How good is a benchmark dac 1........? What are the improvments of the dac 2 ?
What do you mean "what are the improvements of the dac 2?"? There is no dac 2, unless you mean the Bel Canto DAC 2, which is now discontinued. I own a Benchmark DAC1, so I can answer questions for you, but I'm not really sure what you're asking here.
Maybe that's what Zanash meant by 'stupid question'. Or does he really think a DAC 2 exists but meant 'stupid question' in the sense of over-simplified question. Zanash, will you please explain yourself!
Pete, I'm hardly an arthority of equipment at this end of the market but for what it worth, I had a forum conversation with a gentleman a while ago on the subject, he was EXTREMELY enthusiatic about them........to the extent that he saw little reason to have a high end cdp at all.........just hook up a benchmark DAC1 to whatever you have got. I think he said he sold an top end Wadia (or similar) as a result. I Don't know about a DAC2.
I'm not in 100% agreement with this. While I truly love my Benchmark DAC1, I wouldn't sell my Resolution Audio Opus 21 and keep the DAC1 as my only source, to be honest. Don't get me wrong, the DAC1 is a great little DAC, I love it. But comparing the ~£699 DAC1 with a £3k player isn't really fair, and while the DAC1 isn't 4 times worse than the RA as the price suggests, since when has audio price/performance ever been linear? Again, of course, these things are all subjective, and I have no doubt at all that the gentleman you spoke to was entirely serious and justified in his experience, I'm just pointing out that this rule doesn't hold true for all users. That said, I'd definitely have no reservations at all about recommending a DAC1 to most people. It does, however, have a slightly detailed/treble focused signature. While my ears are particularly sensitive to sibilance, which the DAC1 doesn't exhibit in my opinion, I'd still steer clear of matching it with bright equipment. This signature isn't to be confused with lean though, it's got a weighty and tight bass presentation, but the sound is on the 'resolving' side of neutral. It's a fine choice of DAC.
Cheer ...I said it was a stupid question. I'm probabley mixing the benchmark and the belcanto up. Ok now the reason behind the question. I made a call to a chap who has the aformentioned dac with sugden a21se amp , meridian 200 transport, mogami speaker cable , and a set of arc's. This was not the first time I'd been over , but the meridian was a recent upgrade. We had run the quad 99 as transport against his universal dvd [he'd been told that all transports were the same so just get a cheap one !] The quad was providing more info than his lp12 but thats an issue thats been sorted ! The system sounded very polite, which was at odds to the previous visits. I had taken various bits and peices which included a set of Audex Mopads ....[he has a first floor flat] with idea of reducing the ammount of sound reaching the floor. The speakers are sat on manna things which by all acounts have been injecting vibration into the flat below. So after some chopping and changing the Mopads were fitted with no negative results. The system still sounded polite. I then swapped the dac 1 for my modded src2496 .....well to say that this bowled us over would be an understament, regardless of the settings this rather cheap [but modded] dac restored the life and energy to the system suddenly he had deep full bass and imaging second to none. So the question is why was the dac1 making such a bad fist of it. Looking at the manual its clear there are a number of user setting ...would any of these have helped ? As I see it he has a number of options sell the dac1 and recoupe £500 ish, buy a src2496 and have it modded or replace with an as yet unknown dac..... The dac1 was bought after much enquiery and was considered very good value against its level of performance [which is where my first question comes in].....evidently this put the src into a different catogory at a cost £99 plus about £30 worth of mods.... so to reiterate... why was the dac1 behaving so badly and would any of the internal setting adjustments be of use improving its performance ?
What did you do to the SRC? It doesn't really surprise me that much, my modded DEQ2496 (no PSU mods) sounded a large bit better than the BelCanto DAC2 to both mine and Paul's (BitMonkey) ears. Interesting that after all this time, someone else is backing me up on the idea of it being a good DAC!
SRC mods....... damped the case and lid with bitumen sheet. replaced the rectifier diodes with 11DQ10's replaced all the 10uf caps arround the regulators with starget of the same value. replaced the 1000uf with 1200uf pana fc's and bypassed with wima film caps. replaced the 47uf coupling caps with 2.2uf pio's The main gains were from the psu mods.....deep bass and sweater treble. The bass is so deep that pictures in adjoining rooms now resonate/rattle .... took me a while to find what was playing along !
I know looks don't equate to sound quality but internally the Benchmark DAC1 doesn't look anything special compared with our DAC-AHs and my modified Zhaolu D2.0 and their relative price points and performance.
hiya for the more stupid amongst us (me included) - which one is which, and what should I be looking for? Cheers!
hiya for the more stupid amongst us (me included) - which one is which, and what should I be looking for? Cheers! From top, pictures 1 and 2-Benchmark, 3-Dac-Ah, 4 Zhaolu D2.0. The Dac-Ah is the cheapest so if you are modding i would go for that. Heard on other forums the Benchmark and Zhaolu have clean and clinical sound where the Dac-Ah has a more analogue sound. Jim.
Be careful of that thread. While I have no doubt that the Zhalou represents a great bargain, there are more than one or two posters around Head-Fi suspected of 'shilling'. Head-Fi is a great resource, but it tends to attract bands of followers for each brand/model who roam around the forums and recommend their current favourite piece of equipment en masse. There's plenty of useful info in that thread for sure, I'm not trying to discredit the Zhalou at all, but just trying to point out the inherent FOTM frenzy that sometimes happens.
