Good recordings are best enjoyed naked. The organic sound of Hegel means that all parts of a dynamic recording are reproduced exactly like the original. The quality of the sound coming out of your speakers are only limited by what happened in the recording studio. Nothing added, nothing taken out - no artificial ingredients.

It's a common fact: As a story is told from person to person, details change. Things are added, others lost. At some point, the story has changed. When a music signal is passing through an audio amplifier a similar effect will take place. As the signal is passed from stage to stage within the audio amplifier, the music signal will be changed by every single amplifier stage.

All Hegel audio amplifiers are using a new kind of distributed amplifier technology called DualAmp Technology. This technology is used in all integrated amplifiers and power amplifiers from Hegel. In normal audio amplifiers, the voltage gain stages and current gain stages are combined in the same amplifier module.

Normal audio amplifiers are using the same power supply for the different amplifier blocks within the audio amplifier. The amplifier output stage driving the loudspeaker is using the same power supply as the crucial input stages and voltage gain stages of the audio amplifier. The large currents flowing in the connected loudspeakers will disturb the sensitive input and voltage gain stages of the audio amplifier.

After converting the digital CD data to the analog domain with the SyncroDAC converter, the high-frequency noise has to be removed from the analog signal. This prevents high-frequency noise from the conversion process to reach the pre-amplifier and power-amplifier in the audio system. High-Frequency noise will reduce the linearity and resolution of the complete audio system.

In a CD player, one of the most important parts is the master clock signal. The master clock is controlling the rhythm of the CD player by telling the DAC chip exactly when to convert the audio signal from digital to analog. To have the best possible sound, it is vital to have a master clock that has a very stable clock frequency and lowest possible jitter. Jitter is timing errors in clock generator circuits.

Almost all HiFi CD Players today are using asynchronous upsampling to convert digital audio data to analog audio. Hegel found that using this kind of asynchronous converter technology will convert jitter error into amplitude error, giving less than optimal sound quality. The Hegel CD Players are using a new digital to analog conversion technology called synchronized upsampling.

The USB connector found on Hegel amplifiers and digital to analog converters opens a whole new world for music and movie lovers. This functionality allows you to easily connect your Hegel product to any computer with a reasonably new Windows or Mac Os operating system installed. The most common Linux systems will also work. The Hegel USB technology is actually a computer sound card, or audio controller if you like.

Modern day Digital-to-Analog Converters are much driven by a numbers game. How high a sampling rate can they achieve? Are they bit perfect? What levels of DSD can they decode? The list is long. All of these things are essentially good features. There is absolutely nothing wrong with playing DSD files or having a bit perfect DAC.