EEVblog 1613 - Audiophile REPAIR: $4500 Chord Hugo DAC

hi it's repair time sorry about my voice it's not good so if I if it completely just vanishes during this and words don't come out H repair time um a simple simple repair but it's one of these audio file products so audio foery alert um and yeah I'm sure it's just a high quality headphone uh Dack digital analog converter it's a cord Hugo apparently this is a legacy product um and yes look it's got a wanky little window in there you can see oh look is that some RGB leads it's designed for um it's got a Wi-Fi module in it or something and it hooks to your you know streaming uh media server or whatever and gives you super duper high quality headphone and line output right so apparently um it's got two rechargeable batteries in it and I got this from a neighbor who wanted me to uh replace the batter batteries in it cuz um yeah it doesn't have a decent solder in IR to actually do it so let's crack this thing open now check this out apparently these are just stupidly expensive if you have to ask the price the hugo2 this is the updated uh model um so yeah so the technically the one we're looking at today is discontinued but check this out 4500 Aussie bucks we're on Brisbane High here um 4500 Aussie bucks it's ridiculous anyway um yeah this cord uh Mob sell lots of uh yeah high-end uh audio wankery so the finest in audio wankery here ups scalers and funo stages and streamers and the Dax you know um and integrated amplifiers look at that oh so wanky look ah it's got all any vibration feed on it so you don't get any microphonics and whatever and it hooks up to your record player right so yes so we've got the Legacy um Hugo uh product here so yeah like even secondhand like this thing's going for like 1,00 bucks right Aussie secondhand it's just absolutely crazy right so anyway um yep let's uh let's tear it down so presumably we get these screws off and I guess this lid lid pops off there and you know it's really nicely made we've got four rubber baby buggy bumpers I like how they're uh indented in into the case like that to stop uh slippage uh some sort of wanky light up uh window here another one here um one on the bottom you can't see it but is that part of the Wi-Fi are they doing a cutout in the diecast for the yeah you can't see that sorry camera overexposure but yeah it's kind of like I can see the module in there so let's take this apart and it's uh made in the Old Dart of course it's upside down so all the electrons are going to fall out so hi to all my viewers in the Old Dart so to want to be made in the Old Dart for for the money I mean this is just like thousands thousands of pounds for one of these duck things but that's nothing if you're spending your $10,000 on your uh on your cryogenically uh Frozen bir directional snake oil speaker cable and you're you know $5,000 for your power cable and uh $2,000 for your wooden anti vibration knobs for your pots you know it's just oh God anyway yep but I'm I'm sure it sounds very good I'm sure it's using like you know it's probably got I don't know was it got like a bur BR Dack in it or something you know they they usually use real high quality um high quality components like the new version has like an RX 7 fpga in it so you know it does all the processing and whatnot but I don't think I didn't see on the uh marketing for the new one like usually they scream at what brand decks they use in it I thought that would have been I don't you know I'm sure it's not sure they wouldn't roll their own would they there we go there we go and we are in little bit of uh foam there that pokes through to that uh window that's that window thing on the other side there that little lens thing um sorry this won't be a full tear down I'm not going to risk uh damaging my neighbors Dad here so I'm just going to do the business of uh replacing the battery here you got a blue Giga Bluetooth module there so I'm sure you can stream from your shoe phone and your whatnot what's down on the bottom here nothing much doing there it's just a microchip regulator there um you know they claim linear regulator and everything else yeah that's why they need two batteries in this because they're doing the plus minus rail so they don't need an inverter to get the extra rail 78256 is that a memory is it it's not a converter there but um there's not much to see here it's a TI jobby which a DK 637 it's just an OP app of some description got a ferite bead there nothing else exciting sorry we've been mooned um right on the bottom here so yeah let's uh let's get a multimeter on there and and see what uh what voltages we've got on the existing battery just said the batteries are dead so I don't know um in what capacity get it capacity I'm here all week okay let's measure that let's see what we get there anything on there at all oh yeah okay 4 volts so that's fully charged so I don't know don't know what the the deal is yeah they're both 4 Vols so um not a problem I don't know but he did want the batteries changed so maybe may maybe it's a capacity um thing