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upgrade advice

Hi
i bought the Hegel h160 integrated amplifier with pair of Spendor D7 loudspeakers.
the source is bluesound node 2 .
speakers cables are VOVOX vocalis. all other cables are regular.
i want to upgrade my sound and wonder what would be the best way to start.
to change my power cable,my digital cable,speakers cable or buy a better external DAC  than the hegel internal.
thaks for your advice
yansad
yansad OP
10 posts
 
sim audio is a streamer without dac so i thought its a good option to connect it to the hegel internal dac. a future upgrade can be buying external dac instead of hegel internal or upgrade to hegel h360.
buying the wyred remedy is a bit problematic since i have to spend $400
without trying it first since there is no dealer at my country.
gnostalgick
88 posts
 
What exactly is different in your set up to the store you listened at? If you purchased all the named items from them (Spendor, Hegel, Bluesound, Vovox), I’d look at everything else first. If the dealer has/had the same set-up I’d think they’d have the best suggestion as to where to start, but your room (over or under-damped), speaker placement, ’clean’ power & your cables are all going to be--and remain--influences regardless of what else you change.
kalali's avatar
kalali
1,977 posts
 

I'm following this thread with great interest since I'm on a similar upgrade path except I'm using the Bluesound's internal DAC and streaming HiFi Tidal wirelessly. The funny thing is when I asked a while back, most folks seemed to think the Bluesound DAC was fairly decent. I guess it's all relative. Does any of the components mentioned above allow wireless streaming?

Question for OP: Have you compared the Bluesound internal DAC with your Hegel DAC? Just curious.

Thanks.

jl35
3,966 posts
 
the Bluesound's DAC is fairly decent, but not close to the Hegel or the Spendors, which are both quite good
wtf's avatar
wtf
307 posts
 
I vote for trying a different DAC. FWIW I purchased a Bluesound Node 2 back in April and retired my 2012 Mac mini (i7, 256GB SSD, 16GB RAM, Amarra Symphony, Audirvana +, JRMC, Pure Music) .. the Node 2 is really quite good. I prefer both of my DACs (Chord Qute EX and Schiit Bifrost Multibit) to the on-board DAC in the Node 2. Not surprising really. BTW, the DAC in the Node 2 is a Burr-Brown PCM5122 and isn't bad at all. 
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