Hegel Unveils H600 Dual Mono Integrated Amplifier and DAC

Hegel has introduced their reference integrated amplifier. The H600 is rated for 303 watts in 8 ohms, with a damping factor of 4000, and 2 ohms drive capability - core specifications that Hegel considers are key for an amplifier to drive any speaker with confidence and ease. In line with the company's obsession of dual everything, the amplifier is a dual mono design. It also boasts a state-of-the-art preamplifier with the same extremely precise volume attenuator found in the Hegel reference P30A amplifier.

Gary Galo reviews GeerFab Audio’s D.BOB Digital Breakout Box, a valuable new solution for all the music enthusiasts who would like to listen to their Super-Audio CD (SACD) music collection by feeding the DSD datastream via HDMI from the player to an outboard digital-to-analog converter (DAC) in high-resolution audio. And GeerFab Audio created the first device that delivers! This article was originally published in audioXpress, October 2020.

Just a few short days after launching its new Sabre Smart Power-Amplifier (SPA), a new-generation device designed to boost the audio quality and efficiency of portable and wearable devices, ESS Technology announced the ES9219, the 3rd generation of Sabre DAC headphone System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions for mobile devices. The ES9219 Headphone SoC with 32-bit, QUAD DAC Technology and 2Vrms output adds crosstalk reduction and THD compensation while reducing BOM size and cost.

Berlin-based MUTEC released a convenient utility app for firmware updates of its successful MC-3+ Smart Clock USB converter on Apple Mac computers. Since the release of the Windows update utility in July 2016, MUTEC has received a positive response from users who have eagerly updated their devices. Now the German company offers a Mac-compatible app allowing users to keep their MC-3+USBs up to date with equal convenience.

Among several new products recently introduced by ESS Technology is the next generation SABRE Digital to Analog Converter (DAC), the ES9028, featuring a new Dual-DAC architecture, and the new ES9603 Headphone Amplifier. Both are designed specifically for HiFi audio enabled smartphones and were used in Vivo’s recently announced X6 Plus Android smartphone.