Chord Hugo Color Guide Explanations
Do you have questions about the Chord Hugo and the color guide? Moon Audio receives a lot of questions about the Hugo and the color guide weekly so we thought we would answer these on the blog for everyone.
First and foremost, the Hugo is a phenomenal product. As soon as I tried it at CES in January, I knew I wanted to become a dealer. More on why I think the Hugo is a gamechanger is HERE in my original post.
So, let’s talk about the operation of the Chord Hugo. The Hugo is unique in that its simple design can provide you with a lot of information at a glance.
The chassis has three circular disks that shine different colors based on how the Hugo is functioning.
- The color that the large clear disk creates is based on three sources of information. You’ll notice that there are three light sources in the clear disk (highlighted above as green, red, and yellow).
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- The green indicates the battery life. Chord Hugo runs off of a trickle charger which means it is always running off of the battery. Even as the unit is plugged in for charging, the Hugo is pulling power from the batteries that are being charged, not the chagrining unit itself. The beauty of this is that you will never have to deal with AC noise on the line contaminating the quality of the music.
- The red is that of the input selection. I have noticed that the colors do not match up perfectly based off of the connection type. It is a good idea to connect with your chosen connection type and then toggle through the inputs with the connections switch. When the smaller white disk above the clear input lights up you have established a connection.
o Depending on the input chosen, the Chord Hugo has the ability to play much higher resolutions than many other DACs. This is another reason the HUGO is a Gamechanger. Please see the Hugo Input Matrix below for audio format capabilities.
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- The yellow shows the crossfade option. This is a feature that Chord really created the Hugo for as it provides a larger soundstage and depth of field. I like to describe it as 3D sound like you are at a concert, positioned at center stage with the best seats in the house. Instead of the singer positioned in the center of your head, the soundstage positions the singer in front of you. This is much like what happens when you listen to music through loudspeakers as opposed to headphones.
- The 2nd disk shows the bitrate & resolution of the Hugo. It has the ability to pull 44.1 kHz up to full DSD audio.
- The 3rd disk is your volume control. Keeping its uniqueness, the creators of the Hugo decided to give the volume a color code as well. You can use this rotator button to change the volume of the Hugo and it will change colors based on your volume level.
Looking for more information about the Chord Hugo Audio Connections?
In this video below, Drew explains the way to OPTIMIZE the Hugo connections with your hi-res music.
Ready to buy the Chord Hugo? click HERE.
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Top 4 Reasons I bought the Chord Hugo at CES 2014
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Leave us a comment below if you have a question, we'd love to help.