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

For the ASR crowd it measures very, very well. Better than any of the Class D stuff. 

"It`s Mid-Fi" - I`m being facetious.

There is no such a thing as an "audiophile" amp. It is no less "hi fidelity", than Belles, Krell, McCormack, or Parasound amplifiers. How it performs depends on the speakers, and upstream components you have teamed up with it.

There is no such a thing as an "audiophile" amp. It is no less "hi fidelity", than Belles, Krell, McCormack, or Parasound amplifiers.

@pmm If we define fidelity as, “the output being faithful to the input” then it is a true hiFi amp.

How it performs depends on the speakers, and upstream components you have teamed up with it.

“Performs” may be appropriate the appropriate word with respect to the speakers complex load.

But “Performs” may be better stated as “Sounds” with respect to the preamp and source components…

In my opinion, it is easier to have a low distortion amp, and speakers, and do any tuning of the sound with a single component like, for instance, solely with a tube preamp.

That is providing that a low distortion system may be too clinical for what people want, and that those people want some harmonic distortion signature to be rolled in.

Once we get two or three things adding together, then it gets a bit more difficult to understand what is happening… and where.

Chris Bryant and Hi Fi Critic commended it on its measurements but gave it a very low score for sound quality-mainly because of its poor musical communication.

@holmz : Funny. I was thinking "how it sounds" when I typed "performs".

Thanks for pointing that out.