Chord announced the Hugo TT 2 at the High End 2018 Show in Munich, Germany on May 10, 2018. The Hugo TT 2 is the successor to Hugo TT, however, unlike the original Hugo TT which is a variant of Hugo, the Hugo TT 2 is not a variant of Hugo 2. The Hugo TT 2 has been radically redesigned from the ground up, not only with beautiful new casework by Chief Designer, John Franks but with 5x the processing power of the original Hugo TT and double that of the multi-award-winning Hugo 2.
Featuring the new Artix 7 FPGA chip, the Hugo TT 2 is custom-coded by Chord Electronics’ Rob Watts, with 86x 208MHz cores running in parallel to create an advanced 16FS WTA 1 filter with 98,304-taps. Double that of its multi-award winning transportable brother, Hugo 2 (49,152). Hugo TT 2 also benefits from an upgrade from a 4-element design to a 10-element design, which works in harmony with the radically upgraded FPGA and code.
The Hugo TT 2 added buttons to the front panel, allowing for manual switching between filtering and crossfeed modes and in the box, there is also a remote control which also works with the Hugo 2.
A brand new high-power discreet output stage coupled with second-order noise-shaping integrated between the DAC output and filter is also employed to massively reduce distortion. Further improvements have also been made to the power delivery.
Hugo TT 2 eschews the Li-Po battery power supply of the original and ushers in six supercapacitors capable of delivering huge, linear dynamic currents when the music demands it with the peak output of 5A, 9.3V RMS.
The number of digital inputs on the Hugo TT 2 has increased, it now features two optical (24-bit/192kHz-capable) and two coaxial (24-bit/768kHz-capable) sockets, as well as a USB-B connection capable of decoding 768kHz PCM and DSD 512 files. For wireless fans, the Hugo TT 2 also features aptX for wireless streaming.
The Hugo TT 2 also furthers its output offering featuring a pair of balanced XLR, a pair of unbalanced RCA and three headphone jacks (two 6.3mm and one 3.5mm), there is also the dual BNC DX for connectivity with other Chord devices.
Hugo TT 2 also features the much loved four-stage user-selectable filter controls first introduced with Hugo 2 and retains the three-stage user-selectable digital crossfeed function for headphone users who want to improve the perception of depth, similar to that of speakers.
The Chord Hugo TT 2 will available in the autumn, priced at £3,996.
