Hi Everyone,

Firstly I want to thank everyone that came to our Chord Electronics open day on Saturday, I would say it was one of our best yet with a brilliant turn out and getting a chance to sit and listen to one of Rob Watts presentations was incredible, feel really honoured that he made the time to visit HiFi Lounge really especially as we are such fans of his work, to be fair the presentations were quite technical but everyone that attended had nothing but praise for what Rob had to say and most of us actually understood a fair chunk of it which is even more incredible

A couple of things that I took away from spending some time with Rob was that all his years of work on his products is quite simply all about getting that emotional connection with the music, also he is a big classical listener and uses mostly classical music to listen to and test his products which I found interesting as obviously they work brilliantly across all genres, and finally what I found interesting was that Rob is extremely happy with how the new M Scaler turned out, apparently when he started development he had no idea how much of a game changer it would be and how much performance it unlocks from his already brilliant Dac’s, funnily enough he likes it so much he takes it on planes when travelling the world with a portable power supply to use as his portable system, brilliant

He was adamant though that the addition of the M Scaler to a system is a real game changing product and as I know it well what with using it in our demo Blu 2 for a few months I have to agree 100% as did a lot of people who attended the open day. A question I get asked a lot is what is better, a DAVE or Hugo TT2 and M Scaler as both are similar prices, Rob didn’t hesitate when asked this as he would want the M Scaler every time so would go with the later but obviously the ultimate is DAVE with the M Scaler.

So thanks again to everyone that came along and made it such a great day, thanks also to Maurice from Chord for his help and Chris and Dawn for bringing along a great selection of vinyl for sale which proved as popular as ever.

Please find a few pictures from the day below -

It really was standing room only for Rob’s presentations, the room got a lot busier than this and we had to close the doors as the room was really rammed.

How To Drive Speakers From the Hugo TT 2

For todays lesson we are going to discuss how to drive speakers directly from the new and brilliant Chord Electronics Hugo TT 2 yes that is right, you can drive speakers directly from a DAC, this is a new one on me so I just thought I would mention it just incase not everyone knew as this makes a very simple system if you just want to stay digital.

So basically all you need is a Hugo TT 2, a digital source, speakers and cables, to test this I got Atlas Cables to make up speaker cables with XLR at one end and a Banana at the other as the below then I just hooked up the new Melco N100 server to the TT2 and made sure to set the TT2 to amp mode so not to blow the speakers, then set the TT 2 to high gain to get more volume, I then hooked up a pair of PMC Twenty5.24′s and we were ready to test, not really knowing what to expect, well all I can say is amazing as I was able to play the 25.24′s really loud with volume to spare so it is definitely an option to consider if you want a highend but compact system which on the face of it will drive quite a variety of speakers, again another innovative design from Chord and even better you can also put the M Scaler on it to take it to another level

If you’d ever like to try this as a system please feel free to get in touch to arrange a demo.

http://hifilounge.co.uk/chord-electronics

Cheers,
Paul.