Hope someone might be able to help me as I’m not very technical. I have two questions. I will shortly be updating my (original) Chord Hugo for a MQA DAC now that Roon is fully MQA compatible. I also have an SOtM SMS-200 Ultra, tx-USB Ultra and sPS Power Supply feeding the Hugo which has hugely improved the sound. The SOtM SMS-200 is my Roon endpoint.
Q1. If i replace Hugo with a fully compatible MQA DAC the MQA signal will go through two SOtM products before arriving at the DAC. Will the MQA DAC still be able to do the full rendering or will it be compromised in any way?
Q2. Is anyone using the SMS-200 as a Roon core? my core is currently on an iMac and I get the occasional dropout with DSD files. How capable is the SMS-200 running Roon core?
Thanks
As a satisfied Chord customer I’m interested to learn why you think MQA will offer more than the Chord Hugo. Certainly, as a company they’ve rejected MQA, and from my listening tests I hear no discernible difference between a TIDAL Master played straight or with Roon performing the first unfold.
Here’s what Chord say on the matter of MQA:
Fundamentally, we’ve looked at MQA, and it’s not for us," says John [Franks]. "It’s a clever idea as a packing system. But you don’t need to pack your audio down. It solves a problem that’s not there now. We looked at it and we thought it was inferior to what we were doing, so we haven’t touched it.
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If you ever feel the need to ‘upgrade’ to the Chord Qutest, I’m happy to take the 2Qute off your hands ;-). I really do wanna try a fpga-dac
They are fantastic and I wouldn’t trade my 2Qute for anything other than another Chord DAC.
Sorry, but I won’t be trading up any time soon. But you can still buy a 2Qute for around £700 … a steal. 
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Ooh where? In NL they are still over 1.100 euros.
Amazon UK and a HiFi dealer in Coventry. I’m on my mobile, so will try and find some links later this evening.
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Thank you Martin, much appreciated
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That’s great news! You won’t be disappointed.
This comes from the need to replace my Chord Hugo. I use it as a desktop device with it permanently switched on and it’s on it’s third battery. So replacing it has been a mater of when not ‘if’. I too have not heard the difference between MQA and non-MQA files in a proper comparison. By that I mean using a decent DAC in a reasonably capable system. I have heard the Oppo UDP-205 Signature by Audiocom against my Hugo in a very capable system. In fact I heard this agains a dcs Rossini/+clock, £24K worth of DAC, which the Oppo also exceeded. It’s an MQA DAC too, which is a bonus, and as such is rather a bargain. But does not indicate whether the full rendering of MQA is taking place. This is a flaw of the Oppo which Roon now solves by providing the information from within Roon. So it’s not that I’m fully committed to MQA, it’s just that if there’s an MQA DAC out there that sounds better than Chord’s products, which with the Oppo I believe there is, then it would be advisable to go down that route. There’s nothing to lose.
Thanks for a comprehensive reply, Mike. Good luck with you new DAC. This demonstrates the importance of auditioning.
@Dick_Vliek Has the 2Qute arrived? And …?
Tomorrow, just bought a ifi psu in case the 2qute arrives with a uk plug only. Allo USBridge is waiting for the 2qute…
Let me know how you get on … I may pop out tomorrow and buy a Mojo for my travels.
Will do. Tomorrow is dedicated to the Giro and qute listening. If I like it I already planned to put the mojo on the shopping list,but I want new speakers as well to replace the KEF R300 (probably the Dynaudio special forty).
So if you buy the mojo, let me know how it works out.
Well it’s in da house! First impression: a more engaging sound than my Brooklyn (and that was exactly my goal here, I found the brooklyn a bit too analytical, but an excellent headphone amp). Or perhaps the 2qute is a better match for my amp, also British (Rega ellicit-r).
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Picked up a Mojo this morning and charged in for the requisite time and … fan-tas-tic! Paired with my Beyerdynamic T5p Gen. 2s I am more than pleasantly surprised. But, there is a downside to this. I now have that itch again that lead to buying the Chord 2Qute. Amp, speakers, speakers, amp??? 
Need to spend time listening to the 2Qute through my A19s headphone amp.
Haha I know what you mean, started with a node2 a year ago. Now I own 5 dac’s, several transports, 3 pairs of speakers, extra amp.
Now I want to try the mojo too…
Regular Overspending Obviously Needed.
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