Hegel H390 DAC

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

@curiousjim 

Re: Anders, that's disappointing to hear.

Out of curiosity, did you ever get an answer to the bias question?

What DACs did you consider before choosing the Pontus and what do you like about the Pontus, especially?

@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.

It’s a shorter path using the Hegel’s DAC. Could that be a factor?

Hard to see something like the Denafrips Terminator not being an improvement.  At your price level you could feed it i2S from a Denafrips Hermes and be even better off.  

https://www.vinshine.audio/product-page/denafrips-terminator-r2r-dac

If any internal Hegel DAC can match that combo I’d frankly be shocked. 

Hi @soix

Thanks for the suggestions.

I neglected to mention in my OP that I was hoping to go with something US or Euro made and furthermore, one that I can return if necessary. My speakers are US made. My Jay’s and Hegel are both made in China and I wanted to equalize things a bit (admittedly for no profound reason) with the DAC.

However, I’d still be very interested in any DAC recommendations you might have within these parameters.

I’d always assumed any DAC I’d own would be r2r/NOS but this latest experience has thrown me for a loop. Not sure what to make of it, yet.