AHB2 and HPA4 Review - Ulrike Schwarz, Anderson Audio NY
ANDERSON AUDIO NEW YORK
is the creation of Jim Anderson and Ulrike Schwarz. Their combined 60+ years experience in producing and engineering music has resulted in many nominated and award winning productions.
JIM ANDERSON
is an internationally recognized recording engineer and producer of acoustic music for the recording, radio, television, and film industries. His music recordings have received eleven Grammy and Latin Grammy awards and 27 Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations; radio productions have received two George Foster Peabody Awards and television productions have received two Emmy nominations. In 2013 and 2018, Jim won the Grammy for Best Surround Album (Patricia Barber's "Modern Cool" - 2013 - and Jane Ira Bloom's "Early Americans" - 2018) and was nominated for Best Surround Album in 2014 with Jane Ira Bloom's "Sixteen Sunsets."
A graduate of the Duquesne University School of Music in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jim was awarded with the music school's first Alumni Achievement Award in May 2018. He is also a professor with the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Jim was also the President of the Audio Engineering Society (AES).
ULRIKE SCHWARZ
is a sound engineer and producer of acoustic music in the radio, television and recording industries. Her recordings have received multiple international nominations and awards: two Echo Klassik Awards, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenindustrie, Ars Acoustica, Diapason d’Or, a Grammy Nomination and many others.
In 2015, the BRKlassik production of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” featuring the choir and symphony orchestra of Bayerischer Rundfunk, conducted by Bernard Haitink, received a Grammy Nomination for “Best Choral Performance.”
Ulrike received her Tonmeister degree from the Hochschule der Künste Berlin (University of The Arts Berlin), Germany. She also holds a Master of Business Administration in “Innovation and Business Creation” from Technische Universität München(Technical University Munich), Germany.
From 2001 to 2015 Ulrike was employed by Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich, Germany, as a senior sound engineer for large orchestral and jazz productions.
AHB2 - "The Power Amps are Fantastic."
"I use them as mono blocks due to my power hungry speakers."
"I hear clarity, precision and an openness in the treble that I haven't heard in my speakers before."
HPA4 - "The HPA4 and AHB2 are Made for Each Other"
"The HPA4 line and headphone preamp and the power amps are made for each other..."
- Ulrike Schwarz, Anderson Audio NY
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"For years, the audio world acknowledged one main contender (at least at sub-five-figure pricing) for the quietest, cleanest, most neutral power amplifier around. That was the Benchmark AHB2, whose specifications are still, for all practical purposes, unsurpassed, even by today’s excellent Class-D amps."
"10 years after its release, the Benchmark Media Systems AHB2 stereo power amp is still a standard-bearer in clean, neutral sound in the audiophile world."
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"I especially appreciated the AHB2’s smooth, well-integrated treble, free of splashiness or grain, and its natural reproduction of the human voice."
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