OP: “I think most of us have friends and relatives who sometimes ask for advice, and today we can’t make a reasonable recommendation.”
Agree 100%. +1. I would suggest that the tenor of this thread shows that the Roon community places no value on making a reasonable recommendation to non-audiophile friends and relatives.
The price differential of these two options is about $2500 give or take. Wouldn’t that alone justify taking the Dragonfly out for a spin? [doing the Devil’s Advocate thing; pls take no offense.]
Of course it would (although my Audeze cans would be a strain).
But remember, I didn’t come at this from a mobility perspective. (From that perspective, I have recommended the Dragonfly widely.)
I came at it from a top-level DAC perspective, looking at things like the PSAudio DirectStream. And in that category, the Hugo 2 looked like a sweet spot.
Battery operation and mobility was an unexpected benefit. But a very valuable one.
The battery thing IS the swing factor, like you said earlier. Okay! That was my best shot. Nice choice.
AndersVinberg, I like what you have done, and did something similar myself. My library is on a USB SSD so I can travel with my laptop and an extra USB battery also.
What the hell does sound or simplification matter if you have a view like that?
Sometimes you need to harsh the mellow with Tom Waits or Roscoe Mitchell or Steve Reich.
Really showing off the lack of cables.
Think about it: I can sit outdoors and listen to outstanding recordings, with top level sound quality, with the best library browsing or top quality streaming, all this we could only dream of in the previous century, let alone outdoors.
The combination of several advances: Roon’s iOS endpoint, WiFi, battery powered DAC, headphones of a whole new caliber, the Internet.
Some people in the previous century they were enjoying something called portable cd-player (decent sound quality even by today’s standards). Others used a thing called walkman (a small cassette player, decent enough with metal cassettes and dolby). Even the DAT had his portable versions. Note that ALL of these were one cable solutions (the one for the headphones). Some of them were used in real great outdoor endeavors (see for example Jean-Louis Etienne at North Pole). So nothing really new about, just another way to do it.
And before that, we had portable lossless in the form of traveling minstrels! However that was a fairly high maintenance, single genre format. But few cables…
I actually had a portable turntable and used to play records at the beach.
Do not forget the MiniDisc. Mines in my attic somewhere.
Mine too. Seems weird looking back - buying a pre recorded cassette!
It’s no wonder people start feeling the want to go back to physical mediums despite the benefits of digital - holding something, storing it somewhere, rummaging to find it, losing it - all much more tactile and human than the digital equivalents.
Yeah I’m buying more CDs now than ever but it rip not play. You dont get the sense of ownership from a file and you can’t trust streaming services to keep the albums in its library.
I can manage all of these except the first one, digitally! 
I’ve still got mine, but I don’t take it to the beach anymore, just use it on the occasional picnic…
I have 2 units and I loved those back in the day. I didn’t understand how non-lossless they were…
Well, now, this wasn’t the path I expected the conversation to go.
I still believe that the conversation is very much on topic. Personally i just wanted to give you some examples of a very real fact: simplicity was always around. And it still is, at a cost. It is the uneducated consumers and the consumerism culture we live in that brings the complicated solutions where there is not really a need for that. And some other factors (simple things are usually the result of smart ideas) but going there it will indeed be off topic.
Now please do not misunderstand me: I’m an uneducated consumer too. I’m trying to rise my level of knowledge both theoretical and practical but it’s difficult to do that when people around consider up sampling an 160kbps mp3 to DSD “a great improvement”. Everybody is free to do and believe whatever he wants, I have absolutely no problem with that. Except when that kind of approach doesn’t let to much room for others and this is what actually happens, the industry has a well known tendency to go with the crowd and if the crowd loves complicated things then that’s what everybody else will get.
A personal experience about this subject, I’m doing my homework to buy a new DAC and the Holo Audio Spring DAC was on the list until I realize that in order to get the max from my investment and my setup (network transport) I need to consider some other complicated stuff up to a point where the price will be the same (and that’s not cheap) as a whatever one box solution. And that’s not my real problem because there still are some alternatives, the problem I see is that people I talk with about they seemed (or at least that was my impression, I may very well be wrong) very comfortable with that complicated setup.
I also believe that simplification form the user point of view means complications from the manufacturer point of view and as long as there is a satisfactory market for the things the way they are, then why bother?
And the last one, we live in a “smart things” culture. Some past personal experience is telling me that the best (and cheapest) way to make things to at least appear smart is to sell them to dumb consumers. (It is not in my intention to offend anyone, I just can’t explain it in other words).
Can I ask is their an app you guys use to make these diagrams? I’ve searched, but can’t find anything that resembles the stuff posted on this forum…