You buy once, and you are happy forever!Īll of this comes from a company that is a model of transparency with proper and accurate measurements of their products on their site.
This is what I look for in high-end audio: absolutely the best performance so no second guessing is involved. Using it, you can be assured that any distortion that you hear is from other sources (speaker, source, content, etc.). It goes without saying that the Benchmark AHB2 breaks new ground with respect to performance of power amplifiers. Wow, assuming you play at peak of 120 dBSPL, your noise floor will be at -10 dBSPL! That is absolute silence. Will the Benchmark AHB2 manage the same? Let's see.Īs usual, I start with my 5 watt output test using 4 ohm load using SpeakOn terminals as noted: We have seen this in stellar performance of Massdrop THX AAA 789 amplifier which broke new ground in level of distortion and noise. The general scheme is not new, dating back to 1980s but new implementation is. The distortion of the latter is not seen because it is producing so much power (so the ratio of distortion is lower). In use the AHB2 stays very cool for a power amplifier when it is idling, outputting little power which was a nice surprise.Īs to THX technology, it merges a low-power but very low distortion amplifier with a high power but higher distortion amplifier.
#Benchmark ahb2 specifications full
Nothing is more aggravating than the AC cable coming half-way lose from the IEC socket.īeing a proper company of course the AHB2 comes with full set of regulatory/safety/emissions certifications which is super important with power amplifiers given the high voltages and currents running around in them. Insert it and it stays put unless you push the two red tabs on each side. There is a very beefy AC mains cable with really nice locking tabs. The latter quadruples the amount of power available and unlike typical bridging, according to Benchmark comes at no penalty in distortion! I plan to test this later as it has a minimum impedance of 6 ohm so I could not use the 4 ohm setup I used for this testing. There is a switch for selecting stereo or mono bridged output. Flush mount screws would solve this problem. Typical round shaped SpeakOn ones are not an issue. So the measurements you see are with SpeakOn jacks.Īnother minor nit on that note: I had a rather cheap SpeakOn cable and its plug was just large enough to hit the silver screws that the sockets are mounted with. I lost about 3 dB of performance using the banana jacks due to less secure connect there. The SpeakOn are locking and provide the best performance. Using this scheme, the signal to noise ratio can be improved as you will see in measurements later.įor speaker terminals there are two sets: classic heavy duty banana jacks and SpeakOn.
#Benchmark ahb2 specifications professional
At the other extreme, the low gain setting is designed for professional pre-amps with lots of output, getting its max power at 9.8 volts. A gain switch allows the input level to be controlled so that you can just use an RCA to XLR adapter and still get full power (2 volt max in high gain). Only input is XLR balanced which is just fine in my book. This is a very minimalistic approach given the small amount of real estate available.
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