We have mixed feelings on the Hegel, Keoliphant finds the treble a bit thin so we are wondering what is causing that? We had a demo earlier in the year of the Hegel 190 and the Nuprime STA 9 combo with the Nad C658 dac/preamp far outperformed it for the same money.
The new 390 is supposed to sound great.
As per Darko's video, on the Hegel/Ref 1 although we often respect his opinions he liked the Kii speakers and we really don't like them at all so it is hard to tell if this combo sounds great or just better than the Kii or are there other similarly priced amplifiers that will offer the great bass of the Hegel amplifier with other qualities.
When we had the older Hegel series we found that the Luxman and the Unision Research or Coda CS ib intergrated amplifiers were often chossen over the Hegel in our shootouts at the shop.
At one time we had the Hegel, Luxman, Coda, Unison Reseach, Naim and Devialet integrated amplifiers all in the
The other point is that the OP made is that Kef often shows with Hegel, that may be more of a corporate decision than the sonic one, many times these pairing occurs because of a corporate relationship rather than through rigorous testing of lots of other components.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
The new 390 is supposed to sound great.
As per Darko's video, on the Hegel/Ref 1 although we often respect his opinions he liked the Kii speakers and we really don't like them at all so it is hard to tell if this combo sounds great or just better than the Kii or are there other similarly priced amplifiers that will offer the great bass of the Hegel amplifier with other qualities.
When we had the older Hegel series we found that the Luxman and the Unision Research or Coda CS ib intergrated amplifiers were often chossen over the Hegel in our shootouts at the shop.
At one time we had the Hegel, Luxman, Coda, Unison Reseach, Naim and Devialet integrated amplifiers all in the
The other point is that the OP made is that Kef often shows with Hegel, that may be more of a corporate decision than the sonic one, many times these pairing occurs because of a corporate relationship rather than through rigorous testing of lots of other components.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