I am considering getting a dac for my wife’s stereo system. I was thinking of getting a Pro-Ject 2s dac or used Chord Hugo (1st edition). I read great things about the Chord dacs. I also read a couple of reviewers stating they thought the original Chord Hugo sounded better than the current Chord Mojo. I would appreciate in thought in comparing these two dacs.
If anyone has any additional dac (with preamp) that they want to recommend in the $500-$700 it be greatly appreciated. Thanks for consider to assist me.
I had both a Chord Hugo (1st edition) and a Pro-Ject Pre Box S2. In side by side I thought the Hugo was superior in both sound stage and definition – especially for redbook cd quality music which Chord is really great at. Having said that, the Pre Box S2 was very very good and for a in-house stereo setup looks better and is simpler to operate as Hugo is designed to be portable and has an unique but hard to remember button structure. The S2 also does MQA if that’s a requirement; the Hugo does not. If no MQA rendering isn’t a showstopper (Roon can do the decoding) and highest quality of sound is all that matter, I’d go Hugo.
I’ll chime in briefly as a Chord DAC fan. When I tested them the original Hugo sounded clearly better than the MoJo though I still chose the latter because of price and portability. The price seems fair and I find Chord DACs really suit my listening preferences, some say analytical, I say detailed. One word of caution, I’d not bother with the Chord streaming solutions. I’ve never bought one but I don’t know anyone who has who’s entirely happy.