CHORD 2GO/ HUGO 2

The Chord 2go is a brilliant way to add streaming capability to the company’s Award-winning Hugo 2 DAC. Together, they add up to one of the most capable premium music streamers on the market.

This pairing is portable, and capable of running up to 12 hours on its internal batteries. It is too large for most pockets, but small enough to fit into a bag or rucksack.

The 2go is more than just a DLNA streamer. Its two microSD card slots can handle up to 4TB of stored music files, which means this Chord can work as a server too – any device on the same network can play the songs stored on the Chord. Add Tidal and Qobuz capability alongside internet radio, Bluetooth (4.1, A2DP) and Airplay, and you have a highly versatile digital music source.

Perfect partnership

Physical connectivity is limited to an ethernet port and a pair of micro-USBs that plug directly into the partnering Hugo 2. One of these is for power and the other for the signal output. If you are out and about, the 2go can be set to wi-fi hotspot mode, or use Bluetooth if you don’t mind a compromised performance. The 2go won’t work with any DAC other than a Hugo 2, unless you add the company’s 2yu interface.

The 2go can play PCM music files up to 32-bit/768kHz and DSD up to DSD256 – we can’t imagine many people having files outside the Chord’s abilities. It builds on the software foundations laid for Chord’s first such streaming module, the Poly, using the company’s Go figure app for set-up and certain aspects of control. Chord doesn’t have a dedicated UPnP streaming playback app, leaving the 2go user to find a third-party app alternative such as mConnect.