![]() ![]() It’s not an asynchronous USB input, because Hegel prefers adaptive. Hegel also prefers a linear phase output, and deploys its patented LineDriver high current, low impedance circuit block to limit the ingress of high-frequency digital noise elsewhere in the circuit. ![]() The amplifier section itself is a 2x 150W into eight ohm design which near doubles to 250W into four ohms. Hegel, however, doesn’t just make off-the-peg circuits that ape those of hundreds of other amp manufacturers this is more back to the drawing board. Hegel, as in all its amps, keeps the current and voltage gain stages completely separate through the amplifier circuit (even to the point of feeding these stages from different power supplies) in an attempt to deliver higher dynamic range and lower distortion. Also, although the amplifier is notionally a Class AB design, its ‘SoundEngine’ local, adaptive feed-forward circuit gives the amplifier effective error cancellation instead of error correction, and sonically combines the ‘purity’ of Class A with the high damping factor of Class AB, which once again aims to lower distortion while raising dynamic range. ![]() Both of these characteristics took a good couple of hundred hours to come to light, with the amp sounding a little rough-edged and uninspiring before that. Once suitably conditioned, this is one of the least ‘sounding’ amplifiers I’ve heard in a long time. The Hegel does this not in a colourless, bloodless manner, but rather with the kind of intrinsic ‘rightness’ that should be inherent to all amplifiers in theory, but usually fails to appear in the real world. Describing the H160’s performance in terms of musical presentations is a little pointless, because you might as well read a review of the recording itself, the amp adds and subtracts so little from the mix. ![]()
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