the ESR in them could be bad and uh cuz this is an old product so anyway um he gave me these standard 18650 it's got a uh some battery protection in there you can tell by the extra Gap it's a Cameron Soo I don't know anyway it is an 18650 and uh that's all it needs so I assume that these things are going to be stuck oh no no they're not no I thought they might put some silicon in there or something but no look at that just comes straight out no worries all right well I will desolder that 2200 Mah hour so we'll get a bit extra capacity in that no worries NX Energies yeah so with four point with uh four four volts on them it should have enough to work but um yeah I don't know how to test this thing so I don't know anyway just once the battery replaced oh actually I just I just turned a switch on the side and it is lighting up so it does actually work so yeah so I'm sure he knows that but uh yeah so it must be a battery capacity thing and I'm not going to bother testing the uh the complete battery capacity there but okay so that's negative that's oh yeah there I was going to say they should label that they have don't know if you can see it it's tiny jeez could have made the silk screen a little bit bigger than that just saying let's get the other one out there we go so now Pro tip don't just cut the cables like that because you will short them out and uh that would be rather unpleasant so if you're going to cut these cut them one at a time thank you very much so there we go they are going to fit or yeah they're just going to fit in there if I fold that over and then like that and bring them up over like that I think I'll probably leave leave that lead length on them and then try and shove it down I'm not going to try and cut it short or anything so so again they've got tiny silk screen there negative and positive wow thanks a lot ca's formed a little bit and it'll sit nicely in there like that let's guide them in place there we go there's the negative ah I forgot to check the charge state of that battery there H 3.85 no worries that will uh charge up that will well start it up and then uh it can do its chargy thing here you go one negative one positive melted pretty easily didn't it still got insulation on there so that's uh not particularly high temperature uh insulation they got on those uh wires there but next battery oo doesn't like the fit of that one seriously wow just fits wow that's pretty tight isn't it and if that case is um sharp at all that alloy case you could actually um short out to your uh battery case here but the battery um itself is going to that's that's going to be negative so uh that shouldn't be a problem but you know probably don't want that yeah placement of this one gets a little bit tricky actually so I'm not not entirely pleased with the uh placement of that but it's going to work like as as in the actual design of it not not my placement of it it's just the it's just the physical design of how this all not much room left in there that's all I'm saying not much room left for I know there we go just start to shuffle the battery down a bit more now there's more room okay but still is a little bit tight just saying and we'll measure that battery as well should have the same yeah .85 that'll be enough to start up okay make sure I don't short that out sorry overexposure on the uh camera there bloody black solder mask it's always a pain but uh trust me that's good turn that down a little bit there you go so you can see we have some nice files nice fet of fish there no worries yeah when I turn the camera Auto exposure just like that black solder Mas just like kills everything it's just unbelievable switch over here somewhere and now it's not doing anything well I did something before 3.85 zero why is that zero huh okay we have a problem problem here I'm reading 0.6 ohms between that pad so yeah the protection Circuit of that kicked in so why is that 6 ohms both directions short the probes out 02 so we're talking about 0.4 ohms what's going on why is that shorted I don't get it our voltage over here is 3.5 so it's dropped down all right something's going on so let's actually give those uh some extra juice as you can see on this channel here you using the uh power supply uh 4.2 volts so we're in uh so that's the maximum compliant voltage you don't necessarily want to go over that um and then we're constant current at 1 amp 1 amps good enough I mean that's not even one C cuz these are 2600 Mah hour so we could probably charge it at a couple of amps if we wanted to but uh that that voltage is rising up it was 4.08 or something before so 4.10 so it's in constant current charging mode now then it'll switch to constant voltage and we'll know we we're pretty good to go so okay so that's very strange that we would get a short across that battery like 6 ohms or something so so I've disconnected both of them and I've plugged in the uh Power Pack which is it doesn't tell you on here but it's a 12volt uh half amp jobby and if we switch it on then we get well we get both of these leads lit up in there