Opinions on best integrated under 10k?

The Hegel arrived this morning and I wasted no time getting it set up and into play.
Not sure if not been used much previously because the sq has improved by the hour( been on about 9 hours now).
It compares very favourably with my Exogal/BAT combo in most areas except possibly imaging is not quite as well defined and the soundstage not as expansive.
Plenty of horsepower and bottom end is tight and nicely defined, not a case of one note bass.
The onboard DAC appears to be of fairly high quality, Tidal streamed through sounds very respectable.
All in all I am very happy with my last 2017 present to myself

Well I am stumped on the Hegel for now on how to get headphone output.
I saw it had rca preouts so assumed to be able to connect a headphone amp to these outputs and should be good to go.
Yes it works BUT music has to be playing through the speakers as well, which sort of defeats the point of headphones!
When I hit mute on the amp it also mutes the pre outputs as well, something according to the sparse manual it is supposed to do ( yes should have read up first!).
This seems to have been the only way I can see to have got headphone output out of the Hegel but cannot now be used.
Any other Hegel integrated owners have a solution to get headphone output?

I have no experience with this particular unit but almost every preamp or integrated I've owned with two pre-outs, both outputs were always active at the same time and at the same level. The only exception I've seen is one of my current preamps as a separate level for one of the pre-outs so the output levels can be matched if the two pairing amplifiers have different input sensitivities. Doesn't the Hegel have a headphone output jack?

Unfortunately this earlier model does not have a headphone jack.
Now it does also have a coax digital out but looks like that is meant for a DAC loop so not sure if that would work to take an output to a headphone amp that had coax digital input like the Aune or SOtM or similar.
And before I wasted time and money on one would like to see if anybody knows for sure