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Tweaked RedBook
 Quoting from my review of Esoteric's $5,000 SA-50, "Hegel's €3,200 CDP4AMkII does not offer half its functionality nor its overkill build but retaliates with special claims for its very own transport servo circuits—unlike Esoteric, Hegel does not design and build transports so they must outsource theirs from the usual OEMs and then improve upon the stock servos—a LinearPhase filter, fully balanced circuitry and fixed synchronous upsampling. The SA-50 was configured as it sounded best to me, 4FS upsampling with the S_DLY apodizing filter. Those two machines were very closely matched. The differences were small and mostly of gestalt.


"Ultimately, it came down to shades of sophistication versus vitality, hues of greater politeness versus a tad more robustness. The SA-50 had the arguably more suave top end. Simultaneously, it also had a somewhat softer overall grip. The Norwegian player came across somewhat coarser not in negative terms but in how a lovable rogue differs from a dandy. It was edgier in its handling of outlines but again not in the overdrawn love-to-hate sense. It simply sounded a bit more direct and grounded where the Esoteric felt slightly more reserved and soft. These were not differences of quantity—of more this or less that—but differences of feel and parlayed by subtle textures. The machines were sonic equals though not identical. In terms of interactivity, the Hegel's remote control abolishes basics like direct track access. This could make it a deal breaker to the lazy-fingered for lacking expected creature features."

Before one considers the performance implications of the above, it's fair to underscore the closing deal breaker sentence. I have great sympathy for uncluttered front panels. Simply relocate the otherwise missing buttons to the remote. Hegel however dropped them altogether. In an age where ease of use and convenience dominate, I'm sure many punters will find the lack of direct track access, time remain modes, programming to eliminate unwanted tracks and display off unacceptable omissions. It smacks of engineering not communicating with marketing. It's doubly strange since these would not have been performance-degrading features. Personally, I'd not buy the Hegel just for that reason.


But purer listeners who recite the 'only the sound matters' mantra with greater fervor would, from the above, rightfully conclude that for less money, they could buy performance on the level with Esoteric's SA-50 (which I called the most attractive one-box player in that brand's lineup at present). Due to the small voicing difference described, they could actually prefer the Hegel sonically. That's no small matter considering Esoteric's standing in the digital community. It suggests that Bent Holter's proprietary servo circuitry made his stock drawer perform like a VOSP equivalent. That's engineering smarts to us civilians.

Hegel | Hegel: The CDP4AmkII treats its analog outputs with equality on voltage level and sonics. RCA and XLR are freely interchangeable as I proved by wiring up both at once, then switching inputs. The resultant Hegel sound is exceptionally open, lit, transparent and pure. You can nearly tell that someone with deep live experience of music molded these pieces. Timing and transients, two of the tell-tale qualities which tend to separate real from canned, are very acute here yet this precision comes not at the cost of artificial tension.


Crystalline, water-like, immediate - its descriptors like these which are most applicable. All in fact point at neutrality, no more or less. This always poses a problem for pen men who with gusto can describe aberrations and personalities. Accordingly, some could deliberately specialize in loudspeakers as a category. Their far greater deviations from neutrality makes describing them an easy reviewing task. Alas, our kind is far more ill at ease with walking the center of neither/nor. There each qualification must be accompanied by a chaperone-type counter qualification. Otherwise it risks reading weighted and colored to be judged off-center and hence, misbehavin'. "But I didn't do anything." Or should the emphasis really be on anything? You get the idea. In the end, how much can be said about neutrality?


Walking the center line requires high-level balance in particular from the loudspeakers. Phase shift will undo much of the electronic engineer's focus here. Even additive cables with too much plastic and dielectric delay will screw things up. This type of sound is about precision and articulation, fine sorting and a sense of great visibility. There's no added weighting and anchoring down low, no padding in the midrange, no softening in the treble. Yet there's no emphasized sharpness, no pushy attacks. It's a clean, lean and mean sound. It hasn't been strategically tweaked to trigger a concert-type emotional response. It's about sounding like the real thing.


This apparent contradiction between sound and feel lies at the heart of much audiophile discord. A concert experience involves all five senses directly. Playback addresses only one. If desired, playback must reach the other four senses by inference. Designers intent on getting closer overdraw certain sonic aspects deliberately to bridge the gaps to the missing senses. They hope to make up—some of— the difference. In terms of fidelity to the recorded signal which only deals in sounds... well, engineering types would call that editorializing. I's hard to argue the point whilst on their turf.


Audiophiles keen on the contact high however—of feeling as though someone serenaded them personally—don't give a shit. For them, the end justifies the means. "Turn me on" is their self-serving mantra. Seeing how intensely personal such turn-on trigger points are from individual to individual, an entire industry has developed around serving this subjectivism. Sympathizers with such statements could find the Hegel sound too focused on just the - er, sound. Once written out, does it not seem pervy nearly to even contemplate other options? Engineering types into perfect honesty would certainly nod in agreement. So there you have it: a very condensed version of the central ongoing audiophile dispute. Pleasure versus truth, pleasure from truth, the endless shades of gray between it all. Here review descriptions turn philosophy and we best abstain.


The upshot: We all have heard components which measured close to perfection and left us cold. Worse, some could nearly annoy. Neither is true for these Hegel pieces. In the process of distortion elimination which clearly was Hegel's stated mission, one doesn't arrive at a starkly bare-boned and stripped-down sound that plays the notes with metronomic accuracy but no life. One does however need quality ancillaries that mustn't hide their shortcomings behind other machines. One should also prefer exactitude and directness to patina and moist textures, midday light to afternoon shadows. Such match-making handled, what very fair prices buy you with Hegel's best CD player and smaller H-100 integrated is performance on the level with mid-priced Esoteric sources and amplification that has more in common with class A FirstWatt competitors than for example class D Hypex as the Belgian Hexateq company recently proposed with their review loaners.


Hegel could still improve the legibility of its displays and featurize the remote without anyone complaining. On the bonus side again, there is the USB input on the H-100 which is a clear step-up from generic computer-installed sound cards to hold many over indefinitely and others until they can invest into a state-of-the-art external USB DAC. Neither machine suffered any self noise of even low-hum transformers nor operational idiosyncrasies like turn-on/off thumps and the H-100 is powerful enough to be suitable for most every speaker that would be a reasonable match on price. Despite marketing's somewhat heavy hand on trademarked 'wonder circuits', Hegel practices real engineering of which the proof is in the listening. The clean minimalist cosmetics mirror well what the sonic expectations should be - no-nonsense cool of just the facts on rhythm, timing and obviously good dynamics; and a great capacity for presenting the simultaneity of many parallel recorded events without confusion. That in fact is one of the core qualities of the Hegel sound - utter non confusion that's articulated very crisply.
Quality of packing: Good.
Reusability of packing: A few times.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: Easy.
Condition of component received: Traveling review loaners with very minor cosmetic dings just as alerted to.
Completeness of delivery: Perfect.
Website comments: Good.
Human interactions: Friendly and informative.
Pricing: Value-oriented.
Final comments & suggestions: Displays aren't very legible and the H-100's input abbreviations where some letters are only half rendered really take getting used to. Bead-blasted front panels aren't matched by the grained top cover and sides.
Hegel website