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So, I bought a Chord Hugo TT2...now what?

Hello all!

Today, I ordered a Chord Hugo TT2 DAC from my local dealer...should be able to pick it up late next week.  It will be fed by a Bluesound Vault 2 that I'm using to stream Tidal and Qobuz, as well as play my ripped CD collection.  

As the TT2 is definitely several orders of magnitude better than the on-board DAC of the Vault, I now have a quandary regarding what my next upgrade step should be.  So, if you could only make one more upgrade, would you get the Chord M Scaler, which from everything I'm reading/hearing is the ideal pairing for the TT2 and takes it to near reference-class Dave levels?  Or, would you upgrade the streamer, since the TT2 is only as good as the files/data you're feeding it?

For reference, the rest of my system consists of Audio Research's LS7 line stage, PH3 phono stage and (2) D240MKII amps running as monoblocks.  Speakers are Kef Blade Twos (non-Meta versions) and my turntable is a Technics SL-1210GAE.

Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions!

Arvin 

128x128arvincastro
toneranger58
134 posts
 

I have the Zen MK 3 and I’ve kept my Node 2i, I really like the voicing (not the DAC) of the Node as an alternative to the Innuos both feed into my Denafrips T2 12 and both sound great. The Bluesound OS is good, overall it’s not as good a streamer as my Zen MK 3, but as I said I appreciate its voicing/sound, and I like it as an alternative streamer. I’ve got 2 nice CD transports, they each have their own sound signature, both very good so I kept both, I like sonic options I guess. 

mazian's avatar
mazian
406 posts
 

I've owned most of the streamers mentioned here except Innous but my current streamer is an Antipodes CX which is the best I have tried so far. The CX is towards the bottom of the Antipodes range so I can only imagine how good their more expensive streamers are. Also the Antipodes customer service is second to none which can't be said for Aurender although their streamers are good.

rumblestrip's avatar
rumblestrip
48 posts
 

As a "budget" idea to upgrade your current streamer, what about a DDC between your Vault and the Chord? It seems everyone who runs one, be it Singxer, Denafrips, Musician, etc., seems to hear a significant uptick in quality no matter the DAC.

tony1954's avatar
tony1954
1,052 posts
 

Ambulance chasers are an untrustworthy subset of personal injury lawyers more focused on scamming victims out of money than getting justice in their cases.

What is the audio dealer equivalent?

emergingsoul
1,167 posts
 

I mothballed Hugo TT 2 and got a Lumin x1 streamer dac.  I think the internal wiring was done really well and now I don't have to deal with a separate dac component and it is sounding a lot better.

I thought about the m scaler and also the Dave but it just was nauseating to deal with all this stuff. The colors on tt2 are cute

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