The current challenges Hegel is facing on the digital side are likely to lead to substantial changes in the way they design their next generation of integrated amps. I like how Hegel sounds as an amp, but I’ve always found their DACs being inferior to the system overall. The Roon saga is just one more bit that tells you, they are not good at the digital end and they have now being forced to recognize it. I suspect they will have a slightly different philosophy re the whole digital section sooner rather than later
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Hegel is a 20th century company trying to make it in the 21st. I don’t think they have have the ability to do so. We should all move along… like from a toxic relationship. They won’t change.
Hegel was a good company.
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If you re-read Hegel´s response to Jean-Michel there is clearly progress. Seems that Hegel has in fact finally submitted an implementation to Roon for testing and/or certification. The question remains if Hegel has done a minimal job, or if they have aimed to live up to the standards of their amps.
Interesting, btw. how some commenters on this thread mention their loudspeakers choices quasi as an afterthought. Many seem to be optimized for, and glossing over inferior Spotify. My Piega pair certainly highlights Hegel´s stellar amp quality. Crossing my fingers for Hegel and Roon, but both Airplay over USB and Lumin work fine.
If you re-re-read the response from Hegel you’ll notice some wordsmithing deflecting responsibility away from their deceptive behaviour and ongoing client misleadings. They have been blaming Roon for over half a year now. They simply copy and paste this (likely lawyer approved) response to everyone who reaches out to them. I do not believe Roon Ready will come until their customers unite with legal action and demand compensation for damages and legally confront Hegel’s false advertising.
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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Hegel country of origin
A year ago I was interested in Hegel after getting burned by KEF’s Roon Ready “Coming Soon” marketing tactics. I soon learned that Hegel had taken that same marketing path. I eventually bought one of Linear Tube Audio’s integrated amps and a Lampizator Baltic DAC. I agree that the DAC in Hegel’s products is probably their weak link.
I would forget the All in One amps and at least get a Roon Ready streamer to feed a good integrated. I also think that Roon must surely share some responsibility here. They have everything to gain by tossing a lot of effort into helping a manufacturer succeed in their Roon Ready accreditation. It does not seem like they are doing that. I would like to be proven wrong, as I love Roon.
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That’s interesting - perhaps a coincidence but I seem to remember that at least in Germany anyway, KEF are the official distributors of Hegel products. I wonder if they have something to do with this?
I think it’s all on incompetent Hegel. They’ve been “working on it” for like three years with “all available resources”. I think it’s all bs. Roon Ready isn’t coming.
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What are they working on then?
I suspect they are re-designing the whole digital part. It’s quite obvious that this is their weakest section and even stripping aside the Roon issue, the DAC in the Hegels has always been inferior to the pre- and amplification sections. This is quite visible even here where people are typically adding DACs and DAC-enabled streamers in order to by-pass the DAC in the Hegel.
I would speculate that the new generation of Hegels (whenever that arrives) will have a significantly updated digital section and I don’t mean software only.
They don’t. The KEF sales office in Germany is a distributor for Hegel products (and our only sales office that distributes Hegel).
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Do you think they’re working? I don’t.
They made the V10 for kicks and giggles while they already had announced Roon Ready for their CURRENT line of products.
But that is probably another “branch” in the hegel organization.
I’ve had Tesla’s for five years and they have said I would have autonomous driving. It doesn’t but I love the car. Microsoft promised net security with windows. It’s not but their products have made me successful. Spotify promised lossless audio. They don’t but I love the system. Hegel promised Roon. Not available but I love the natural sound for a valued price. Can anything make you happy Peter?
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Yeah, life can be full of unfulfilled promises… that doesn’t make it ok, but it reiterates “buy for what it is, not what’s promised”. As noted above, Hegels internal DAC was always weak, so was never really a strong selling point, just a something to tic a box. It is what it is.
Sorry, I’m gonna have to disagree, the H390 DAC is not weak. I’ve compared my Lumin T2 USB in to the H390 with XLR and XLR wins, but not by a huge margin. It should be that way given the T2 costs not much less than the H390. H390 is the sweet spot in the Hegel range, and one of the very best value integrateds with DAC you can get. Sure, the (lack of) Roon Ready thing is not a good look for the company, but with my setup I couldn’t care less about that, and I’d have to pay a hell of a lot more to get a substantially better amp. Everybody makes choices and compromises in this game.
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I’m quite happy with what’s going on with my H190 as an all-in-one, DAC included. As a whole package, it’s great value.
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Partially, I have to disagree. I have not listened to a T2 yet, but between the H390 DAC and my Spring 3 KTE is a big difference. There are some songs I couldn’t enjoy at all with the H390 DAC that I really love now (especially songs where a lot is going on at the same time). I cannot believe that this is just due to the differing DAC architecture…
So, maybe the DAC itself isn’t too bad, but then the USB implementation of the H390 is not as good. I don’t know your exact setup, but did you use some kind of USB isolator between your Core and the H390? I didn’t, which might explain why I noticed a bigger improvement with the Spring 3 while you didn’t with your T2. I made similar findings with a Matrix Element X with RAAT through Wi-Fi.