Chord Hugo TT 2

Its pretty sweet.

It’s headamp output is pretty good, has a bit of class A warmth to it. TT2 as DAC into a SparkoS Aries, for example, yeilded a significant step up however. BUT its a lot more money, and the Aries is a class act.

Need help.

Got a TT2 second hand in great condition.

Most of the cables controller etc still original bags etc.

Sounds amazing and really enjoying the crossfeed function.

I can use all my headphones no issue. This includes focal Radiance, arya, th900.

But wen i plug in the lcd-5 i get terrible buzzing noise.

Goggled this and apparently very common wen TT2 paired with LCD-5?

Has anyone encountered this and resolved it?

Tried changing plug sockets used also tried unplugging usb.

The problem seems to be connected to the power not the usb.

Also if I touch the TT2 while I have lcd-5 on the buzzing disappears.

Reading online it seems grounding the TT2 is the answer.

What is the easiest way to do this?

Anyway hope someone can help.

2 Likes

I have fixed this by using the rca output at the back of the TT2.

Plug-in them in to another amp seems to have fixed this.

1 Like

I am finding I love how the TT2 sounds and especially enjoying XFEED from the TT2.

The only drawback is I get some strange niggles from the unit.

One was the ground issue that I have now resolved by connecting the RCA and the Balanced outs to other amps that I was intending to do anyway.

The other niggle that I can’t seem to resolve is sometimes the amp/dac starts making this super high frequency sound for like a split second ramdomly sometimes 3 or 4 times in one track.

This can be temporary fixed by turning the TT2 off and turning roon/hq player off and starting again but can start doing again after a few minutes.

I also get the impression it dont like switching accros from dac mode/ amp/hp mode as this seems to give me this fault quicker.

Also sometimes when scrolling websites, desktop etc I get artifacts in the sound like the TT2 is struggling to cope with the load??

No other dac/amp I own has ever given me this weird/quircky issues :face_with_diagonal_mouth: very confused with the TT behaviour.

My questions are:

Has anyone had any of these issues and found a fix?

Does anyone have good HQplayer settings for the TT2?

Should I be using DAC BITS 32?

Edit: The faults happen when using HQPLAYER but havent really tried without so will have to see if its just HQplayer related.

None of those issues sound like normal behavior for the Hugo TT2. I had one for years, and never ran into any of them.

My gut feel is that you’ve got a problem with the unit itself.

The first thing I would try is to remove HQPlayer from the chain entirely, and spend a day or so just running the unit off Roon using a basic, spec-compliant, USB cable. That’s the fastest way to see if you have an issue with the unit, or if there is something upstream that is causing your issues.

If you’re getting artifacts when performing operations on your PC, it’s NOT the Hugo TT 2 that’s struggling. It’ll play at max-bitrate and depth, 24-7, with no issues.

It may not be your PC either, but it suggests that either something is wrong with the TT 2’s isolation, or your USB output is getting modulated by PC activity somehow.

Chord DACs are supposed to mute if they encounter drop-outs or spurious data (bad checksums over USB), and not make odd sounds like some other DACs do.

Either way, that’s not in anyway normal behavior given my experience with the TT2.

1 Like

Yes it is all very strange. Never had issues like this before with dac/amps except from a slight issue with HQplayer doing weird things but not as noticible or as bad as the issues I have described from the TT2.

It may be something that I can fix but need more time investigating.

1 Like

Your description matches my experience with extremely cheap <$50 off brand DACs. Those products seem to lack any filtering and produce odd whines, chirps, and artifacts all the time. Perhaps something is inactive or broken in the filtering/output stage. I don’t know whether there are on/off settings your might test.

One thing to note is I accidentely pressed and held the menu button down for 10 seconds or so on my TT2 the first day I received it and the screen started displaying ramdom figures(like the matrix) that dont make sense.

I couldnt work out how to put it back to normal but ended up turning the unit off for a minute or so and it disapeared on reboot.

hanst happended since but though I would mention this.

Has anyone else ever done this? Thought I may have put the TT2 in to some strange mode but can’t find anything in the manual or online about it.

Check with Chord about any undocumented features or settings. Check with In-N-Out Burger about its secret menu…Animal style…mmmmm…

2 Likes

I have noticed that the TT2, when playing through Roon, will try to play a FLAC trac as DSD at times generally if I try to play the track too fast on startup of the unit and will produce that high pitch whine, I’m not 100% but I think it’s going through a startup process still and recognizing the file type.

@Torq or @TylersEclectic would probably know as long term TT2 owners.

Edit: I reached out to Chord this morning to ask about it, as well @Essentials for you.

