Upgrade from Adcom 600?? Benchmark?

if you canget a gda-700 for < $200, jump on it. i got a smokin deal and bought 2 at the same time, 1 worked and 1 didn't, so now i have another gda-700 for parts in case something goes wrong. i used to have the audio research dac2, very nice. i still have the manley jr dac. when i used the manley a couple of years ago with my old sony dvp9000es cd/sacd player, everytime the sony would initially read the disk, i got some loud pops out of the manley and was turned off because of that. the sony took a while to determine if the disk was a cd/sacd/dvd and the dac didn't like it. i sold the AR dac2 and kept the manley.i also just purchased an audio alchemy dac for my rec room/outside system. not a bad little unit. i use my adcom for my den system with my dk design totem setup.

try the gda-700. i used to own the 600 and the 700 is superior along with hdcd and balanced options. i actually like the gda-700 better than the benchmark. i also have/had more expensive dacs and they are better than the gda700 but you are also paying 2 to 3 times the cost. also, just because a dac/cd player claims 192/24 specs doesn't mean they sound better. when i evaluated dacs a couple of years ago, i ended up buying 2 nice 20bit dacs that i liked the best, both from manley and audio research.