Benchmark DAC1 auditions out there? latest model

Steve, I just read your article. Very well written. One thing I'm having a hard time believing though, is that the designers of high-end DACs don't know this stuff. The Benchmark is definitely designed to a price point, so I can see how it could be improved. But the Meitners, dCSes, Wadias, etc. of the world don't have that restriction on their high-end gear. Are you saying the designers of high-end DACs don't know what they're doing? If you were to market a cost-no-object DAC you designed from scratch would it benefit from mods?

Are you saying the designers of high-end DACs don't know what they're doing?

No, some of them are very competent circuit designers. What you must understand is that there are some very difficult areas of design, such as power delivery, grounding and shielding, wire technology, ESD and EMI. In these areas there are very few experts, even in big industry. I'm talking IBM and Intel. How can you expect designers in small audio companies to know this stuff?

If you were to market a cost-no-object DAC you designed from scratch would it benefit from mods?

Probably if someone identified a higher performing part, it would benefit from replacing that part - a capacitor or op-amp for instance. Also, I am an expert in the esoteric areas that I mentioned above and in the article. I have not spent 30 years designing discrete analog circuits. You dont have to throw a stone far to find one better than me. John Curl certainly can do a better job of designing an amp than me. Even in op-amp design I'm no expert. Industry experts have seen more circuits and solutions than me. For instance, how to do the I/V conversion from the DAC. I only know what I have seen. I'm no expert on this.

Richdobs,

Back on track. To answer your initial question, the latest version is the one with a stepped volume control. Been out about a year. There is also a version with less output impedence upon request from the factory for passive folks. There is a mod that Steven at Resolution Audio does that bypasses one of the coupling caps and some wiring by jumping them with Bybees at the output. This is even better than the lower impedence change from the factory because you are losing a couple of stages and gaining the incredible benefits of the Bybees right at the outputs.
That was probably more than you needed to know but maybe helpful to some others.

"I'm just saying that John has never heard my reference DAC's."

I was hesitant to give my response to this comment as I'm not after an argument. But facts are facts. And the fact is that last year at this time I had the opportunity to listen to this "reference" dac for a couple of weeks in my home and was impressed only with its dynamics and a fairly high degree of articulation but in regard to the higher endeaver of caputuring the soul and life of the music it was NOT the last word in musicality. I had a gentleman in response to my earlier comment in this thread e-mail me his impressions after he had this modder mod his electocomp ECD-1 dac. He stated that the modders goal of retrieving all the detail with a balanced presentation actually ended up being less than musically involving. These are the facts and I ended up using none of his digital mods. His analog mods may be terrific but there it is a special blend of tech and art-form indeed to create musical magic out of bits.

I think people looking in the close to $1000 or even $2000 range should not be put off by some of these negative sounding comments regarding the Benchmark. Some glowing reviews including the one in Stereophile may make it sound like it is the best DAC in the universe, bar none, in every system, which of course, is impossible IMO. (I'm not saying the reviewers said that, you may just come away with the impression that they did after reading a glowing review.)

The bottom line is every system component designer makes choices (I hesitate to call them compromises) based on the sliding scale between accuracy and "musicality", desired price point, output levels and many other things. This also means that something can sound better or worse in your system than it did in a reviewers not just because of "sound" issues but for reasons of level or electrical compatibility, or choice of transport or even type of music. Then we have the downstream to consider - perhaps your speakers + room won't benefit from the most revealing front end even if revealing does not mean etched or negatively anayltical.

You could just get stuck in an endless research loop looking for something that everyone loves and even then it may not be the best match for your system. I find that there is nothing here (unless incredibly obscure) that is universally loved by everyone, if you search hard enought, and for good reason.
By all means consider the right components and narrow the field of competitors then pick the likely candidates and *try them in your system*. Try your best to make each work but don't be surprised if you end up with what you thought would be your number 2 choice or #3, 4, etc.