I am ALWAYS late to the party, but since I’m here...
I, too, find the Hegel amps to be clean, clear and pure, but they lack the soulfulness of other amps (especially tubes). The Hegel reminded me of my super amp, the Goldmund Mimesis 9 (circa 1990). A damn fine amp, with high frequencies far past anything I’d heard up until then.
For all that, the Goldmund lacked a sense of "weightiness" to the sound, almost as though the midbass, upper bass and lower midrange were slightly bleached out (as was the Goldmund, although BARELY so).
I admire the Hegel, but it’s not my cup of tea. In a contest with a current era NAD (the 399, which I am getting, and the 3050, which I had for 60 days, but then returned it (the fact that it had no second outlet for a pair of subs was a dealbreaker), I suspect the NAD would not be quite as "pure" as a Hegel, but it certainly has the "breath of life" that makes voices and instruments come alive.