of things.

Anybody else have the same experience as me?

A few months ago I tried a Rega Dac with same results. Am I cloth eared?

Is my system not good enough to reveal the differences?

Any advice welcome, I'm keen to at least learn to recognise the differences even if I decide it's ultimately not worth the additional cost.

Thanks, Tom
 

iQ Speakers

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Hi Tom I had the same experience with an Arcam irdac. I have recently bought the stream magic to replace my Sonos ZP80 and again I did what you are doing drove me mad, in the I just enjoyed the music more with the SM. Evidently modding the Sonos brings improvements to external DAC's Matt49 has several!
 
That is one hell of an outlay just to stream cd quality files.

Could it be the very nature of these files that is the reason for the apparent lack of sound quality?

Should add, I don't own a Hugo yet and neither do I own a Sonus System but do have a lot of experience with DACs in general, predominantly with hiRes files though.

I'm not so sure about 'running in time' for what is essentially solid-state electronics and have not found it applies to DACs in my experience, however I do see some reviews that says there can be an improvement after many more hours than you seem to have used your Hugo for. I do tend to take these with a pinch of salt as the timescale involved means you would have little chance of actually remembering what the initial listening sounded like. Most people I know cannot accurately remember the difference over a few minutes in an A versus B blind audition.

Personally I think it is purely a sales pitch as in - 'Don't like it? Don't worry it will impove with age'. This might work with a fine wine but not, I fear, with solid-state electronics.
 

Native_bon

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IF you dnt hear a difference then there is none to be heard. Dnt fall into the trap of burn in time. I tried the irdac & made no difference as well. Others may think different but I always trust my ears.
 

Frank Harvey

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My Sonos ZP90 (Connect) is connected to my Audiolab 8200AP pre/processor, and is generally used to find new music and for background music via Napster, which streams at 128kbps. Electronic music doesn't sound too bad, but indie/rock tends to suffer at this sort of bit rate.

I borrowed a Chord Qute HD earlier this year just to see what it was like. Comparing this Chord DAC to the DAC in the 8200AP was like comparing MP3 to CD quality files. I was stunned by the fact that whatever I played through the Qute no longer sounded restrained and splashy, but was now delicate and detailed, sounding more like DC quality.

If your system isn't conveying the difference between the DAC in the Sonos and the DAC in the Hugo, then something is wrong somewhere. Try music that generally sounds muddled or less than perfect - differences are harder to detect in well recorded music.
 

The_Lhc

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David@FrankHarvey said:
My Sonos ZP90 (Connect) is connected to my Audiolab 8200AP pre/processor, and is generally used to find new music and for background music via Napster, which streams at 128kbps. Electronic music doesn't sound too bad, but indie/rock tends to suffer at this sort of bit rate.

I borrowed a Chord Qute HD earlier this year just to see what it was like. Comparing this Chord DAC to the DAC in the 8200AP was like comparing MP3 to CD quality files. I was stunned by the fact that whatever I played through the Qute no longer sounded restrained and splashy, but was now delicate and detailed, sounding more like DC quality.

If your system isn't conveying the difference between the DAC in the Sonos and the DAC in the Hugo, then something is wrong somewhere. Try music that generally sounds muddled or less than perfect - differences are harder to detect in well recorded music.

As he said, he's listening to FLAC, should be more than good enough in that case.
 

Frank Harvey

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The_Lhc said:
As he said, he's listening to FLAC, should be more than good enough in that case.
I was just passing on my experience using a lesser quality file type. In this case, the file type is irrelevant, but what is relevant is why he's not hearing a difference.
 

tommyt

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Last night and today I plugged the Hugo into a Mac-mini as several people commented elsewhere that the Sonos feeding the Hugo was the weak link and the USB was noticeably better than spdif. However, after several listening sessions I chose to return it as I really couldn't detect any perceptible differences. Turns out I wasn't the first to return it on the grounds of it making no disernible difference. There were times I thought I could spot some improvements going from Sonos direct vs Mac-mini+Hugo, slightly better separation, slighly more definition but returning to the Sonos yeilded the same effect. I think it was just a case of the more I listened to the song the more I noticed about the material, rather than the equipment. I tried repeating whole songs and sections of songs, analysing the details and just listening to the music and never once thought I preferred one option over the other. The Sonos still sounds very good on it's own so I shall continue to enjoy it until I get the bug to try some other options :)
 

