I guess my ears must be terrible as I actually like the HK setup. I will admit I am no audiophile person, but do like to listen to my music loud. I actually have Sonos is nearly every room in my house and love blasting it.
I think the HK in the 2 is great for what it is. I do wish we had an equilizer option though. I normally play everything via bluetooth from my phone. I know its not the best source, but it has my most up to date music. I have a thumb drive, but I upload new music all the time to my home server where I stream everything from, so using the thumb drive isn't always up to date. I have yet to store anything on the internal HDD to see if that sounds different, and probably won't.
Overall I am happy I got it and think it was worth it.
Ken~