Is the Hegel H-20 better than the Parasound A-21?

Dear Audiozen,

First of all are you judging a company by their history or sound quality? The new Aragon amplifiers are very well built and very well designed and constructed, I don't think you saw a current picture of the amplifier.

The look of the Aragon is quite stunning and in a rack looks far more beautiful than a Parasound or Hegel.

I never said Hegel products don't sound good they do, but they are not the end all and be all that they are being purported to be, they do have a great website full of technical ramblings that speak more of marketing than of actual circuit design.

You are right the website of Indy is terrible but they are a new company and they are working on it.

I have been comparing digital front ends and the Hegel stuff gets creamed by the other brands that I sell, namely the new Chord Qute HD and the Auralic Vega.

I am not saying that the Hegel stuff isn't very good sounding and well made, I am saying I have found the new Aragon to be a really fantastic amplifier and a best buy for costing $1,400.00 less and having a more beautiful midrange to boot, caveat emptor.

Isanchez..thanks for the very informative historical background on Aragon and Acurus. I remember when they were part of Mondial and I assume their amps have improved sonically since then. The reviews back in the 90's were a mixed bag. The main criticism at the time was their amps had a cold, hard upper treble that was overbearing and the amps lacked warmth.

Audiooracle..the interior pictures of the 8008 were taken within the past year on Google images. You can tell they are current since the faceplate is current compared to the previous fronts which have gone through some changes and also they have changed out the binding posts which look like good quality WBT's. The previous posts were not that impressive. Have you compared the current 8008 to models from 10 years ago, and does the current 8008 have a more refined, smoother sound, and has Aragon corrected the treble region that was constantly criticized years ago? I'm curious why Aragon makes only two products which are amps and will they go back to making Pre-amps?

The new amps are not even in the same ballpark as the old, I used to sell the originals and they were good not great.

I sell some incredible amplifiers from Chord, BAT, Bryston, and Hegel, and the new Aragon 8008 sounds like a way more expensive amplifier than it has the right to be, and it is a best buy in its price range.

AudioZen, other than I could not get a very clear picture of where the instruments were placed in the soundstage (like I get in my system), I didn't detect any of the symptoms you described. I would say the sound had some warmth, although it was most likely due to the tube preamp the 8008 was paired with. The sound was as crystal clear as the much more expensive ML/Krell room.

The only thing that raised a flag is this statement from the 8008 manual:

2. Using higher-efficiency loudspeakers (87dB/W/m or greater) will reduce the average amount of amplifier power consumed to produce a target listening loud-ness. This effectively helps reserve greater peak amplifier power when loud musical transient passages are reproduced.

This value seems to be at the threshold level of Magnepan speakers (86dB/500Hz /2.83v) and other low sensitivity speakers. So, I wonder if the amp is stable below 4ohms.