• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Hegel H95 Review (Streaming Amplifier)

OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,386
Location
Seattle Area
Hi-Fi News 'Outstanding Product'
There's a Lab Report attached to the review, amazingly the engineer doesn't unravel anything of major concern.
He does but just phrases it in the way to make marketing happy. 86 dB a-weighted signal to noise ratio is considered good? In whose book when CD has 96 dB of dynamic range, unweighted! He also talks about DAC clipping severely above -10 dBFS. On and on. Trick is to put all of that in dense text and horrible to read charts. Then no one knows what they are or mean.

Paul Miller is not who he used to be. He used to have tons of graphs with pass/fail criteria. Now he does the minimum to let the whole "review" essentially by a subjective piece.
 

zeppzeppzepp

Member
Joined
Jul 10, 2020
Messages
68
Likes
31
He does but just phrases it in the way to make marketing happy. 86 dB a-weighted signal to noise ratio is considered good? In whose book when CD has 96 dB of dynamic range, unweighted! He also talks about DAC clipping severely above -10 dBFS. On and on. Trick is to put all of that in dense text and horrible to read charts. Then no one knows what they are or mean.

Paul Miller is not who he used to be. He used to have tons of graphs with pass/fail criteria. Now he does the minimum to let the whole "review" essentially by a subjective piece.

things weren't praised by a review meant they were broken.
 

Phorize

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Apr 26, 2019
Messages
1,533
Likes
2,060
Location
U.K
ASR: this is a $2000 paperweight.

YouTube: buy two of these, the cross talk is proven to be good.
 

JiiPee

Active Member
Joined
Oct 23, 2021
Messages
252
Likes
481
If poor performance is what you’re after, similar measuring Chinese amps can be found for $70.
Please, I'm fully aware that there are cheaper alternatives with similar objective performance, and I'm not trying to defend Hegel. I'm simply wondering where is the level, where our "measuring by listening capability saturates", so that anything above that is undetectable to our ears.
 

xaviescacs

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 23, 2021
Messages
1,494
Likes
1,971
Location
La Garriga, Barcelona
No.... this is that bad? Somehow I had come to believe this was an audiophile device with good specs. The high distortion could be detected with a 80 € behringer interface, you don't need the AP for this :p
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,386
Location
Seattle Area
No.... this is that bad? Somehow I had come to believe this was an audiophile device with good specs.
As noted, their own specs are not that good. It is easy to miss though as unlike me, they won't put them in context.
 

MCH

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 10, 2021
Messages
2,581
Likes
2,197
I own the older H90 (from which they claim they have used a much better DAC in the H95 :facepalm:) and can confirm the unusable (really, no exagerations) headphone amp and poor line out. However i use it mostly with analogue inputs and can't complaint. It is not very powerful but enough for me. Soundwise is fine too.
 

Amplifier dude

Active Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2021
Messages
170
Likes
68
Please, I'm fully aware that there are cheaper alternatives with similar objective performance, and I'm not trying to defend Hegel. I'm simply wondering where is the level, where our "measuring by listening capability saturates", so that anything above that is undetectable to our ears.
For me it’s around -100dB THD+N. Others may disagree, but I can clearly hear the difference between an amp with -108dB THD+N and -92dB THD+N. And can tell them apart blind 10 out of 10 times.
 

xaviescacs

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 23, 2021
Messages
1,494
Likes
1,971
Location
La Garriga, Barcelona
As noted, their own specs are not that good. It is easy to miss though as unlike me, they won't put them in context.
I must admit that I'm so used to see the plots here that bare numbers don't engage my anymore, I have to make an extra effort to interpret those numbers and didn't do it for this one. Just got carried by all its admirers.
 

JSmith

Master Contributor
Joined
Feb 8, 2021
Messages
5,153
Likes
13,214
Location
Algol Perseus
Panther is upset and confused... this is so poor;

1637826982786.jpeg


Clearly Hegel were doing this when they designed this over price piece of rubbish;

1637827058123.png


Thank God I never purchased this product, or I'd be shattered right now.



JSmith
 

Drengur

Active Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Aug 17, 2021
Messages
150
Likes
412
I am, somehow, not surprised. Still I wonder what Hegel's reasoning is? I am sure they have very talented people working there who could easily churn out a high performing device, yet they choose not to. Perplexing.
 

Purité Audio

Master Contributor
Industry Insider
Barrowmaster
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 29, 2016
Messages
9,051
Likes
12,150
Location
London
Thanks Amir your work is invaluable beyond measure.
Keith
 

DSJR

Major Contributor
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
3,314
Likes
4,427
Location
Suffolk Coastal, UK
How incredibly sad and disappointing!

I really rather liked the Hegels I've heard and loved the ergonomics, feel and ease of use myself, especially the half hidden power button - A 120 and a larger model (190?) I spent a morning each using while I did other work - I kept being drawn back to themusic being played as well as it was so 'clear' and 'clean.' I remember reading the performance was good on one of the larger ones - with graphical evidence presented I seem to remember - and much MUCH better than this... Admittedly, I was playing at low volumes generally and into a solid-state-benign speaker load.

Shows that I for one CAN'T 'just use my ears' when choosing gear as 'good enough', ain't good enough for me now. This is far worse than the half century old prosumer amps I inherited, use and still love (they've been tested elsewhere and still do quite well on the bench even after all this time).

Is this industry now totally 'eye-fi' led? Looks like it (sorry) to me now.
 
Last edited:

voodooless

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jun 16, 2020
Messages
10,226
Likes
17,803
Location
Netherlands
I would like to propose to have the panther dance poll before the review comes out :)

Would be fun to see how well we are at assessing equipment performance translated to subjective panther scores before we have the objective data available. If it tracks well, we can skip the reviews... would save Amir a lot of time ;)
 

thewas

Master Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jan 15, 2020
Messages
6,747
Likes
16,180
Oh, but Hegel + KEF = MAGIC! Or that's what I've read at least 100 times. ; )
Same like the B&W + Rotel, Focal + Naim and other recommendations because they belong to the same company groups or have same importers, what a horrible marketing mess... :facepalm:
 

luknap

Member
Joined
Jan 26, 2021
Messages
9
Likes
34
I just wonder why KEF or Harbeth use Hegel gear at the audio shows? Is it possible that more expensive models (>H120) measure better? H120 has AK4490EQ chip. Not bad DAC at all.
 

voodooless

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jun 16, 2020
Messages
10,226
Likes
17,803
Location
Netherlands
I just wonder why KEF or Harbeth use Hegel gear at the audio shows? Is it possible that more expensive models (>H120) measure better? H120 has AK4490EQ chip. Not bad DAC at all.
See the reply above yours ;)

Having used some good DAC chip doesn't say much. Clearly, the implementation that Hegel did here is lacking a lot.
 

Koeitje

Major Contributor
Joined
Oct 10, 2019
Messages
2,292
Likes
3,880
I just wonder why KEF or Harbeth use Hegel gear at the audio shows? Is it possible that more expensive models (>H120) measure better? H120 has AK4490EQ chip. Not bad DAC at all.
The DAC chip doesn't really matter. The performance you can get out of the cheapest DAC chip on the market properly implemented is going to be better than what Hegel manages here. You can worry about the chip when you reach the limits of the chip.

Anyway this amplifier is a complete and utter distaster.
 
Top Bottom