i would have to say, in my own experience, the chord hugo tt2 with m scaler is one of my favorite sounding dacs i have experienced through my extensive dac journey since covid shut us in in early 2020, when i finally implemented music streaming, and thus have been running the gauntlet of dacs, priced high and low
certainly expensive, certainly well marketed, i don’t know too much about what goes on inside, maybe it contains some cheapo parts nestled within those sexy machined cases with colored baubles, but to me, this combo is one of the very small handful of best sounding dacs i heard, and one which i still choose to own - so to me, they did get something right, and maybe the most important thing