Dust Settled Consensus- is the Benchmark AHB2 an Audiophile Amplifier?

I liked the AHB2 very much when I got it. It was very clear, clean and noiseless, but when the Coda 16 arrived it made the AHB2 sound thin, anemic and lacking weight. I now have tube mono blocks so maybe I like distortion.

I totally agree with that comment with certain speakers. In fact, I bought lancelocks AHB2. The CODA #16 sound a lot like the AHB2 on top but it has grunt. That 150 watt CODA #16 is more powerful sounding than my 400 or 500 watt AHB2 monos. Though with a proper speaker match the AHB2 is great.

That comment about the AHB2 owners never hearing or owned $10K+ amps is not true in my case or in the case of some folks I have conversed with online.

The great thing about the AHB2 is that it should not be an amp that is a mystery. It is rather low cost and with a 30-day, home trial. If it does not work for you then you move on.

The guy that bought my KRELL Duo 175XD (a $11K amp) had the AHB2 with Harbeth speakers (a great pairing in my opinion). He was amazed at what he heard. However, after a couple of weeks he felt he was listening to the amp and not the music. It was too revealing for him. He easily sold the AHB2 and bought my KRELL. He loves my KRELL so far. Though I would say the KRELL is sufficiently revealing and is just much warmer.

I find the pairing of the AHB2 with my tubed Conrad-Johnson preamp to be detailed AND quite warm sounding with GoldenEar Triton 1 speakers.

I own a pair of AHB2 and use them as monoblocks with my Magico A3s and REL T/9i subs. They perform well and as advertised. But this is in the context of my system and room. So others experience may be different.

Do you think so @kingbarbuda ?

I find low distortion gear quiet, and others have statements like, “it lacks punch”, “lacks weight”, sounds anemic or thin.

I know my tube seems better for TV and rock in Ultra Linear, and in Triode seem thinner/leaner/quieter, with more space between things.

This is probably mostly BS, but how I think of our the hearing work as in that we get direction from the delay between our ears and other queues. So that gives and azimuth direction.The if the drummer is off to the right and close to the back of the stage, we get a quick echo off the back wall, with the side wall echo maybe be a little further delayed.
If the singer is in the middle and in front, then the back wall echo will be more delayed.
The a guitar player may be on the left and has a different back and side wall delay.

Then in our mind we have a model of where the instrument must be at to make the delays all comport with the reality of what we hear.

Assuming that is not total BS, then what happens when we have IMD?
Is the product of the singer and the guitar player happening at the singers location, the guitar players location, or some other place or places which are products of the two?

I am assuming that it is more locations and that this fills the sound stage with the IMD products filling some of the blank space in a spatial sense.

Maybe it is not happening that way, but higher distortion does seem fuller. And I cannot conjure up a hypothesis of why the lower distortion gear seems to be more lean in a spatial sense… But it seems that the lower distortion is less exciting, less full, more austere and quieter. So it is great on some stuff and maybe not so good for say, rock and big band music.

it would be interesting to know with the Krell person, and others, whether they find the ABH2 better for some genres of music than others… or of there is no correlation??

@holmz I have more than a few amps and I would have to put the AHB2s back in my system to give you more up to date impressions. But here are a couple of things. I tend to do most of my listening to jazz. A large amount of piano. A large amount of ECM label. This lends itself to a quiet distortion-free amp. I do occasionally listen to rock and have had no issues that I can recall. But one thing I should note is that there are LEDs on the front of the AHB2 which will let you know if the amp is clipping. I have not had any issues with clipping. I would say that if you are looking for an amp to color your sound, these are not the amps for you. But if you are looking for clean detail and all the other audiophile amp characteristics, then this amp is a contender. 

It measures really good, offers good value, and Benchmark is big in pro audio market so that means audiophiles will tend to discount it compared to whatever other “audiophile” amp it may be that manages to catch their ear or eye for whatever reason. So if you want to buy objectively check out Benchmark. Otherwise have at it and take your pick for whatever reasons that might turn you on. It’s a free country. Personally I consider it an “audiophile” amp.   No objective reason to consider it anything else.  It’s just semantics anyhoo.