There's a gentleman that frequents both AA and Agon that has performed several different mods to his HCA-2. According to what he's stated, the amp responds very well to some basic mods. I'm sure he'll chime in once he sees this post. If not, i'll drop him an email and see if he can help you out. Sean > |
I agree with Fiddler. The Marantz is probably on the noticeably warm and soft side i.e. thick and dull sounding. Working with interconnects and power cables may correct some of this, but short of modifying the Marantz, you may be stuck with that sound. Correcting one set of problems may lead to a more revealing system, which in turn could have you looking for other problems once they are made more apparent. Sean > |
Audioengr: You can't fix what isn't there. That is, unless you re-design the circuit. If you do that, it is no longer the same product. Other than that, there's a reason that i've always stressed wide bandwidth. In order to achieve wide bandwidth, you have to have speed. With speed, linear dynamics are an afterthought and everything falls into place a lot easier. If you can maintain this speed into any given impedance, you've now got stability. Stability results in consistent results & performance regardless of the load. Therefore speed and stability are the key factors here, nothing else. This is why i "bagged" on the HCA-2 so much. It was neither fast enough nor stable enough for me to consider it a worthy product. The fact that certain folks at Stereophile recommended it so highly ( ST ) that JA overlooked the poor performance and ranked it in Class A recommendations are what made me stir up all the hoopla about this amp. All i can say is that in stock form, this amp would be nothing to write home about. It may be miles better after being modified, but those mods would have to be pretty adventurous to bring it up to what i would consider a "Class A" type of component. Obviously, these are just my thoughts which are likely to clash with other personal points of view. Sean > |
Fiddler: Fast amplifiers have wide bandwidth, they don't ring just above the audio passband, they reproduce square waves easily, etc... This amplifier fails all of those tests as can be seen in the Stereophile test results of the HCA-2. Having said that, a lot of people are fooled / confused into thinking that the system is "faster" by reducing the amount of sound that they hear. Less density to the sound, in tonal balance and / or harmonic structure, tend to make things sound cleaner and clearer i.e. add apparent speed due to the sound being less congested. Evidently, a lot of people that own or have heard the HCA-2 that think that the amp is "fast" don't know what they are listening to or for. What do i base this statement on? The Stereophile test results proved this amp to be "slow" beyond a reasonable doubt. One can buy, use, listen to whatever they like. That is obviously everyone's individual option open to their own preferences. I'm not debating that some people will like how this amp sounds / interacts with specific components. The fact that this is a poorly designed amp, lacks speed, lacks stability, etc... has already been verified and is not really open to debate. At least not by anyone that understands how electronics work and can interpret test results. Sean > |
