Even as we speak, most of my digital listening is spent with the unstressed move of Tidal HiFi, “Crimson Ebook” CDs, and 16/44.1kHz downloads. Not solely that, however I nearly at all times want my music within the format by which it was initially launched. Fairly often, I discover remastered variations of the music I’ve recognized since my youth to sound bizarre, soulless, and distracting. After listening to the Beatles and Dylan a thousand instances, my DNA has turn into wired to the unique Capitol and Columbia variations performed on the radio within the Nineteen Sixties. That is why I gather first-pressing LPs and seven” 45s.
After two days of listening to dozens of fancy audio programs on the 2016 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, I noticed that, in all of the best-sounding rooms, I would seen “44.1” beaming from the DACs’ shows. After I requested one particularly high-profile exhibitor, “Why not hi-rez?,” he coyly smiled and stated, “I play what sounds good . . . that is my job!”
At that present, Hegel Music Methods’ US distributor, Eileen Gosvig, and Anders Ertzeid, Hegel’s VP of gross sales and advertising and marketing, took me by each arms and led me to a rack of drugs sitting between a pair of KEF audio system. “Look. What do you see?”
My glasses have been fairly grease-smeared. I frowned dumbly and stated, “Duh . . . I do not know.” Questioning what they anticipated me to note, I went on: “Seems like a rack of Hegels with a CD participant on prime.” Then I attempted, unsuccessfully, to recollect the names of Hegel’s two CD gamers: the entry-level CDP2A and their well-regarded assertion mannequin, the CDP4A (each about to be discontinued at time of writing).
Leatherstocking Tales
As I cleaned my glasses, Anders Ertzeid defined that the darkish metallic field atop the stack was Hegel’s new CD participant, designed as a particular love-project by Hegel’s founder and chief engineer, Bent Holter. Ertzeid stated that Holter named it Mohican (as in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Final of the . . .) as a result of it performs solely “Crimson Ebook” CDsno SACDs, no digital enterand so is among the many final of a dying breed. He stated that Holter had engineered it to final a very long time, and quoted him: “‘I do not care if I promote solely seven! I need to put my greatest effort and all the things I acquired into making the highest-quality CD participant I can.'”
My thoughts drifted to recollections of traditional machines . . . Linn’s CD12, Accuphase’s DP-90 . . . I grasped the place Holter was coming from, and admired his heretical ambition. My glasses nonetheless off, I regarded Eileen Gosvig straight within the eye and squinted. “What do I’ve to do to get a overview pattern?”
Description
The Hegel Mohican is a starkly elegant metal field weighing 14.3 lbs and measuring 16.93″ extensive by 3.14″ excessive by 11.42″ deep. It has a Sanyo disc transport, and an AKM AK4490 32-bit digital-to-analog converter to decode the 16/44.1 CD information with out upsampling. This Mohican is made in Norway, and has the appear and feel of a high-quality Scandinavian product.
On its darkish faceplate are two massive knobs. You do not flip themyou push. Press the highest of the left knob to show the participant on. Push the highest of the correct knob to open or shut the disc drawer, then push the bottom-right portion of the identical knob to Play, or on the bottom-left portion to Cease. Press the left-hand knob on the bottom-right or -left to respectively play the following or earlier monitor. It is all very strong and easy. The slim rectangular show tells you solely which monitor is chosen and the way lengthy it has been taking part in.
The Mohican’s rear panel is even less complicated: pairs of unbalanced (RCA) and balanced (XLR) analog outputs, an IEC power-cord inlet, and a digital output (true 75-ohm BNC).
System
I used the Hegel Mohican for a number of months, and was each day struck by how military-grade sturdy it felt to the contact. I used it with all kinds of overview gear, however for the sake of this overview and my listening impressions, I used solely my greatest reference system: DeVore Constancy Orangutan O/93 audio system pushed by a Move Labs HPA-1 preamplifier and headphone amp and a First Watt J2 stereo energy amplifier. I then double-checked what I would heard by listening once more, by headphones: Audeze LCD-X, HiFiMan HE1000 V2, and Sony MDR-Z1R.
Listening
After I overview a loudspeaker, the very first thing I do is play some well-recorded solo piano. This reveals me how the speaker delivers weight, momentum, and tone. With a DAC or CD participant, I start with music that is enormous and sophisticated, with punched-out bass, hypertextured midrange, solo and massed voices, aggressive percussion, and light-speed synthesizer highs. Then, straight away, I can inform if its programs of digital preservation and analog restoration are delivering a well-sorted phantasm. If a DAC or CD participant sounds thick, onerous, opaque, or confused, then each recording thereafter will undergo in (roughly) the identical method.
In that spirit, the music from the clever, Cirque du Soleillike theater of Brute driveor Brute Pressure (CD, Ozono 7794440 002399) was the right method to start my evaluation of the Hegel Mohican. Brute drive is a high-energy, continually morphing kaleidoscope of sound. If the Mohican may navigate it with out midrange mud, vapid bass, or metallic synths, then it will get a minimum of one gold star. Solely minutes into the primary monitor, “Playero,” I awarded the Hegel two starsthe second was for type and coherence. The Mohican did not simply type its approach by this sonic extravaganceit navigated it with a gymnast’s consideration to correct kind.
Northern Gentle: Supposedly, Icelandic singer-composer Jón Pór “Jónsi” Birgisson named his band after his sister Sigurrós Elín—however the group’s identify, Sigur Rós, means, actually, victory rose. I first found Sigur Rós by way of my love for and research of the music of Björk Gudmundsdóttir, which is past improbable. In search of music much more tough than Brute driveI selected Sigur Rós’s fantastically packaged Thanks . . . (CD, Geffen B0005345-02). No English is sung on this 2005 album, which options strings, brass, various percussion, synthesizers, bizarre noises, a choir, and Jónsi’s wordless, falsetto vocalizing. Thanks . . . is my greatest check of any CD participanta spectacularly dynamic sound collage that not solely shifts beats and tempos with numbing frequency, however sometimes drifts into prolonged intervals of what feels like radio interstation hiss or a hairball on my cartridge’s stylus. When this album is reproduced correctly, these fuzzy distortions turn into significant, electronically textured communication.
