Looking for a DAC that has..

Hello Steve thanks for all this info.

"I generally dont believe in reclocking in the DAC. It is better to leave the DAC alone and allow the source to have low jitter. If there is reclocking in the DAC, the benefits of a low-jitter source are diminished. This is why I dont reclock S/PDIF input inside my DAC."

My Peachtree Audio IDAC reclocks, do you believe it won't benefit much from the synchro-mesh?

"My Peachtree Audio IDAC reclocks, do you believe it won't benefit much from the synchro-mesh?"

It probably will be beneficial, but an even better solution is to use Off-Ramp 5 and a computer. I believe iDAC was reviewed with Off-Ramp 4 in TAS in the last year or two.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Have you thought about listening below that level and using a passive?

benchmark just introduced a new dac - pretty feature rich, though below your price range:

http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/dac/dac2-hgc

Hi Srosenberg, thanks for the info on Benchmark DAC2-HGC. I wouldn't have known. It indeed is a feature rich product. I will be keeping an eye on this for the next few months.

My initial budget $3-4k USD is based on the assumption that there's a product that can replace my Pass Labs XP-10 pre + my current dac. But somewhere along the way, I learned that I should improve the clock jitter of the transport first (currently waiting for Empirical Audio Synchro-mesh, time goes by so slow). Once SM is in the chain and after I get myself familiar with the sound of SM+my current dac, I will be auditioning for a new dac. So far, these are on my list to audition in the coming months:
- Metrum Octave
- W4S DAC2
- Benchmark DAC2 HGC
- PSAudio Perfectwave DAC II (only if this is on par with XP-10+dac mentioned above, I cannot afford having both XP-10 and Perfectwave II)