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

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. 

I have a single AHB2 with the HPA4 and Dac 3B in powering Harbeth P3’s in a small family room-Phenomenal. I also have a Belles Aria with a Dac 3B powering Harbeth P3’s in another small room-Phenomenal. Point is, the AHB2 is an amazing amp but it obviously has less coloration than other amps. Also different recordings, different room acoustics matter greatly. I would never let go of my AHB2 because when I am listening to the right type of music and the right type of recording it just can’t be beat. With other types of music and other types of recordings I change rooms. Having said all that I don’t know that if I had room or the budget for one amp that it would be the winner. I think there are other amps out there that may perform better as “jack of all trades” amps.