Chord - Hugo M Scaler

At the heart of the Chord Hugo M Scaler is the Xilinx XC7A200T FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chip which provides 740 DSP cores and a whopping 10,15,808 taps. The FPGA-based WTA (Watts Transient Alignment) filtering technology is very effective in improving the sound quality. This upscaler can upgrade standard audio at 44.1kHz up to 705.6kHz i.e. 16 times that of a CD’s 44.1kHz native resolution.

While optimised to be used with select Chord Electronics DACs, the Hugo M Scaler can work with other DACs as well. You can extend the 96kHz performance of the Qutest, Dave or Hugo TT2 to 768kHz with the dual BNC sockets. Other outputs include single BNC at 352.8/384kHz and optical S/PDIF at 176.4/192kHz. You can also connect to a variety of digital sources with the two BNC sockets, two Toslink sockets and a Type-B USB input.

The Hugo M Scaler has been made to align with the rest of the TT (Table Top) series so that it’s really easy to stack up. It features illuminable fascia-mounted spherical controls where the data (on the input source and incoming sample rate) is visually displayed on a polychromatic scale. It also has a governing input selection, output sample rate and video mode for lower latency.