The problems at Hegel are in line with most hi-fi vendors. They cannot keep up with digital and streaming. Hegel products look great with fantastic materials and haptics.
Under the hood, they are lost. Instead of focussing on ridicules damping figures, they should focus on bringing the great user experience they offer on the exterior side also to their interior & software.
The problem lies clearly on their engineering lead. Watching the videos on YouTube, he tries solving problems that are no problems. This leads to an over-complex design. Yes, they sound great but they would sound the same with a prefabricated class-d module they’d just need to put into their nice chassis. Amazingly, the lead engineer plays in a rock band and we know what this causes to hearing abilities.
Check the parameters of their network interface. It’s prefabricated modules from China and guess who delivers the software / firmware that runs on top. This is the core of their problem. They focus on old-school amp design with voodoo engineering while lacking software and digital. My recommendation: Retire the lead engineer and thank him for past achievements. Put some software engineers in charge instead.
As much as I am annoyed with the way Hagel handles the Roon deployment. I am amazed how you shoot down the founder way of designing the amp. Do you know, It is also the damping factors that make them unique and I don’t think Bent is solving problems that do not exist? Just to get the fact right, do you even own a Hegel amp to start with? Are you sure simply by creating an amp using prefabricated class-d module will make it sounds the same as it is now? Do you even know Bent personally to know he is suffering from hearing loss?
Your post is really intrigued and acts as if it is so simple to build an amp from scratch. Try building one amp that better than an H590 and sell at the same price in Class-D form and I will gladly buy one from you.
To quote someone who knows his stuff: DF is overrated. Values of 20 to 50 are fine. Hegel has what? 4000? That’s the solution to a non-existing problem. This is where they waste their time instead of proper software engineering.
I have a H120 and wait for AirPlay 2 since their first false promise. The H120 is a beauty. And that’s it. One day, when it blows (with this over complex amp design it will not last too long) then I will strip it out and put some class-d inside the size of a cigarette box. And I will enjoy the same sound. Because guess what … amplifiers amplify. They don’t sound.
Just in case you thought Hegel’s 4000 DP is high, Soulution amp has DP of >10000. What do you base your basis on to conclude that DP of 20 to 50 is enough? Do you know that Class D amp typically has a high DP >1000? I would rather Hegel focus on their amplifier than wasting effort on your so-called “proper software engineering”, are we even buying a computer here?
You can simply go for a Naim Nova or Devialet I am sure their “proper software engineering” will be able to satisfy you since you are more bothered with functionality than sound. Go ahead and strip your H120 and show us your cigarette box class D module in it and do remember to drive some Dynaudio speaker or other hard-to-drive speakers for a start so we will be convinced that your amp is of the same quality as your original h120.
Your argument of all amp sounds the same is absurd, it is like telling people a Toyota and a Porsche are the same because both of them have 4 wheels.
Ah, the good old car argument. Everyone in Sales uses this comparison to make people spend more. [Moderated]
To be more specific: All transistor amps since about the 70s sound the same at the exact same output level. Of course, some can get to their limits and distortion kicks in. This makes a difference but output power is also not a problem anymore since decades. Tube amps of course sound different by design because they try mimicking limitations from the pre-transistor age to make it sound nostalgic (= worse).
An ideal amplifier produces an exact scaled replica of its input signal at its output— however as far as I’m aware, such a perfect amplifier doesn’t exist
Feedback mechanisms like Hegel uses do help in getting closer to this ideal, but even so, not perfectly
For the statement that all transistor amplifiers sound the same to be true, they’d all have to be perfect … which seems like a bold claim?
Alan Shaw, designer of Harbeth speakers, has said the Hegel has the lowest gain stage distortion of any amp he has ever measured and he uses Hegel to demo Harbeth reference monitors. The impact of this clarity is objectively measurable and subjectively desirable for him, and I agree.
Now where’s my Roon Ready firmware update Hegel?!
It does what i has to do and it needs no other buttons and dials to do that.
Why add a button, dial, socket or indicator if it is has no meaning to have it on the front or if it distracts.
Anyway, everybody is free to buy what they want, piles of bells and whistles or one black fine looking box.
The choice is yours!
The one i made the remark at is definitively not constructive.
Trolling and bashing, well well, that is also a choice.
