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Ayre v Hegel sound

My setup is comprised of a Roon-ready Ayre QX-5 Twenty DAC, Ayre DX-5 DSD disc player, Ayre KX-5 Twenty preamp and VX-5 Twenty amp driving a pair of KEF Reference 1s augmented below 80 Hz with s pair of acoustic room corrected Velodyne HGS-15s.  The speakers are high-passed at 80 Hz by a Marchand filter.  I've been mulling over the idea of replacing the DAC, preamp, and amp with a Hegel H390 integrated for simplicity and downsizing , but I have no idea what effect that might have on the sound.  Anyone out there know or have an opinion? 

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Showing 1 response by rbstehno

rbstehno
1,406 posts
 

The dacs in any of the h3xx integrateds are not that good. I used to own a Hegel h3xx integrated and used the dac for maybe 1 hour in the years that I owned it. I used a dac that cost more than the Hegel integrated itself and it blew away the internal dac.

At rmaf, I had the Hegel room compare the internal dac in the h360 to their standalone dac, it wasn’t even close in sq. But I do like the sound of the hegels they just didn’t have the power I need

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