Hegel H390 DAC

@jjss49

I was hoping you’d post here. Thanks.

I used digital bnc from Jay’s cdt2mklll to Aqua and rca"s from Aqua to Hegel.

I used same bnc from Jay’s directly into Hegel.

Sorry, but are you suggesting using DAC loop would equate to "equal footing" or the opposite? I did not use DAC loop, in any event, as I have only one digital cable and loop would require two.

This comparison really surprised me. The results were not at all what I expected. With the Aqua, I experience fatigue and sibilance. These disappear when Hegel’s DAC is utilized. I tried the Hegel’s DAC as an experiment to see whether these unwanted factors were traceable to the Aqua.

@stuartk

i did not realize you are solely listening to cd’s played through jay’s cd-t, and you are in fact not streaming music (is this understanding correct?)

before you try different dacs, as mentioned by a couple others, i would suggest a couple (cheaper and easier) things... get another bnc cable to try the dac loop, and also, try a different set of ic’s (and use the balanced inputs) from the aqua to the 390 - i have found the analog balanced in’s sound a touch better than the rca’s on the bigger hegels -- looks like the aqua has dual mono topology through its d/a to the outputs, so best to take advantage of that

as many dacs as i have tried, i have never had an aqua la voce unit, but by the specs this should be quite a natural (and not a strident) sounding unit, and should surpass the internal 390 dac by at least a little

i have plenty of extra cables i can send you if you’d like, just pm me

good luck have fun

a couple random thoughts to you @stuartk

how were the h390 dac and your aqua connected from upstream? streamer, clocking, cabling can affect the dac performance (did you have the h390 dac on the ’dac loop’ connection?) -- hope you made sure the two were on ’equal footing’ before reaching your comparative conclusions

as you know i have had all the hegels pretty much (but not the 600 yet) and numerous dacs over the last few years

i felt the h390 internal dac/streamer was tuned for best sound with tidal/mqa... it was nicely transparent, spacious and smooth, yet when used with qobuz or other digital feeds, the tonality became noticeably sharper and leaner, lost a degree of refinement, so to speak

the h590 dac in comparison was more extended in both extreme highs and lows while producing a very smooth tactile midrange, slightly vaster spatial info recovery (not sure how of this is the dac section vs the pre/power section... where hegel definitely put more sonic goodies into the 590 over the 390) -- all the above i heard running roon into the hegels using the lan feed with no roon dsp engaged

in time i will check out an h600 ... but probably not anytime soon... seems like they moved to a top ess chip, then worked around that chipset’s tonality to achieve the sonic balance they seek to offer in their top shelf integrated