I’ve never heard a Chord amp, but glad you’ve found a new system that you enjoy.
It’s not surprising that Naim streamers and dacs and amps and speakers work well together, and Chord streamers and dacs and amps work well together as they are each designed to do so.
I agree Jim… as I have gone along I have come to realise that higher end system synergy starts to count for an awful lot.
As you say, hardly sunrising really when you think about it, expecting random units to be connected together and sound their best…
Once we get over this lockdown Jim pop over to East Yorkshire and have a listen.
Yes please!
It sounds like you’ve found a great way to create a Naim/Chord integrated system.
Jim
Its come together nicely, I’m over the moon with the ND5XS2,MScaler,Qutest and rediscovering albums all over again.
More on this later as things are still bedding in.
Thanks for the detailed reply, the XS 2 certainly sounds like the model to go for.
Whilst the NDX2 screen would look nice I don’t think it’s worth the extra £3k on top of a lesser model. Plus I wouldn’t want to be tempted with an XPS upgrade.
I’ve not got my SN3 yet (6-week wait) so will live with it for a month or two before I start looking to replace the streamer. I’ll use the Qutest from day-one though (with my CXN) and keep an eye on the used-market as may pick up a bargain their. Failing that I’ll buy from my dealer once I’ve demoed.
True but @Nick.Lees uses Mscaler/Dave with his 552…
Similarly I’ve also heard the progression from Hugo, TT, to Dave and Mscaler/Dave on a 552 system, each step up was audible and showed the improvement on each level.
Do users of the Chord Hugo TT2 use the supplied digital optical cable or do you all have a digital cable purchased separately?
In the second case, what did you choose, an optical cable or s / pdif?
Thank you
David
I tried the one that it came with, a cheap 20 year old cable, a QED Performance (I think) and a Wireworld Supernova 7 (the only glass cable)
In the end I preferred the WW Supernova 7, sounded more fluid… very nice. However, I’d recommend trying a few different ones from any online dealers that give you 60 day free return trial. Then you can pick the one that sounds best to you in your system, setup. I preferred it initially over other connections.
Now I use a Roon NUC with an iFi usb 3 Mercury cable, usb purifier 3 and a modified splitter that allowed me to power the usb from a clean power source… power bank.
Thanks!
Do you think Chord in this way suggests the superiority of the usb and optical over the s / pdif digital câble?
Rob Watts stated that Optical was technically better as it is isolated from electrical interference but that doesn’t mean that a usb or BNC cable doesn’t sound better to one person. It comes down to ears, system setup and room etc to which sounds best.
Optical often provides a darker sound… slightly narrower and deeper soundstage. The more noise that enters the system the brighter it will sound and often artificially widens the soundstage. Brighter and wider might be what is needed to make it sound right for some… and not to others 
Although optical carries no common mode electrical currents, it does pick up sound pressure feedback and adds clock noise that way, (Electrical clock sideband modulation / noise), so does suffer interference and introduces mechanically coupled noise which becomes electrical noise which can rob detail and dull the sound.
It’s a useful phenomenon in very different scenarios such as certain surveillance / security systems.
So no, it’s not technically superior, it just suffers different challenges. Further TOSLINK is a very loose consumer specification and has limited reliability above 96/24/2 with signal smearing and therefore bandwidth limited compared to SPDIF coax.
I wouldn’t use and don’t use it for anything where I want full performance.
For best performance use galvanically isolated properly source impedanced SPDIF coax. As such Chord use this format for their double interfaced high speed, such as between HMS and Dave.
If you are going to connect lower quality digital inputs you may well be better off using TOSLINK.
It certainly has its limitations but Rob Watts mentioned on a few occasions on Head Fi that Chord DACs (TT2, Qutest especially) had been optimised for Optical but that didn’t mean people should limit to that one connection type. It was mentioned optical was a good reference point for comparing different digital leads.
Personally, I don’t think there is a right or wrong way… just different ways.
Sure nothing wrong with Toslink, like there is nothing wrong with Bluetooth, but I would not rely on it for top performance… the format is just too compromised. (In my opinion)
I wouldn’t put it in the same class as Bluetooth which in my view is like lossy and generally not great for high quality sound.
What I would say, is it’s only really reliable up to 24/96 after which you are in the lap of the gods as to whether it will play nicely with the hardware to give you anything more than that. Some cables would manage 24/196 while others wouldn’t.
In the end, I used optical (and it’s characteristics) to find a usb cable I liked and then fine tuned it so it gives the bits I liked about optical while giving me the better performance with 24/196 and above
But it’s signal becomes noisy when passed through Toslink. I think more often that not the limitation on upper bandwidth, if you exclude slew and noise, are the equipment Toslink transceivers.
And I believe Rob Watts said that optical jitter on his DACs was a non issue and that it provided what he considered the best connection for his DACs when compared to other digital connections. That of course doesn’t mean everyone will like the sound… that’s a preference thing.
I am not sure he has said that … when I spoke to him a few years ago about this, if my memory serves me correctly, he is confident his designs decouple transport clock noise from sample rate jitter… and Rob Watts particular nuance here i believe is mitigating very low frequency jitter by not using traditional PLLs.
However transport clock phase variance will couple into the electronics at very low levels through ground plane, power bus, or electro magnetic modulation as the Manchester encoded transport clock is recovered so the data can be recovered, and indeed this is part of the reason why not all transports or SPDIF or Toslink leads sound the same.
On head Fi Rob Watts commented that Toslink is the reference digital input for the M Scaler. Link to article He went on to say he could hear no consistent change between USB and Optical but added YMMV.
I do think optical is a very good option, given certain limitations with some cables… just comes down to if you like its character or not… and, if it manages to play files greater than 24/96 (my only issue).
I use use optical myself. No issues.
Rob Watts has posted on head-fi that he recommends using the optical inputs on his DACs.
the good thing about his products is that one has the choice, optical USB and Coax.