Porknocker

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I don't have a Sonos myself but one of my neighbours has. I tried it out with my own DAC, which is the new Caiman MKII, becaus emy neighbour wanted to find out as well if he could get more out of his Sonos. For music up to 48kHz the Sonos showed foot tapping marked improvements with the Caiman. Veiled sounds were now far cleaner so to speak. But above 48kHz we couldn't hear a difference. Then my neighbour told me that his Sonos is only specced for up to 48kHz music. I don't know how much of that is true though. But it did sound like if his Sonos is downsampling anything above 48kHz. This is pure guesswork on my part though so don't take it as fact.
 

cheeseboy

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David@FrankHarvey said:
If your system isn't conveying the difference between the DAC in the Sonos and the DAC in the Hugo, then something is wrong somewhere. Try music that generally sounds muddled or less than perfect - differences are harder to detect in well recorded music.

not necessarily, maybe there is just very little difference to be heard. It's a bit of sweeping statement to say something *must* be wrong, when we don't even know the room layout, speaker positioning etc.
 

relocated

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David@FrankHarvey said:
The_Lhc said:
As he said, he's listening to FLAC, should be more than good enough in that case.
I was just passing on my experience using a lesser quality file type. In this case, the file type is irrelevant, but what is relevant is why he's not hearing a difference.

I wonder if you sell the Hugo, David? It strikes me that this would be quite important. Probably more important than you recalling a positive experience when using the equipment in a different scenario to the OP.
 

The_Lhc

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Porknocker said:
I don't have a Sonos myself but one of my neighbours has. I tried it out with my own DAC, which is the new Caiman MKII, becaus emy neighbour wanted to find out as well if he could get more out of his Sonos. For music up to 48kHz the Sonos showed foot tapping marked improvements with the Caiman. Veiled sounds were now far cleaner so to speak. But above 48kHz we couldn't hear a difference. Then my neighbour told me that his Sonos is only specced for up to 48kHz music. I don't know how much of that is true though. But it did sound like if his Sonos is downsampling anything above 48kHz. This is pure guesswork on my part though so don't take it as fact.

One or both of you was doing something VERY wrong, Sonos won't even play files over 16bit/48kHz, so the only thing you would have heard was silence.
 

SteveR750

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When I did a major DAC search a couple of years or so ago, I concluded that as good as the Qute was, it simply wasn't worth the additional cost over my dacmagic +. In reality, there really isn't a huge difference between a decent portable DAC such as the Fiio range and a mid priced hi fi mains powered box. The money is better spent elsewhere IMO
 

iQ Speakers

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I to tried a Arcam IrDac with no affect, The Stream Magic did make a good difference fuller, tighter more defined. They have a custom chip in and a big one! that upsamples files and a pretty good analouge output stage. I also copied my post to your other thread.

I recently tried Tidal whilst sounding marginly better throught the Sonos than Spotify lots of albums I wanted to compare were missing. Niether sounded as good as Spotify through the Stream Magic 6 (which bizarly i have now sold!) I have also tried Hi Res stuff through the Stream Magic and IMO is just not worth the cost pain.
 

Frank Harvey

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relocated said:
I wonder if you sell the Hugo, David? It strikes me that this would be quite important. Probably more important than you recalling a positive experience when using the equipment in a different scenario to the OP.
Yes, we do, as we have a Chord account, which is how I was able to take a Qute HD home and hear an appreciable difference compared to the DAC in my 8200AP (and that DAC is better than the DAC in a Connect).
 

SteveR750

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This Hugo thing is portable. Now that very interesting. The dac magic + fits brilliantly in my system, but it's a bit lacking in cohesion and control over the headphone amp. I need something to do justice to these DT880s that Joel has just sold me.
 

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