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Oppo 105 and Hegel H160 DACs

'Sup?

I have my Oppo 105 feeding a Hegel 160 integrated - which I just got and am so far extremely happy with. However, does this combo render the Oppo's Sabre DAC meaningless? Am I hearing just the Hegel's DAC? And is there any way to by-pass the Hegel DAC by, say, running a digital cable from the Hegel to the Oppo to start a loop?

Should I look for a decent transport and move the Oppo to another system? I'm not really interested in getting a streamer or going that route at the moment.

Thank you in advance.
128x128simao
willemj
1,036 posts
 
Any data?
auxinput
2,920 posts
 
Tired of people asking for data they know does not exist.

if you can’t  hear differences between DACs, then either your hearing is not as trained or skilled as others or your system just does not have the resolution to reveal these differences.

agree totally that oppo does not make a great CD transport.  It can be an okay CD transport, but others, such as CXC, will be much better. 
willemj
1,036 posts
 
Plenty of reviews that disagree with you. And to be up to date, here is the recent Stereophile one for the new UDP 205: https://www.stereophile.com/content/music-round-87-oppo-udp-205 Measurement data would help, as no human can discern what an Audio Precision vel sim. audio analyzer can.
nycjlee
286 posts
 
Op, it looks like the others have hi-jacked your post, but my suggestion to you is to try both DAC chipsets and use the the output that sounds the best to you.
1) XLR output will use the OPPO - ESS Sabre DAC
2) USB or S/PDIF/Optical (digital connection) output will use the Hegel - AKM DAC
Good luck!


willemj
1,036 posts
 
+1
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