benchmark and apogee

just bumping this aged thread up as I am interested, too.

left a lengthy response the other day, but don't know what happened, never got posted. lets try again in short form. basically, liked the apogee slightly better than the benchmark, and picked up 2 apogees and 1 belcanto dac2 for my 3 different sonos setups. bottom line: apogee was slightly fuller sounding, whereas the benchmark was maybe slightly more analytical but drier. since the apogee was several hundred cheaper new vs new price, i went with apogee. test system includes B&W 803s2, acurus dia100. hope this helps. feel free to email if you need more info. regards jeff

Jeff,

What you report about the Benchmark DAC1 is very consistent with what I observed and many others have reported. To my ears it happens to work well with my speakers so I am happy with a less "full" sound. I have not heard anything quite as detailed as the DAC1 without sounding harsh and I understand that many people will not like this aspect but it suits me. I admit though that there is not a lot in it between one good DAC and another - at least to my "tin" ears.

Shadorne,

I have to admit, in researching the benchmark, I was VERY excited and very much wanted to hear it live up to it's press, but it just didn't do it in my set-up. In fact, I could barely tell any difference between the 3 different dacs. However, to be fair, all three were being fed by the sonos unit, and I was trying to see how close I could get the sonos to sound like my main rig (now my second best rig, hooray!). Fact is, all three got the sonos pretty close to the main rig, but just couldn't match it. Seems like the old Adcom GCD600 feeding the old Acurus DIA100 integrated couldn't be bested by this sonos-to-outboard dac setup. I did NOT, however, try any of the dacs being fed by the adcom cdp as a transport, and that may have yielded different results. So that's my big disclaimer.

OT: BTW, most impressed with your HT setup. Do the embedded ATC's give decent imaging and localization of instruments? My HT system has N803's in cabinets, and this really detracts from imaging/localization (at least until I pull them out of the closet for serious 2 chnl listening!!).