I also found this thread on head-fi where Rob watts commented on the display and whining Hugo TT 2 by Chord Electronics - The Official Thread | Page 465 | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org

Replying to my comment above @Essentials I heard back from Chord already, for the issue I experience occasionally this is what they said, in regards to it playing in DSD which produced that whining in my case, which I wonder could be a similar issue with your HQ player and ROON.

"The TT2 will only play what it is told to, so this is likely an issue with Roon settings.

It might be worth reaching out to them for support, but I would start with the DSP settings."

I am going to dig into my ROON settings this week, let me know if you find anything in HQ player settings as well as I am curious.

Thanks :pray: for looking in to that much appreciated.

I think I have found a solution.

It was my nvidia graphic card driver causing a issue.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling drivers using specialist graphics driver uninstalling software etc and nothing seem to work.

After lots if searching on the web I found a forum that had the answer.

Currently can’t link it but will as soon as I get access to my pc.

Basically I downloaded a file that changes the priority of the graphic driver from high to low and this seems to have fix my random noises I was getting using HQPLAYER with TT2.

Hope this helps anyone else with similar issue.

Edit: This is the link that helped me
Nvidia Driver, no latency anymore? | VI-CONTROL

1 Like

This seems like so much work. I remember when you would just turn on your Japanese transistor radio and get music. Or put a stack of discs on the record changer.

1 Like

Just a quick comment, I think I have heard/read that for Chord stuff you shouldn’t use oversampling (or HQplayer), I think because Chord always oversamples and does its own thing behind the scenes.

Almost all DACs will be oversampling.
HQPlayer certainly benefits Chord DACs less than others, as they already have very good oversampling so the room for improvement is much smaller.
BUT, objectively speaking, and in my opinion subjectively, HQPlayer still brings a benefit.

Thank you for the clarification @GoldenSound I was under the impression that it is only beneficial with NOS dacs.

Love your reviews by the way.

I am interested in what settings you recommend for HQPLAYER with TT2 or Chord for PCM.#

Specifically DAC BITS.

Better oversampling can be beneficial to any DAC so long as the oversampling you’re doing is better than the DAC’s internal one.

Hence why the MScaler’s 1 million taps still provides an improvement over the DAVE’s own 164,000 taps.

The main thing is that the ‘dac bits’ setting will make more of a difference to, and full benefit of the improved noise-shaping will only be available on a NOS DAC.

This is because most DACs have their own internal dithering which will effectively ‘over-write’ so to speak a lot of the work done by HQPlayer’s noise shaper. Hence the DAC bits setting makes less difference.

Still ideal to set it to the correct value if you can, but less of a worry. I just set it to 19 for 95% of DACs and leave it there

2 Likes

If the issue persists, also try setting the rate in HQPlayer to 705k instead of 768k. I remember reading that solved the same problem for other folks with Chord DACs.

2 Likes

Thought I would update my thoughts of the TT2.

After quite some time of extensive listening sessions with LCD-5 and Radiance mainly as my headphones I am a quite disappointed from a technical side from the TT2.
I have a couple of DAC that I am currently comparing to (X26Pro, Holo Spring 3 KTE)
And currently only one SS Amp to compare to (Ferrum Oor)

The HOLO Spring 3 KTE and Gustard X26PRO to my hears they sound very similar from a technical perspective only the Holo Spring being slightly better technically.

The amp in the TT2 is then one I feel has the biggest drawback. I feel I get more bass/impact from the TT2 (that I enjoy a lot), and this is its biggest strength and it powers everything with ease.My favorite combo is the Arya v1 with the TT2.
BUT soundstage size and separation from the TT2 amp is very poor compared to Ferrum Oor+Hypsos and it feels more like a wall of sound instead of any sort of 3d feel like the Oor.
The Ferrum seems to give this big soundstage and much better separations that feels very natural and gets me more involved and connected to my music.
So, from a technical side the TT2 Amp seems to be lacking for me.
A few more experienced members of this forum have commented about the Ferrum Oor claiming it is NOT a good amp for low impedance headphones (that includes the lcd-5) and the TT2 amps is much better suited, but I am really struggling to understand how they are getting this impression.
When I just feed the DAC side of the TT2 in to the Ferrum it sounds much more technical and very closely matched to how the Gustard X26Pro sounds connected to the same amp.
Only the Holo Spring 3 sounding marginally technically better in my opinion and sounding more “natural” is the word a lot of people use, and I agree with this term.

What are other people’s thoughts on the TT2 amp and how it performs technically with low impedance headphones compared to other amps.

1 Like