Less is more?

I think you'll find the Benchmark is darker, with a deeper almost inky blackness. The M-Audio is brigher (but not shiney). The Benchmark has greater weight and physical prescence, while the M-audio is errs towards being lighter and smaller. If you do a sighted AB comparison, I think you'll agree with my subjective assessment.

 

Strange Andy, I find the Benchmark thin and flightly if anything a bit bright, even after playing it need wanky wires the extract that basic of presence out of it.
Needs more balls, but passable.
Please do explain linear and minimum phase variants Andy, they are a few keen guys here wanting to indulge in acoustical engineering, maybe a bit of evidence that phase fiddling is non detecable by you mortals.
Instead of one sentance/word retorts Andy, how about some theroum/fumulii?/graphs/plots, lets do a non abx on the thereoy sir
Come Andy, so us that secret workshop buried away where you conduct your experiments on the poor subjectivists

 

Thanks for that. So which one is accurate if I might ask or are both the same under blind conditions?

 

merlin, tone, I think oedipus's last post was made with toungue firmly in cheek.

Read it again and then have a look at a picture of the two dacs and maybe you'll get it

Michael.

 

Superb

 

yes datty19 did indeed pull a flanker. wood/trees springs to mind

 

Nice to see a developed sense of humour


Touche I believe is the expression - so the M Audio sounds as good as anything. Great, you've saved me enough to upgrade my turntable

 

michaelab - as the dac chips themselves (and its in a socket) are so cheap you could try a parallel version. Like this - http://www.dddac.de/ma_dac21tower.htm have considered one myself.

 

hifikrazy - I've seen that DAC tower page before, it looks nuts!

I might consider trying paralleling but you quickly end up with cooling problems. As it is I'm very, VERY happy with this DAC. I had a friend over last night to listen to it and we compared it to the DAC64....this DAC just blew the DAC64 out of the water it's so much better in every way.

Michael.

 

So I take it the the worlds finest digital soucre has been religated then ?

 

Correctamundo

 

:mana:

And this is just using a bog standard wallwart into the stock form of the DAC as posted to you right?

 

Michael,
Wow.

However, since I have to be consistent it need to be asked. Was the volume levels matched to within 0.5dB? And did you attempt the comparison blind?

 

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, my preamp doesn't permit such precise level matching but even with the NOS DAC playing less loud than the DAC64 it's advantages are still clear. We didn't try a blind comparison.

Michael.

 

Michael,

don't you think you should? Given your proclaimations it seems strange that you would post some thing like this without any objective testing

Aside from that, I'm delighted that you have found this Dac to be so impressive. I would love to hear a similar design before wasting money on anything more esoteric.

 

Merlin, you have an open invite to sample my ceramic wares.

-- Ian

 

<long response deleted>

I don't want to get into yet another objectivist/subjectivist debate

Michael.

 

Interesting comments there, Michael. I guess this is what myself and a couple of others have been saying about the DAC64 all along in that despite the very high sampling rates & "buffer zones" talked about in the brochure, it is a very unmusical DAC. In fact, I find it very interesting that it's taken a very simple and much cheaper DAC design to dethrone the DAC64 in your system. Perhaps, the likes of 47 Labs & Audio Note do have a point after all in that keeping things simple does indeed pay musical dividends. On that musical note ……………………..



Enjoy the music,

Lawrie.

 

Michael,

Just dropped in on this thread and am a little nonplussed - are you basically saying that this little box that looks like Orac from Blakes 7's runty little sibling and cost all of 100 notes is doing better things than the Dac 64 ??

Do you think it might stand a chance of getting my Rotel sounding marginally musical?

 

to the description. Yes, that is what I'm saying . It's about time I changed my avatar.....

I think it would stand a chance, yes, allthough I think its performance is potentially quite system dependant. On Saturday I'll be taking it over to the house of the friend who heard it here last night and we'll try it with his Meridian 508.24 (or 507 I can never remember which he has) and that will give me a better idea.

Michael.