@twoleftears
I am using a Hegel H160 to power my Harbeth 30.1, and find it to be excellent. I did not buy the Hegel because of Alan Shaw's high opinion of the manufacturer, but it is interesting to note what he likes so much about their amps. From the Harbeth forum in May:
I am using a Hegel H160 to power my Harbeth 30.1, and find it to be excellent. I did not buy the Hegel because of Alan Shaw's high opinion of the manufacturer, but it is interesting to note what he likes so much about their amps. From the Harbeth forum in May:
My position on Hegel is abundantly clear. It is the only hifi amp I have ever measured in my lab that has what I consider to be a proper gain structure throughout.
In layman's language that means that with a 'hot' source pumping audio volts into the input channel it is practically impossible to clip or overload the input. That indicates to me a mature, pragmatic real-world approach to the circuit design in a market where far too many amps have input stage clipping evidenced by the ridiculously low setting of the volume control (typically 10 o'clock or lower) at which the output clips. Hence a hard, hard, grainy sound. Indeed, I'd suspect that the extreme sensitivity of the volume control (hardly on, really loud) is prima facie evidence of clipping.
I have been playing P3XD over the last days via one of my H390s and with the volume at about 60/99, I have lots of power reserve and a clean, loud, unclipped sound.