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Benchmark ahb2 canada12/27/2023 But it is decidedly a tube sound with all the lusciousness and romanticism thereby suggested. ![]() As I pointed out in my review, the Bia is perhaps best described as classic tube sound brought up to date: very dynamic, excellent transient response, well-defined and articulate bass, gorgeous midrange. Now both of these amps are, generally speaking, neutral within what I call acceptable boundaries of neutrality, but neither of them is dead neutral. For the past year and longer, the amplifiers I’ve been mostly listening to have been the Zesto Audio Bia, an all-tube unit, and the Quad 909 solid-state, but solid-state with limited bandwidth both top and bottom (the AHB2’s bandwidth is extremely wide). The sensitivity of all these speakers is around 85–87dB and they present reasonable impedance loads.Īn adjective that came to mind when I first fired up the Benchmark was “crisp.” “Ah, see,” I hear several of you saying, “solid-state.” Well, yes and then again no. (Digital sources are a Marantz 8000 SACD player and a Benchmark DAC vinyl, a Basis 2200 and Vector IV ’arm with an Ortofon Windfeld pickup.) Allowing for differences in the speakers, the amp sounded identical on all, its 100 watts more than sufficient to drive them to levels far higher than I could comfortably sustain for more than a few minutes. I auditioned the AHB2 on my Quad 2805 electrostatics, Harbeth Super HL5pluses, and the new Falcon LS3/5as. They are also for the most part minimalist as regards function and size: You won’t herniate yourself toting this amplifier around because it measures 11″ x 4″ x 9″ and weighs a mere 13 pounds. While Benchmark products have made serious incursions into the audiophile community, they are made for the professional market (where they are ubiquitous) and designed to the most exacting standards of performance and reliability. I front-load my remarks with these numbers to get your attention. The amp, which is THX certified, is outfitted with a number of protection circuits, the operation of which is monitored by front-panel LEDs, is unconditionally stable, and, like all Benchmark products, is backed by an impressive five-year warranty. (I should immediately add that these figures have not been achieved by heaping on huge amounts of negative feedback, à la those wretched solid-state designs of the Seventies: assisted by a feed-forward error-correction circuit, the AHB2’s noise and distortion hold up under dynamic, not just static, conditions.) The power output is 100Wpc, with a claimed 18 amperes of current in stereo mode, bridgeable to 380W mono. The AHB2 boasts a signal-to-noise ratio that exceeds 132dB and total harmonic distortion figures of –131dB (3 rd harmonic) and –122dB (2 nd harmonic) under no-load conditions it also exhibits, so Benchmark claims, “no trace” of crossover-notch distortion, though it is Class AB, not Class A. ![]() That said, even by contemporary standards of the most sophisticated, exotic, and expensive electronics, this new amplifier is something of a technological tour de force. ![]() Ferretting out differences typically involves zeroing in on a very specific and limited characteristic or set of characteristics with such concentration as to leave one tired, uncertain, or both: in other words, an activity that is the very antithesis of what is involved in listening seriously, even critically-to say nothing of pleasurably-to music. I know this is not the sort of thing we’re supposed to say about products, but it has been evident for a very long time now that solid-state electronics, particularly linestage preamplifiers and power amplifiers, have reached a point where they are effectively a solved problem such that it is exceeding difficult to tell one from another even in the most exacting A/B comparisons. Used within its limitations and for its intended purposes it is in any practical sense perfect. I don’t have much to say about the sonic qualities of Benchmark’s new AHB2 power amplifier because there isn’t that much to say.
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