Back to Blog
Benchmark ahb2 amplifier review6/19/2023 ![]() ![]() The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s performing Hovhaness’ Mysterious Mountains (Telarc 16/44.1) was sublime. Even with this wash of sounds, the hit of the Floor tom, or the crisp full fleshed out sound of the snare was colorless and clearly projected. The track “Morning” enters with acoustic guitar strumming and stereo vocals, and leads into lovely strings with reverberant stereo space all around. Listening to Beck’s “Morning Phase” (24/96) was ear opening and lovely on the AHB2. Extending to the high frequencies were equally clear and distortion free, no hype here- just honest clean reproduction. The midrange was articulate and clear with an obvious clarity that bested my current class A/B amplifier. In fact, this tidy beast produced some of the tightest low end I’ve ever heard in my 2 way speakers. I was amazed at the AHB2’s ability to keep up with dense music mixes and never sound congested or lacking. This amplifier runs like a high-performance sports car. Even more obvious was a clarity to the amplification. The extremely low noise floor became revealed as orchestras truly faded to the acoustic space and black was truly black – no residual noise whatsoever from speaker drivers. My initial reaction was in the form of a grin, as I heard my music amplified in a clear and coherent manner. I gave the Benchmark amplifier some time to warm-up and have had it in my system for several weeks. All cabling was balanced solid core copper. For speakers I used my Green Mountain Eos HX 2-way speakers. I used the Crane song Avocet and several other DACs to feed Balanced stereo program material to the AHB2. Most current professional and audiophile DACS can also achieve very low noise floors – a match made in audiophile heaven. Technically speaking, the AHB2’s Vanishingly low noise floor can be compared to the dynamic capabilities of a 22-bit digital system. Matching the input sensitivity allowed me to optimize the Gain control between the Crane Song Avocet and the AHB2. One dip switch on the right controls mono or stereo operation, while the 3 position switch on the left controls input sensitivity – a welcome feature. Other than the addition of Speakon connectors, the Balanced XLR inputs and speaker terminals are standard. On the business end of things, connectivity is straight forward. The clip lights will illuminate when occasional clipping is present (something that never happened for me), and the fault protection kicks in when severe overdrive occurs- to protect speakers. If issues arise, the fault circuit mutes both channels to protect the amplifier and speakers. Benchmark built into the AHB2- a power supply fault protection to monitor voltage, current, and temperature. With a clean and tidy footprint, The front panel allows access to 1 power button, and several LEDs that indicate proper operation. The distortion is also quite low, at 0.00011% THD in stereo mode. This super quiet amplifier topology allows for a signal-to-noise ration of 130dB unweighted. The AHB2 is a 2 channel audio amplifier with 100 watts of power into 8 ohms, and 190 into 4 ohms(bridged mono mode 380 watts/8ohms). In this quest to squeeze the last sound molecules from my speaker drivers, I have been comparing class A, Class A/B, Class D, and now this hybrid Class H and AB design from Benchmark and THX.ĭelivering clean power with an exceptionally low noise floor are the key ingredients to Benchmark’s new Amplifier. well, I've already said how pleased I am with it combined with the Montis in that particular room setup.Achieving the full performance/responsiveness out of my speakers has motivated me to examine various amplifiers designs lately. and, frankly, the AHB2 sounds so good that. I now own an NAD M33 with Purifi amps (another system) that I could try with the Montis, but that's surely another topic. I also used, for a long time, an Adcom GFA-555 (Nelson Pass designed) which I modified to improve the mid- and high frequency power supply bypassing, which gave better results than the tube beasties. I've tried tube power amps - a pair of McIntosh MC60s and a Marantz 8B that I reconditioned - but these poop out at the upper end and make the Montis sound dull and lifeless. The real trick is getting the mid- and treble range right, and this is extremely well done by the AHB2. As a reminder, many ML speakers have their own amplification for driving the bass units. This pair sounds as good as the extraordinary measurements indicate: utterly clean, transparent, stable and satisfying. I drive my Martin Logan Montis pair with the Benchmark AHB2 driven by the DAC3 HGC. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |