Ayre v Hegel sound

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.

I’m spoiled though, I mostly listen to the AX-5 fronted by a Bartók Apex.

That's a no.