Интегральные усилители — Hegel H590

The H590 is an integrated amplifier with DAC that Hegel Music Systems describes as its flagship, from, the Norwegian company based in Oslo. It sits above the H390 and H190 in Hegel's range, and every circuit board in it is specific to this model. It combines a high-power dual-mono amplifier, an analogue preamplifier, a DAC and network streaming, and is designed to drive almost any loudspeaker from a single chassis.

Key specs that matter

The H590 delivers 301W per channel into 8 ohms and remains stable into 2 ohms. Frequency response is 5Hz to 180kHz, signal-to-noise ratio exceeds 100dB, distortion is below 0.005% at 50W into 8 ohms, intermodulation is below 0.01% and the damping factor exceeds 4,000. Analogue inputs are two balanced XLR and three unbalanced RCA, one of which can be set as a home-theatre bypass. Digital inputs are coaxial BNC, coaxial RCA, three optical, USB and Ethernet, with a coaxial BNC digital output, a fixed RCA output and a variable RCA output. The DAC is built around an AKM chip, and MQA is supported via USB. The chassis measures 171 x 430 x 445mm and weighs 22kg.

Engineering and use context

Each channel has its own gain stage and power supply, fed from a toroidal transformer 50% larger than the one in the earlier H360, and the output stage uses 12 transistors per channel against the H360's eight. Hegel's DualPower approach gives the gain and output sections separate transformer windings, so heavy current demands in the output stage do not disturb the voltage gain stages. SoundEngine2 is Hegel's patented feed-forward error correction, which measures the distortion produced in the Class A/B output stage and cancels it, removing crossover distortion and reducing other distortion by up to 100 times. A by-product is very low output impedance, which is where the very high damping factor comes from, giving tight electrical control over woofer movement. The Ethernet input was given particular attention for streaming, supporting UPnP, Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect, and the amplifier is Control4 ready. A volume lock on any input lets a streamer's app such as Sonos or Bluesound control the level. The H590 has no phono stage, and is supplied with Hegel's all-metal RC8 remote.

Pairing

With its high power and stability into low impedances, the H590 drives large, low-sensitivity and low-impedance floorstanders that challenge most integrated amplifiers. Turntable owners need an external phono stage, and the home-theatre bypass input lets it share speakers with an AV processor.

Alternatives

Hegel's own H390 offers 250W per channel with a similar DAC and streaming feature set in a smaller chassis.