Ayre v Hegel sound

@dbphd "Anyone out there have an opinion?"  That had me laughing.  I have owned the H390 and found it a wonderful amp.  Did everything and did it well.  You don't indicate if you are looking at new or used equipment.  If new, I would encourage you to look for a lightly used H590.  Dollar for dollar the 390 is the much better deal, but the 590 is the better overall package.  Used may bring the cost in line?

slightly off topic to the op's query, but i would agree, a used h590 at a good (current) price is an excellent buy if you have the budget

the used price delta between the 390 and 590 currently makes the 590 well worth having -- by my estimation, it is better by about 10-15%, so not really worth what was the 2x msrp difference, but at $4500 vs $6500, the 590 is compelling imo, it is simply superb

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

i have a different point of view... in the h390 and h590 i feel the dacs are quite good, especially the 590, where they integrated the sound quite synergistically with the pre/power sections ... to my ear, certainly as good as the better stand alone dacs up to roughly $1000 (which is a pretty high standard sonically these days)... my experience is based on running roon, using the streaming function, with a well cleansed lan feed (good switch, well filtered, linear power supplies)

in my opinion one has to spend more than $1000 to noticeably better the sonics of the internal dacs in the upper hegels... (think modded mhdt orchid, dena pontus/venus, chord qutest and higher...)

The hHegel is nowhere near as refined. Acoustic instruments will not sound nearly as natural. I couldn’t stand Hegel myself. It sounds coarse in comparison. Maybe more dynamic. If I only listened to Electronic music, with synths I was unfamiliar with, maybe.