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John
Hegel amplifiers are an iron fist in a velvet glove; elegant beasts dressed in the plainest of attire. We’ve already seen their H190 integrated up close and taken a deep dive on the flagship H590 integrated that launched a year ago to the day at Munich High-End 2018.
At this year’s Munich event, the Norwegians are tending to the middle of their amplifier range with the introduction of the H390 — an H360 replacement that borrows tech from the H590 to offer up 250wpc of Class A/B power armed with Hegel’s not-so-secret Soundengine 2 feed-forward circuitry that compares input to possible output and before adding that difference – phased inverted – to the output, thus cancelling any detected distortions.
From Hegel’s Oslo HQ, chief designer Bent Holter goes much further on how Soundengine 2 works in this (shotgun) video:
On analogue inputs, the H390 offers up 1 x balanced XLR and 2 x single-ended RCA.
And it wouldn’t be a Hegel integrated without a suite of digital inputs that feed a DAC whose design is largely informed by the Mohican CD player. Here, a trio of TOSLINK plus one each of coaxial, BNC and USB, all of which are MQA-capable.
The Ethernet input hooks the H390 into a network for streaming. Out of the gate, that means UPnP/DLNA, Airplay, Spotify Connect and – in the Autumn/Fall/Herbst – a firmware update will add Roon Ready certification. And when that happens, expect to see Roon Readiness arrive at the H190 and H590 as well.
The H390 will sell for €5900 when it begins shipping in August.
Further information: Hegel
