Wadia 170i and Benchmark Dac1 - anyone try it?

I have no experience with Wadia 170i but if your Benchmark DAC1 does its job in eliminating interface jitter then the digital source will not affect the sound. Digital is Digital and provided the source reads the bits correctly then it should sound the same - just like digital copies. Clock jitter is the only distortion inherent in digital interfaces.

Perhaps your player is doing some kind of conversion or compression (44.1 to 48Kz or to 96Khz or to compressed Dolby or something like that). Perhaps it is doing a poor job at converting. Check your settings.

What are you comparing? CD or DVD or BD as your music source?

Perhaps it is a software bug for your player. Perhaps it is using the DRC processing to reduce dynamic range. The other possibility is that you are not sending redbook CD 16bit/44.2Khz to the Benchmarkl but PCM 24/96 or 24/48 which opens the door to errors in upsampling conversion.

Also - one other thing - most Sony devices do something to the digital output to prevent copying. If the source is copy protected then it limits coaxial/optical output to 16 bit 48 Khz. If you were playing a DVD with good 24 bit/48 Khz sound then it was truncated to 16 bit - thta may be your problem right there.

Check DTS setting, Dolby Digital Setting,48Khz/96Khz setting, Audio DRC setting, - default is normally "Auto" which means you get a compressed audio signal NOT wide dynamic range (no compression). Also check Downmix setting - there are a lot of ways you may NOT get what you want. In some cases the HDMI connector to the TV will be enough to set the audio settings so that it is compressed for TV!

Sony are a PAIN with their hard to use and understand manuals...

Let me try to make it more clear: If the two audio transports are reading the CD or DVD or BD in a "bit-transparent" manner then it should sound identical coming out your DAC1 (no matter which player or which digital connection is used). If it does not sound identical (which you have reported) then something is being done to modify the bits!

Contact Elias Gwinn at Benchmark and let him know your findings. It is possible others have reported the issue and there is a fix or you can simply confirm the problem and stop wasting your time trying to get it to work. Elias may also be able to advise you on which players are known to be "bit-transparent" should you decide to sell the BDP 350 and get something that works with the DAC1.

When I turned the TV back on during CD Music play I could see that the audio button on the remote had kicked the playback out of "Stereo" mode.

That was my fear - just the HDMI communication to the TV is enough to make some changes to the audio settings.

I hope this example helps explain why there are so many "audio myths" about what works and does not work. As an engineer I always look for a root cause when something does not do what is expected. Like when you change a cable and it is like a magic veil is lifted from the sound - you can either assign the observation to the cable or you can conclude something is overall not right about how the equipment is fundamentally functioning together.

The Benchmark and Bel Canto are excellent DACs at their price points, but they are not at the very top echelon of performance.

The subject of this thread is Wadia with Benchmark. There's much evidence here that this combination will not be superior to a good stand alone CD player

I think the question was actually what transport to hook up to DAC1 and if there are any differences. The answer seems to be that DAC1 sound is independent of transport & cable & digital input provided the "bits" arriving at the DAC1 are the same (at least many people report this and it is what Benchmark vehemently claim).

Now what "sounds" better or best is, IMHO, a whole other can of worms, which includes the subjective preference of the listener. Certainly a different D to A converter and analog output stage of another high end CDP (removing DAC1 from circuit) is going to sound slightly different - just the same as different DACs will sound slightly different.

Subjective sound preference is hardly "evidence" in the same sense that test results made on the Benchmark DAC1 demonstrate it to be jitter immune and hence transport & digital cable independent (provided there is bit transparency). Note that DAC1 test results say nothing about subjective sound quality - the DAC1 while transport independent may sound terrible to some people. My advice would be to simply listen yourself and buy something more "top echelon" in that case.

Brian,

I think you got it. The point is that as long as Adasilva uses the DAC1 the "evidence" suggests that it really does not matter what transport he uses (provided it doesn't mess with the bits, as some apparently do).

If Adasilva finds the DAC1 to be a substandard DAC compared to the much better sound of top echelon players then he might, in future, face the interface issues as to what other DAC goes well with the Wadia 170i & possibly what type of digital cable he needs and what length. This is the situation faced when using the majority of DAC designs, which are NOT demonstrated through test data to be totally immune to incoming jitter on the digital signal. In this case, careful selection of components that work well together is mandatory and there are no guarantees, such as Benchmark offers in their claims (In this scenario, everything in the chain should really be as low jitter as possible and, as a general rule, a separate clock signal interface is usualy preferred to qualify as "top echelon" - Meitner gear comes to mind)

BTW - "jitter" is certainly the end of the world - it might be better to have a tubed DAC with a great warm and musical sound than an analytical DAC with better jitter rejection. This is where individual subjectivity comes into it - the lesser of Evils - the horrible pro sound versus the organic warmth of something that sounds much better.