not those RGB ones but there's white ones like that so that's interesting whoa what's going on there is that switch Dicky I'm not sure if that switch is Dicky because no no it seems to be doing that that's all under software control obviously now I switched it off but that lead's staying on so that's like a power in indicator yet when you plug it back in it doesn't come on so this is doing some weird software wankery right I'm not sure what but oh my my my voice is getting bad no that's got to be that's got to be coincidence I don't think there's anything Dicky in the switch I think it's yeah doing some sort of software thing we disconnect that you can see that that shorts out let's measure across here again and we're getting nothing there's no short which is good so it's not a short short it's some something turned on some I don't know some some mosfet somewhere switched on part of the charging circuitry don't know um really weird so I'm not sure what's going on there so all I can do is um put this so maybe it's the order you have to solder them in so maybe I'll s solder this top one first this time and then this one and see what happens so yeah it's it's just strange um by the way my my neighbor said that yeah it's a capacity issue um so it it still worked but it he only get like like a couple hours use out of it and then it would die so that's why those batteries still the these batteries here still work but yeah they just dropped in capacity and given that this is probably like a I don't know a decade old model or something like that that's uh not surprising so anyway so I sold her that one in first and then that one maybe I don't know the order of it I don't know anyway I'll leave the switch off and the interesting thing is there is some sort of clicking noise inside this thing so maybe that's like the charger maybe there's a Loosey Goosey inductor in there or something and definitely turns off when I got the switch in that position so which is over there which is sort of towards the center so that seems to be the off position don't label it all right so solded back in and looking at 4.01 I gave it a bit of a charge there and um yeah it's good to go so maybe I can only assume that maybe I solded these batteries in while I had the power on and that because you install them you can't sold them both at absolutely identical time maybe there's some interaction between them so yeah I'm not sure where I was measuring like 6 ohms between there um it's really interesting but I'm not anymore and it wasn't no it was there was no physical little uh dag shorting across there or anything I made sure of that so it was something else so it's really weird don't know right so I have both of those solded in now and 3.93 and no that's Dro no why is that dropped see once again something weird has happened I have not touched that right so yeah there's something weird when you sold of those on but it's Rec like right so there's no there's no short between there anymore wow yeah like that that that cell is being killed what the heck well it's got input you can't kill the cell cuz it's got um uh protection circuitry in it but you saw that before right that was like 4 volts and all I did was go and solder in this one and the switch is in the off position there's some weird interactive thing happening between these two cells what the heck the only thing I can do is maybe plug in the plug pack see if it charges up cuz that's just insane what the heck okay so plug it in okay there is that uh that power lead Has Come On To indicate that uh so it's obviously it that is not just a that's just a soft functional um switch there's that you know there's some sort of thing bypassing that there we go right we're now 4.01 volts how weird is that that is very weird you saw it right it was down to like 3 volts so something was causing the protection circuitry in those batteries to kick in this one here seems to have protection circuitry in it cuz you can see that the cell physically ends there and then they've got the extra something extra on the end of it so that's got protection power on Tada something's happening blue uh blue is good green is good I believe that is uh it it flashes red if the batteries are low or whatever so I think it's I think it's fixed yeah I just didn't expect that level of drama I guess changing over batteries like this but this seems to be some weird interactive thing happening obviously they're going to have two separate charge circuits and it's a soft thing cuz this is not not a hard power switch obviously when you switch this off the lead comes on so it's you know it's not a physical onoff switch just for that um so it's yeah I don't know that's weird but I was definitely measuring 6 ohms between there which would cause you know it's a short you short shorten out the cell so the input so the output uh protection circuitry because the the protection circuitry in these cells they've got over voltage over current uh and low voltage uh protection as well so it won't you know so in theory if you got a decently designed