Integrated Amp Reviews

After my review of the Hegel H400 streaming integrated amplifier was published in Stereophile's October 2024 issue, it finally received Roon Ready certification. Because the Roon control interface is more user-friendly and offers more searching and streaming options than Hegel's own app—and the JPlay app I used in Roon's stead during my review—I am following up with my impressions of using the H400 with Roon.

The H400 was the second streaming amplifier I reviewed while it was in a slow-moving line (queue in British English) to receive Roon certification; the other was the T+A R 2500 R streaming receiver, which received Roon certification shortly after the Hegel H400. I asked Roon CEO Enno Vandermeer why it's taking so long for devices to get certified and working with his company's software. After noting that Roon's consolidation within Harman International/Samsung was still settling, he admitted that "the delays in Roon Ready certification have been due to operational roadblocks on our side."

Vandermeer added the following context: "Over the last year, we also saw a huge surge of device submissions (more than ever before) as supply chain issues eased and it became easier for manufacturers to ship new products. Since the acquisition (by Harman/Samsung), we've made some additional hires, set up a dedicated testing and certification facility, and are working on a new automated testing software that will make partners more successful in their development. Certification cadence has increased substantially in recent months, and with these improvements, we look forward to clearing our backlog and being back to very short testing cycles later this year."

John Atkinson shipped the same H400 I reviewed back to me following its time on his test bench. As before, it was easily unpacked from its sturdy double box. In less than a minute after I brought it inside, I connected it to the Amphion One18 speakers in my office, connected the power cord, plugged in the Ethernet cable, and turned it on. Its little computer booted up and found the network and we were ready to rock. Absolutely no fuss!

I hadn't used Roon in a month or two, so I knew it would take some time updating software and rescanning my music library hard drive. So I used the Hegel app to get some music playing. Hegel recently updated their app with a new name, Hegel Control, as opposed to Hegel Connect. They gave it a bit of a facelift but didn't change any functionality. It now officially works with both the H400 and its "big brother," the H600 (same computer and DAC, more powerful amplifier).

Connecting via UPnP to my Synology NAS (network attached storage) server, I tried out Hegel's search engine again, so as to document its quirks in detail. I decided I wanted to listen to Elvis Costello. I searched Artist–Elvis. It did not return artist names. (I expected Elvis Costello and Elvis Presley to pop up.) Instead it returned albums and tracks by both artists. Not very helpful! I then searched Album–Elvis. This time, it returned dozens of tracks from Elvis Presley albums with his name in the title, not the albums themselves. Again, unhelpful! Finally, I searched for Title–Elvis. This time, all the Elvis Presley albums with his name in the title were at the top of the results, followed by the tracks from each album. Suffice to say, Hegel needs to fix the search functions of its app.

By the time my searching frustration peaked, Roon's software on my Lenovo PC had finished its updating and music library rescanning. I clicked the menu button on the upper left corner of the Roon app's home screen, then the little gear icon to get to the Settings menus. I scrolled down to Audio, which is where devices are set up as Roon "endpoints." Scrolling down to my choices under Roon Ready, there was the Hegel H400. I clicked Enable, and there it was among my choices of where to send audio, along with my dCS Bartók streaming DAC and Cambridge MXN10 streamer/DAC.

Behold the power of Roon: From one app, I can send music from my PC across Ethernet or Wi-Fi networks to any of these devices. Music can move with me from room to room and system to system. The price of this convenience (plus the extensive searching capabilities I will soon describe, plus more visual and textual metadata in one place than any other music player) is a monthly subscription to Roon and setting up a server computer, or buying a Roon Core device. In the case of a streamer like the Hegel H400 (and its stablemate H600), where the manufacturer's app doesn't integrate with Qobuz or Tidal, and has a less-than-ideal search engine, Roon is your best option if you stream much or most of your music.

How about that Roon search engine? It works like those in the Spotify and Qobuz apps, but casts a wider net. In my case, because I signed into my Qobuz account through Roon, anything I type into the search box is checked against both my own NAS music library and Qobuz's huge library. When I choose an album from results, the Versions tab lists options if it exists on my server and at Qobuz, and/or if there are multiple versions on either or both digital libraries. The descriptions of each version are only as good as the descriptive metadata, so it's possible that all options look the same and are described the same way. Flawed metadata is a scourge of streaming, and it's widespread. The record labels and streaming companies know it's a problem, but fixing all the crappy metadata amassed so far will take years.

Searching an artist's name returns an Overview page with a Wikipedia article about the artist (if it exists). Click the Discography tab to see the artist's recorded output that exists as local files and what's on Qobuz (and/or Tidal if you have a subscription and have signed on via the Roon app). Click on an album to see descriptive text harvested from TiVo (which absorbed the former Gracenote, and from which Qobuz also harvests much descriptive text).

Roon's search engine isn't perfect. For instance, I typed in "X" and it did not return the well-known punk group X. I then typed "Los Angeles." It returned the song by X but not the album of the same title. However, searching "elvis" immediately returned both Costello and Presley as artists, as expected. Go figure.

Despite being imperfect—what or who isn't?—Roon is unique in how much textual and visual metadata it collects about a given artist, album, or song, in one place. It's arguable that this presentation of streaming music gets us closer to the LP jackets and CD booklets of yore, which some of us miss very much. The only other music-player app I've used that combined this much textual and visual information with streaming audio was called SqueezePad, a better option for controlling a Logitech Squeezebox streamer from an iPad. Roon takes the concept further, better, and it's more of a universal streaming-control platform (footnote 2).

Back to the Hegel H400: It worked perfectly with Roon. I played hours of music using both the Roon app on my iPhone 15 and the desktop PC version. The H400's display indicated the correct sample rate for each track, meaning its integration with both Roon and either Qobuz's servers or my NAS worked as intended.

The H400 is truly Roon Ready, and Roon is the best way to do streaming with it.—Tom Fine

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Footnote 1: The H-400 costs $6995. Hegel Music Systems, PB26, Blindern, 0314 Oslo, Norway. Email: info@hegel.com. US distributor: Hegel Music Systems USA, Fairfield, IA 52556. Tel: (413) 224-2480. Web: hegel.com.

Footnote 2: In Roon's settings–setup screen is an option to "Enable Squeezebox support." Without testing it, I take that to mean that Roon could be used as a front-end to my old Squeezebox Touch streamer, which I upgraded to full 24/192 capability via third-party firmware.