Norway-based Hegel has been steadily gaining popularity with its great-sounding and elegantly-styled products. Of the two rooms they hosted at this year’s Montreal show, one presented a static display of several of the company’s successful products, while the other had an active demo that included a pair of MoFi SourcePoint 8 speakers ($4399/pr, including matching stands), a 150Wpc Hegel H190v integrated amplifier ($4899), a MoFi UltraDeck +M turntable complete with a 10″ Ultra tonearm and a Mastertracker MM pickup ($3999 total), with cabling by AudioQuest ($various).
I listened to two tracks from the LP Black Acid Soul by Lady Blackbird (an incredible album): “Lost and Looking” and “It’ll Never Happen Again”. The vibraphone solo in the first track sounded natural, with realistic timbre and none of the sharpness I often associate with recordings of this instrument. Lady Blackbird’s vocals were sweet and rich-toned. It was interesting to compare the solo piano parts in the first and second tracks. In the first, the piano sounds farther away from the singer; in the second, it appears in a more normal fashion, closer to the voice. The system made the difference in the locations of both pianos striking, a testament to its transparency and ability to reproduce an authentic soundstage. It was also effortlessly musical. For some, this simple system may be all that’s needed for long-term musical satisfaction.
As an audiophile and a voracious listener of all kinds of music, Jonson believes that the experience of being immersed in music is often something spiritual. Born and raised in Korea, he cut his teeth on western music mostly through the music of the 80s and the 90s. As of today, names that make his heart beat a little faster include Vladimir Horowitz, John Coltrane, Youn-Sun Nah, Francis Poulenc, Leonard Bernstein, Tannoy, and Magnepan. Jonson also runs a podcast and a YouTube channel about language learning, called SpongeMind.
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