Background and Description
I have reviewed three other Hegel integrated amps over the past
few years, so I can understand that it may seem like I am “Mr.
Hegel” at the TAS table. Although other TAS writers (including
Robert Harley, Neil Gader, and Jacob Heilbrunn) have also
reported on Hegel gear—all positively—I am happy to review
yet another Hegel integrated amp because, among other things,
Hegel makes good products in general, and the company has
really pulled out all the stops with the H360 in particular. It is, to
give you my overall assessment upfront, a truly excellent amp. I
believe it can readily compete with separates costing more than
its $5700 asking price.
With 250Wpc into eight ohms (420Wpc into four) and a
damping factor of 4000, the H360 will drive a wide range of
speakers with ease. The H360 is equipped with two line-level
inputs, one RCA and one XLR, although a home-theater bypass
can be configured to function as a third unbalanced (RCA) linelevel
input. In addition, the H360 has a very good, on-board
DAC, capable of supporting 24/192 PCM files and native mode
DSD64 and DSD128. The unit also supports Apple’s wireless
AirPlay, and can function as a DLNA digital-media streamer/
renderer so you can connect a UPnP/DLNA-compatible
Network Attached Storage device (NAS) through your local
router and, voîlà, you have an amplifier that will play a lot of
different sources.
To my mind, the most important aspects of the H360’s
performance come from the analog sections of its preamp and
power amp. After all, a fantastic DAC can fall completely short if
the analog amplification is less than first-rate. For this reason, I
put the H360 through its paces primarily as a standard line-level
integrated amp, and only evaluated its very capable DAC once I
had established what the analog sections could do. (Fortunately
for me, it was through my listening to the H360’s NAS streaming
capability that I began to reevaluate my previously less-thanstellar
impressions of digital-file playback. The DAC can do
more tricks, but I will cover them further on.)
The H360 represents some of the latest engineering and
manufacturing acumen at Hegel. The company’s patented
SoundEngine technology has been further updated, and some
of the rigorous parts-matching protocols, once only applied to
Hegel’s top power amp (H30), are now also apparently applied to
the H360. To recap, one of the main aspects of SoundEngine is
a feed-forward technique that reduces noise and also specifically
addresses the crossover distortion commonly found in typical
Class AB amplifiers when one half of the output section hands
off the waveform to the other. SoundEngine adjusts the output
transistors’ biasing to accommodate ever-changing temperature
conditions—depending on signal fluctuations—rather than
setting a fixed bias for average conditions. The H360’s preamp
section has its own transformer to keep power-supply noise in
the current-supplying power amp section from interfering with
the more delicate signals in the voltage-gain preamp section. The
DAC has also been completely updated from the on-board DAC
in the H360’s predecessor, the well-regarded H300 (reviewed by
Neil Gader in Issue 233). I will compare the newer H360 to the
older H300 in greater detail later. While the H360 does not run
hot, it uses no switching power supplies or any mix of Class
D technology. It is a 45-pound Class AB amplifier all the way.
The cosmetics remain classic Hegel: simple, pleasant, subtle,
functionally proficient...Scandinavian. |
发表于 2016-6-12 11:01:14
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