Is the Hegel H-20 better than the Parasound A-21?

Damn you Audiooracle!! You got me frozen like a deer in the headlights over the Aragon 8008. Checked out many internal pic's and went into forums with over fifty opinions by many owners.
What a piece of work for $4400.00. Four high quality 35K microfarad Cornell Dubilier capacitors made in the U.S.A. and two large toroidal transformers. Phew!! I have never seen an amp in twenty years with what this has to offer for the price. Would be interesting to hook up the Halo JC-2 Pre-amp to the Aragon.
What Pre did you use at the show?

It appears that Aragon as well as Acurus are owned by Indy Audio Labs who bought them out in recent years and the Aragon website looks pretty crappy. I'll stick with Parasound and Hegel. Since 1990, I have owned three Parasound Pre-amps and two of their amps.
Never owned Hegel but have friends that have purchased Hegel and take their opinion seriously. Over thirty years later Parasound is still owned by Richard Schram and holding strong. That says a lot.
And Bent Holter is still the original owner of Hegel
which has been in business for twenty five years.

Closer examination of the Aragon 8008 MKII interior shows that the parts placement and layout looks like somebody stuffed the trunk of a '56 Buick blindfolded. Sloppy work the way things are stacked on each other. If Aragon would get rid of that ugly "V" metal cut on the faceplate and heat sink would make for a better cavity interior for more layout room. Never did like that 1930's retro Sci-Fi look. The layout in the Parasound and Hegel is very nice.

I sold Aragon in the ninties the new amps are way better then any of their original amplifiers.

The Hegel products are way over rated, their new Dacs are good but their $2,500.00 HD 25 is not even close in terms of sound quality or features than the Auralic Vega which is only $1K more.

The new Chord Qute HD at $1,800.00 is also way better than the Hegel dacs, way too much marketing on their website rather than real innovation.

So with Hegel it depends on the product, not every thing they make is great.

I attended the 2013 NY Audio Show and I agree with Audiooracle's description of the Aragon 8008 sound. The room featuring this amp had lots of people visiting multiple times. That room, along with the Martin Logan/Krell room, had the best sound by far on that floor. The sound performance easily surpasses the price tag of this amp and the entire system. The rest of the system was the Neo-Classic 300B RC Preamplifier, Waterfall's Victoria Evo glass speakers with Wireworld 7 cables.

AudioZen, that's not the complete story. Acurus and Aragon's parent company was Mondial. Mondial was sold to the Klipsch Group in 2001 and they never did anything with the brands. Rick Santiago left Klipsch and founded Indy Audio Labs, which acquired Aragon and Acurus from the Klipsch Group. The brands were dormant for years, but it seems that the person leading the two brands now has always been involved with these amps.