Solid advice, but for my current tube amp on order and that I still have a shred of shame that would prevent me from ordering another (not yet).
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Good insights. To level set, it might be helpful to distinguish between DAC only performance vs AIO performance.
@Sturosen I came across this take: https://www.13thnote.net/2019/06/02/chord-electronics-best-dac/.
I own a Qutest. I donāt need a portable and likely wouldnāt extensively use the Chord amp section in a non-portable environment.
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Iāve only heard them through brief auditions in less-than-ideal conditions so Iām afraid I canāt offer an opinion; my queries for you in my earlier post were meant in general terms and not as comments on the Chord gear specifically. Sorry for the empty reply here; Iām posting just so you know Iām not ignoring your reply!
What I will say is that, yes, there are a bunch of wonderful jazz recordings from the late 50s through early 60s. It was an incredibly innovative and rich moment in jazz history, I suppose - thereās so much to discover!
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I recently came across the micro label āReservoir Recordsā. Very well recorded jazz albums, available on streaming. You might want to sort through a few of them. The Hod OāBrien live sets are very good.
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Thanks for everyoneās feedback/advice re: the Chord Hugo 2TT. Hereās how Iād like to fully maximize my use of this - please let me know if this makes sense.
Letās suppose, for this discussion, that I have a new Parasound P6 preamplifier (on its way to me) and letās assume that I would prefer to feed the Chord DAC into it rather than take advantage of the P6ās own DAC. I donāt know that thatās the case, but Iām just spinning out a hypothetical.
And letās say I get the Hugo2TT for my desktop/headphone set up.
Can I run the following:
Roon Nucleus to TT2 via USB, which will set up my TT2 as my headphone amp/DAC. But then, via an RCA switch box (Schiit SYS), also feed the TT2 DAC function, via RCA into (a) my adjacent tube amp; and (b) my Parasound P6.
The Parasound and Nucleus are on the other side of a relatively small room, so itād be a long USB cable from the Nucleus (that works just fine with my current gear) and a long RCA pair into the P6.
What Iām looking for is the ability to maximize my investment in the Hugo TT2, in the event I prefer the Hugoās DAC to the Parasoundās. (There are a host of reasons Iāll want the P6 even if I donāt use its DAC).
Will that work? Does it make sense?
Thanks!
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or, RCA out of TT2 to tube amp, balanced out of TT2 to Parasound.
But, yes, what you are saying should work fine.
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That would require very long XLR cables, but might be preferable - thanks!
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If you have to go long, go XLR.
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And I can get long enough XLR to do the job. Any brand name recommendations for cables?
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Blue Jeans: custom made, great service, good price,
Worlds Best Cables on Amazon - great price, and they call out what components they are suing for wire and connectors.
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@mfadioās advice is excellent: if youāre going long, do it with XLR instead of USB or RCA.
I use a lot of Blue Jeans cables, but my XLR cables happen to be Pangea. Not saying theyāre better than Blue Jeans, just giving you another alternative to think about. I bought mine using Amazon credit, and liked them enough to use Pangea for all my XLR cabling for consistency.
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I had my eye on 7.5 meter Pangea - good to know!
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@Sturosen , I donāt think this is helpful for your particular scenario, but Iāll throw it out in case it gives you some ideas.
I just put together an Intel NUC, which Iām using as a Roon core. Iām waiting for a PI2AES to arrive, but my plan is to use a long ethernet cable connecting my PI2AES to my network switch, and a short cable between the PI2AES and my DAC. My NUC will only be connected to the switch.
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Just FYI, using a balanced cable to reduce noise on long runs only applies when the devices on both ends have electronics to process the signals.
In the case of connecting an amp to headphones, the headphones donāt have electronics so itās not actually a balanced connection. The amp output is a standard analog signal, although each channel has itās own ground and internally the amp may benefit from a balanced design.
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Its DAC is the ESS Sabre32 Reference ES9018K2M, which means the P 6 now supports PCM audio up to 384kHz/32-bit (up from 96kHz/24-bit) and DSD up to quad rate
I saw that, and it was a big factor in going with the P6.
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Understood (mostly). So are you saying that I should expect to experience noise over that relatively long distance, or that the balanced cable isnāt a particularly effective cure, given the headphone end-point?
No, in the use case you mentioned, tt2 to parasound p6, you will have a balanced connection between electronics, which will be more resistant to noise over a long distance than RCA. @NickZ is talking about a balanced headphone cable, where there are electronics on one side and just headphones on the other. In this case the balanced connection is not more noise resistant than an unbalanced cable.
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OK - yeah, I have and am familiar with balanced headphone cables; just didnāt quite understand what Nick was saying - thanks.
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Continuing the discussion from Schiit Audio - Official Thread:
Hi everyone. I just received my new schiit! I purchased the Magni 3 plus, and the Modi 3 plus. These are the first headphone DAC/Amp Iāve ever purchased, and I must say it sounds good a lot better than just my phone. I am a little disappointed though. The Magni has a stcky volume knob and rubs on the case maybe. It sounds really good nonetheless. Iām a bit confused with the DAC also. When I plug in the micro USB to my phone I have to restart it to turn on the DAC. Also, I can use my phone to adjust the volume level, not sure Iām supposed to be able to do that. Like is one gain and the other volume? Iām brand new to this and could use any pointers I can get. Thanks in advance! I hope I made this post correctly. First time.
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