As they say, and from my own personal experience, you can never have enough head-room. Not to mention the much improved sound quality you'll experience. So yes, absolutely, go with the H390, as it will "Knock your socks off.".
Hegel H160 -> Hegel H390 upgrade suggestion
Hi - I am driving H160 with Focal Electra 1008Be bookshelves with Rythmik F12SE sub woofer for the low end. I was curious if upgrade to H390 which is almost double the power that H160 provides would make any difference to my bookshelves for which H160 (power wise) seems adequate.
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I have the Focal 1008Be Electra’s as well. I drive them with a 40 WPC AEC/Cary tube amp/preamp and they sound wonderful, in my opinion. Focal’s are fairly efficient. Cheers, from The Woodlands, Texas |
Do not confuse speaker "rated" power with what you need. Do they play loud enough for you? Any hint of clipping on a loud transient? Cymbal crash etc? Be realistic in the peak level you actually play at. Movie special effects or symphony front row? WHO concert level? ( For the latter case you probably have hearing damage and it does not matter) You can get an idea by using various on-line calculators that input speaker efficiency, listening distance, desired overhead, etc. Decent understanding, but it does not take into account the effective impedance, and hence current requirement due to phase vs impedance. Some speakers, like the Keff R3 are absolutely brutal and bigger power is needed. I run my bookshelves in a large room with a 60W MOSFET with a HUGE power supply and filter bank. For fun, I tried my Schiit REKKR (2W) and it did folk music just fine. I also tried my workshop amp, FOSI V3 which is in reality about 30W and it fell on it's face, not for power, but for load variance issues. Well, it is an $80 amp! You can also give the Hegel power supply some breathing room by putting a good correctly sized cap in-line with the amp input. Depending on input impedance, give a 20 Hz first order roll-off. This will help with reducing compression from transients, though the Hegel does have a decent power supply. Far more critical on a Rotel or something where the forgot about putting in filter caps. I also support multiple subs. Not for power, punch, or distortion, but for smoothing out the room nodes. A single 12 will play loud enough to bust your ear drums. It is smoothing the response that matters. Any wavelength smaller than the box dimension is basically omnidirectional. Just to be clear.
FORGET all that, and dump the 160 to me for a couple hundred bucks and buy a 1000W Crown :) |
@fastfreight thanks will dig it out tonight and give it a shot for sure. |
@fastfreight I guess I should try that with one sub like you advised and then get the second one as advised. I never thought of adjustment in that sense ever honestly. |
+1 on a second sub either way, as @soix has stated.
This is sort of true. Very very low bass can be directionless. Try this: stand in your room, close your eyes, and point to the sub. You can pick out a single sub almost every time. Having two subs allows the integration to be almost seamless. I am a REL fan, but you can integrate most subs easily. First, set each sub's phase for maximum bass response. They may be different Then, set the sub volume where you can hear it, and adjust the low frequencies until they just disappear. Then turn down the volume until you can barely hear it. do this one at a time; you may need to go back and forth a bit. Properly adjusted, not only will the bass fill in the lows, it will more effectively support the soundstage and improve the midrange of your speakers. And they will disappear much more readily. At least this all did for me. You may even find experimenting with different sub positions helps. |
thanks @audioman58 makes sense. I will try them out and keep you guys posted. Luxman and Pass are indeed very sought after if price is ofcourse not the concern. The build quality speaks for itself. |
No vintage equipment can go toe to toe with the New Hegel integrated amps , pits very respectable , my only knock is that they assemble in China ,no need for Thst just to make much bigger profit , Luxman don’t ,or Pass Labs and the Krell 300i is excellent I forgot and my dealer gave my friend a good deal on his for under $8k a great piece of engineering.and made in U.S.A. |
@audioman58 I agree with you on that. How do you compare say vintage sansui or pioneers (ofcourse without the dac) vs Hegel or amps today rather in general? Do you think they (vintage) amps still stand a chance knowing not much has evolved in terms of "amplification" over the years.
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Well, in addition to the power differential with the H390 you’re also getting overall higher parts quality in both the preamp and amp sections (don’t discount that as it’s huge), a much better DAC (if that’s even an issue), and apparently a smoother-sounding device, which is different. Will it be significantly better to you? I’d tend to think so but who knows? My only point about the additional sub is you’ll most certainly experience improvements that would come at a much lower cost than an H390. Which would be better or more significant to you in your room and system and for your tastes is an unknown. I just wanted to bring the sub option up as another possibility you’d probably want to implement at some point anyway because two subs are just flat-out better than one. If it was me I think I’d add a second F12 first (used if possible) and live with that for a while and see what that does for you, plus it’s much cheaper and may delay “the itch” to upgrade further for a while. Plus, and as I mentioned earlier, you’ll likely wanna add a second sub anyway at some point so why not just start there? Honestly, I don’t think you can go wrong either way, so it really comes down to a matter of budget and priorities. All that said and because I’m very good at making things more complicated, here’s a nice used H390 at a good discount that you could try, and if it doesn’t provide significant improvements you can just turn around and sell it for little/no loss. And to make matters even more complicated, here’s an F12G SE for sale as well. You must really hate me at this point, and I wouldn’t blame you. If I was to try to put lipstick on this pig I’d say you could buy both these used pieces for less than a new H390 alone with relatively little risk if either or both don’t blow you away. Ok, I’ll leave you alone now but hope this at least gives you some useful things to think about. |
@soix thanks for the reply. My concern was primarily going from H160 to H390 because my bookshelves dont even need so much power and hence i was wondering if it even made sense to do so. My Focal Electra bookshelves only need max 150W power which H160 already provides. |
Apparently Hegel has tweaked their house sound a bit with the H390 (and H590) to skew a little smoother and less incisive so that’s something to consider. Here’s a review with some thoughts on the H360 versus the H390… You might also consider adding a second sub that’d likely bring sizable improvements and be around $5000 less expensive. Just another option to chew on FWIW and hope this helps at least somewhat. |
