The chassis is a firm steel structure heavily vented over the output transistors top and bottom. Three chunky rubber footers keep this boat afloat. The remote is pretty heavy too and full metal. It looks robust, works as intended and fits the hand like a glove. Under the hood the H160 looks like a familiar Hegel. Key circuits mount on separate PCB. The power supply starts with a toroidal transformer made for Bent Holter. In the filter section there are six Nover capacitors of 10’000µF each. On the analog board we get Rubycon, WIMA and Nichicon Muses capacitors. The blue SE3090 is another typical Hegel part, one per channel. Those eliminate crosstalk in the upper frequencies. The headphone amp is based on the JRC4556AD opamp as used in the HD12, Hegel's latest DAC. The output transistors changed over the H80 which had paired Toshiba 2SC5200+2SA1943. The H160 gets twice that artillery also from Toshiba but this time as 2SA2121+2SC5949 attached to a big heat sink with integral temperature sensor.


The digital section has more in common with the H80 than H12 but not all of it. That shouldn't surprise. The H12 is a heckuva DAC for the asking price so it was predictive that Hegel wouldn’t put circuitry that advanced in the H160. What it gets is an asynchronous USB transceiver based on the Tenor TE7022L which can be found in the H80 as well. The other digital inputs see AKM’s AK4118 receiver we’ve already seen in the H80 and HD12. Another Asahi Kasei chip, the AK4127 SRC, hands over to the AK4396VF converter. It’s the first time Hegel uses that part. The H80/HD2 have the BB PCM1754, the HD12 the AK4399.  


Listening. For starters, one thing needs to be clarified: the sonic differences between the H160 and H80 are significant. They’re not barely audible but, to put it as gentle as I can, big and obvious. This somewhat correlates with their size difference. The H160 sounds big and the entry-level integrated – well, audibly smaller. I reviewed the H80 a few months ago. The original material can be found here.  It's in Polish, hence incomprehensible to the majority of 6moons reader. I’ll thus extricate the gist here. The H80’s reading is quite mellow, relaxed and organic. It's also very linear, meaning I wasn't able to hear any minor or major peaks or valleys anywhere in the audible spectrum. The H80 also has somewhat rounded textures but not too much. It’s a quite universal solution that will get along fine with many speakers. I tried it with the Amphion Argon 1, KEF LS50 and Boenicke Audio W5. My Scandinavian integrated performed on a very enjoyable level with all three and, most important for me, helped me see clear sonic differences between them. So it came as no surprise that the H80 would continue to serve my test rig really well. Its organic presentation beat one of my older setups senseless: Denon DCD-1510AE + PMA-1510AE. That pair sounded lifeless and thin by contrast, hence remains mostly unused these days. I also sprang the H80 on several unsuspecting folks over the past few months, some of them casual listeners, others with really decent setups at home. Bottom line? Everyone was surprised by what the H80 is capable of. Put plain, it’s a great companion for the Argon 1 and LS50.


Because of being imprinted by its mellow roundness, my initial encounter with the H160 started slightly on the wrong foot. It approached me from a more contoured stiffer side than its less expensive sibling. Therefore I automatically assumed that the LS50 as the more revealing and lit-up speaker on top over the Finns  would show better synergy with the H80. That was my starting position when I paired the LS50 with the H160 for the first hour of fun and early impressions. Then I switched back to the H80, listened to that pairing for an entire day and came to just one conclusion: very enjoyable and involving sound. Then the Boenicke W5 arrived and the same story repeated itself but now with the H160. I briefly compared both systems, then returned to the H80/LS50. After those swaps I was finally ready to give the H160 a proper chance with the KEF. It’s not that I disliked that particular pairing. I simply concluded that it would be good sport to treat myself to a rig I am very fond of as a readjustment after a jump into a new pond so to speak. It worked like a charm. The second go-around of the LS50 with the H160 became a real eye opener and very positive surprise. Yet I needed to adjust to fully appreciate what it had to offer.