9/27/2023 0 Comments Stereophile benchmark ahb2it now sits in Class A of Stereophile's 'Recommended Components.'" Bridged to mono, the AHB2 has a claimed A-weighted dynamic range of 135dB . "Benchmark created an amplifier that more than matched the DAC3's dynamic range: the AHB2. "John Atkinson's measurements corroborated Benchmark's claim that the DAC3 is capable of "at least" 21-bit performance. To those virtues, the HPA4 adds equally superb headphone outputs." "I concluded my report on Benchmark's LA4 preamplifier by saying it was the widest-bandwidth, widest-dynamic-range, lowest-noise, lowest-distortion preamplifier I had encountered at that time. "The THD+N percentage was extremely low throughout the audio band into both 100k ohms and 300 ohms." "From balanced inputs to balanced headphone output, the Benchmark had extremely low noise, with the power supply–related spuriae in its output close to –130dB, even with the volume control set to +15dB. With the volume control set to unity gain, the noise floor was 12dB lower!" "Both the response and the superb channel matching were identical at lower settings of the control and from the unbalanced headphone output." With the very low output impedance, the response into 300 ohms was identical to that into the high 100k ohms load, and there wasn't any audio band rolloff with impedances as low as 10 ohms." "The headphone amplifier's frequency response was flat in the audio band and down by just 1 dB at 200 kHz. This report therefore focuses on the HPA4's behavior as a headphone amplifier." ![]() As a line preamplifier, the HPA4 performed almost identically to Benchmark's superb-measuring LA4, which Kal Rubinson reviewed in January 2020, so I will refer you to that review.
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