Hegel H300 still worth getting?


Hi All,

I came upon a Hegel h300 at a good price. Since its an integrated amp with HT bypass I was wondering if they are still worth getting? Are they better than similar priced new integrated amp considering their better specs, i.e. 1K damping factor and etc.?

Thanks.
slash21

Showing 3 responses by rbstehno

Hegel makes awesome sounding gear, especially for the price. I have owned multiple Hegel integrated amps and 1 of their preamps. I still have their h300. With my Usher Mini Dancer ii’s, the Hegel was a great match for them. I went up the usher line to the x-towers which needed more power, so I went with high powered monoblocks.
i have compared the Hegel 160 to my h300 and I would keep the h300. The newer 160 has new features that might entice you to buy it over the h300. Also, when I bought mine from the dealer, I asked Hegel to convert the hot passthru to an extra rca input which they did.
if you decide you want a h300 let me know I might be selling mine
The internal dac in the h300 is decent. I had better external dacs so I used them instead of the h300's. Hegel does offer the DAC loop wherein you connect an external dac using the output and inputs on the h300 and it does make the sound better. I did use it this way for a little while. If you are new to digital audio, i would have no problems using the internal h300 dac but knowing in the future, I would be getting a more up to date/better external dac. Even the dac in the h360 when it came out was much better than the h300 dac, but didn't compare to hegel's standalone dacs or other 3rd party dacs. I did have the older hegel integrated amp and the h300 blew it away. The H160 is a nice unit, but I think the H300 is a better unit except the H160 has newer bells and whistles that the H300 doesn't. Hegel did some weird things by crawling on top of itself. Take the Rost, which was a very nice integrated, then they came out with the H160 and it trampled the Rost. The H360 is a better unit power wise and has a better dac than the H300, but the H360 dac is not as good as many other external dacs
At RMAF in the Hegel room a few years ago, I had them compare the h360 dac to their standalone dac, and their standalone dac was much better, and they will tell you that. 
After I looked at many dacs, I ended up getting the ps audio DS with the bridge. Highly reviewed, FPGA, free upgrades that improve performance every 6 months, can handle any format out there, no need for a dedicated music server since it has the bridge, top SQ, and more.