Every integrated is a compromise. Reviewers will always tell you an integrated is this amp plus this preamp plus this dac all in 1 chassis. Not true! I’ve owned 3 Hegel’s, the h360 last around 10 years ago. Never used its dac, it just didn’t sound that good. At RMAF, at the Hegel room, I asked if they could compare their standalone dac with their internal dac in the 360 and their external sounded better all thru the h360. When I bought larger floorstanding loudspeakers for my 27’ x 16’ x 15’ dedicated room, the Hegel didn’t have the power so I went with separates and never looked back. Now since I have downsized to a much smaller room, I had to downsize to smaller floorstanding speakers. I even thought about downsizing to active loudspeakers and have nothing but 2 speakers in my room.
But I thought, why downsize from a great sounding amp, preamp, separate dac to something that might sound the same, maybe a little bit better, or maybe worse, at the same time, losing 50% of what you paid for your separates. So if you sell your separates for 50% of what you paid for them, maybe even 60% less, then you bought 1 unit for 2-3x the money you just got from your great sounding separates, then the month after your new purchase, if you don’t like it, you can only sell it for 40-50% less than what you paid for it.
In my new downsized room, I have great sounding separates that coast with the new smaller floorstanding speakers sized for the room. I would keep your separates.
The only active loudspeaker setup I have heard that I would sell my whole audio setup for are the new YG active speakers. This setup at Tampa sounded better than rooms that cost 10x more.