protection circuit in there um with all those three features you should not be able to kill this cell but it'll certainly uh you know switch it off it'll switch off the output mosfet will be in here and it'll switch it off and then the voltage that was feeding back was something from over here it's weird it's weird so i' I'd love to see the circuit for this if anyone's got the uh schematic for this please leave it in please leave a link in the comments down below but there you go um I do believe she is now back in Action green I'm going to assume green is good and uh yeah these leads in here are apparently uh yeah there's a blue and there's you can actually see the three individual elements down in there there you go may maybe you can see it now you can see the individual elements in there there you go it's not going to be color accurate so it looks kind of it I just see uh red green and blue on so it's supposed to be white but uh n doesn't really look that way so I guess it does if you turn the gain up but to my eye here it um just looks like a I can see the three individual elements anyway there you go there is the cord Hugo older model um the finest in audio wank um you know I'm I'm sure it has very good performance and everything and the over sampling is great big ass fpga in there to you know do serious oversampling and uh stuff like that and uh but yeah I just don't see the value in these things like I'm I'm sure they work and sound fantastically I'm just you know as with a lot of these um high-end audio products I just don't see the value like it it seems designed to apart from this weird whatever is happening with these dual batter apart from that um it does seem like a reasonable uh you know a reasonably designed uh and built product it looks you know it's fairly solid and you know it's nice and I'm sure it it it actually performs well but uh yeah I'm I'm just still not seeing the absolute value but that is the market for these things I mean you know would you pay $4,000 for a Dack the answer is there's a lot of audio files that will right um and yeah I'm sure it sounds absolutely fantastic just whether or not you get the value out of it but as with all things like this if you pay $4,000 like this which my neighbor didn't do he bought it secondhand so probably got it really cheap um but yeah if you pay $4,000 for this thing then you're going to hear the difference trust me just like if you pay $10,000 for a you know a couple of meters of speaker cable you're going to hear the difference just don't expect your friends to anyway if you like that video please give it a big thumbs up and as always discuss down below catch you next time oh by the way that uh sound that buzzing sound that I heard um it's only when you plug in the AC adapter like I it's now running completely off battery power and it's working fine and there's absolutely nothing going on there but I plug it in and you can hear it so that is some inductor squeal not sure if you'll be able to pick that up on the mic but it's there and yeah that's not uncommon for um charging you know switching uh converters um either charging or power supply or whatever to have a little bit of inductor noise but it's a physical noise but it's not there um when it's uh being powered from the batteries and that's the whole point of this thing is that you don't use it with the plug pack plugged in cuz the whole point is that linear power supplies in there sound more better of course uh cuz you got no switching uh component components they're powered directly from the low ESR of the battery and everything else so um yeah it's all huny not that that's a problem cuz they're not driving well you can drive headphones with this thing it does have a headphone driver so you're driving a you know a lowish impedance loan but you're not driving you know tens or hundreds of Watts or anything like that um so it's not particularly high power but it probably will make a difference if you actually power this thing in maybe you can I don't know some switching components can come through but the whole idea is that you charge it up during the day and then you disconnect it and you listen to it and that's how my neighbor actually uses this thing um he uses for use it for a few hours per night disconnected powered from the batteries um so yeah hopefully that is all good to go winner winner chicken dinner but as I said is this thing going to sound better than one that costs an order of magnitude less I mean it's still 400 bucks for order of magnitude less uh cost for a deck so I don't know you can build one I could build one hell of a deck for 400 bucks let me tell you um so yeah I don't know but n you know people like the sound of certain things and well that's all there is to it [Music]

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 50,313

Keywords: eevblog, video, repair, chord hugo, chord hugo 2, chord hugo dac, chord dac 64, battery replacement chord hugo, battery replacement, how to, chord dac

Id: RAN0hUrAg0s

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024