I purchased a Zen Dac for a relative over Christmas. The Dac wasn't compatible with his system which of course was my mistake. I kept the Zen Dac for my own laptop for Spotify playback. I have a Cambridge CXN v2 network player in my own rig, and was curious to see if I could hear any differences between the Zen Dac and my CXN V2 dac. I connected the Zen to my Marantz PM8005 and played a couple of tracks from Eric Clapton MTV unplugged. I have this album ripped via flac to my Cambridge and Laptop. So I could do A-B testing. I had the power gain switch turned off on the Zen to begin with, and the Zen struggled a tad with my LS50's once I engaged the power gain switch from the Zen I could not hear any audible differences between the Zen and my Cambridge CXN V2. A friend said to me what's the point in the Cambridge Cxn V2 then. I explained that the CXN V2 is a neater solution in my Hifi system and is a joy to use. You might need to spend alot of money on a Dac to get a different sound signature from your Hegel, and different is not always better. If you like what you hear leave the Dac function alone and spend some money on Vinyl, CDs or a streaming subscription..