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Hey Elias, to get terribly unsimple for one second and ask a direct question - are there any plans to ever release a remote controllable Dac1? This is the only thing stopping me from buying one now (used to own one but missed being lazy!).
Two questions, one for lowmagnet and one for Elias. Firstly, low, I was wondering how your new Benchmark setup compares to your Spitfire rig. Any thoughts would be great as I'm trying to justify the cost of the new Benchmark to myself.
It compares favorably. The little Spitfire and Cute Beyond (Class A) are nice, but they have their faults.
The Spitfire takes in coax or optical, and my upstairs system has a dead optical port on its main-board, so that was right out for when I'm at that desk. Also, it has signal locking problems on the downstairs system. It would play noise with no signal on.
The Cute Beyond had serious problems with its volume control that couldn't be corrected by the ganging switch inside. Left channel was way off until about 9 O'Clock, which is painfully loud even in low-output mode.
That said, on to the benchmark. It has a few features that are a big improvement over the Firestone devices:
It takes power from a standard 3-prong power connector to well-designed power supply instead of a wall-wart.
Both DAC and amp are in the same box, instead of stringing two boxes together.
Multi-source selection is possible here, but I haven't used it yet.
I can run my desktop speakers from the benchmark. When I pull my headphones, it plays over the desk speakers.
The volume control is detented and balanced between channels well.
The headphone amp gives me bass on Grado SR225 (which aren't well known for bass)
I hope that covers it. I'm not going to say anything about soundstage or anything, because I'm not a fan of fuzzy terms to describe equipment. It sounds really great, and doesn't miss a thing. I can hear more background chatter in "Light Up" by Styx, which is one of my tests for clarity of sound.
Plus, the thing tests well on the bench. I know you're going to read all of the above, and say "CURSE YOU HEAD-FI!!!", but you did ask for my honest opinion
(Unless you like tubes, warm sound and all of the other methods of listening to equipment instead of music. Some people roll that way.)
Hey Elias, to get terribly unsimple for one second and ask a direct question - are there any plans to ever release a remote controllable Dac1? This is the only thing stopping me from buying one now (used to own one but missed being lazy!).
What would you remote control? Volume, source and mute? Hm, that could be useful Then again, mine sits right to my left when I'm using it.
Thanks, low. No curses from me. I knew what I was getting into when I went a lookin and I always have my credit card out of reach when I'm trawling the boards. Now I just need to wait for a birthday.
This occurred on my Dell system at work with a different device, but it's important if you are hearing clicks and pops with any USB device. You won't hear the pops and clicks on the DAC1 since it should catch them, but it's good to check this out anyway, as it affects the performance of the USB port you're plugged into:
Originally Posted by Lowmagnet
I was having clicks and pops so I brought up the hardware manager, looked through the tree to find my iMic (on my work machine) and wrote down the USB bus number (27CB).
I then switched to IRQ mode and found a USB bus without any shared IRQ (27CB was on the same IRQ as the onboard sound) and wrote the bus number down (27C9).
Then I went back into the connection view, and started plugging my iMic in to various ports until it came up on 27C9, and isolation was achieved.
I have a question for Mr Gwinn. What do you (or others) think of the price doubling Empirical Audio Benchmark mod? I have read that the dac1 has 'empirically' (no pun intended) perfect specs - so where is the improvement? The psychology here is as interesting as anything, I would love to see some serious (decent sized n) double blind trials go on, perhaps at a meet (then posted as a separate thread).
Also (for Mr Gwinn), have you read the comments about the design of the dac1 on the lessloss website? It certainly sounds like they know what they are on about - I wonder if anyone could hear the difference there also. I think there is a very real phenomena related to money spent, research done/time spent, cool looks feeding into how we perceive the sound coming out of some of these boxes.
This has been a very enjoyable thread by the way. I am currently saving up for a dac1 and am sure i will love the sound, not just because of the time I have spent researching, thinking, talking about it :-)
I have a question for Mr Gwinn. What do you (or others) think of the price doubling Empirical Audio Benchmark mod? I have read that the dac1 has 'empirically' (no pun intended) perfect specs - so where is the improvement? The psychology here is as interesting as anything, I would love to see some serious (decent sized n) double blind trials go on, perhaps at a meet (then posted as a separate thread).
Also (for Mr Gwinn), have you read the comments about the design of the dac1 on the lessloss website? It certainly sounds like they know what they are on about - I wonder if anyone could hear the difference there also. I think there is a very real phenomena related to money spent, research done/time spent, cool looks feeding into how we perceive the sound coming out of some of these boxes.
This has been a very enjoyable thread by the way. I am currently saving up for a dac1 and am sure i will love the sound, not just because of the time I have spent researching, thinking, talking about it :-)
If you come to the Head-Fi meet in San Jose you can hear for yourself. I can give you technical explanations about the improvements in person and you can listen to the modded DAC-1. You can hear my new headphone amp mod for it.
First of all, sorry for my absence on the thread lately...things have been pretty busy around here with our new products getting up on their own feet. So far, so good!
Lord Chaos, Low Magnet (and anyone/everyone else), I'm glad to see your enjoying your new DAC1 USB's!
Now, to answer some questions:
Originally Posted by SamNOISE
EliasGwinn
Wow the dude's been one patient cat in answering all of these audiogeek questions! I suggest you post an address that we can send a bottle of fine Vino & our best chocolate to!
I'll attempt to diverge slightly from the topic that is being hammered to death:
What is your take on using the BenchMark DAC1 as a simple preamplifier / DAC? In my case, I have been musing over a combo-DAC / Preamp such as Benchmark's product between my CD player or laptop and the power amplifier (PSAudio HCA-2).
Many have suggested that this is not an idea situation as they feel that the preamp stage in products such as the DAC1 would be inferior to a 'classic', stand-alone preamplifier.
Now, I'm not one to use bass / treble / balance etc controls - nor do I care about input switching etc. That said, do you feel that the built-in preamplifier in combo products such as the DAC1 are every bit as 'transparent' as any high-end preamplifier?
First of all, I'll premise by saying that not all D-to-A's have pre-amp quality output stages. However, the DAC1 is designed to operate as a pre-amplifier for the purpose of avoiding that extra stage (and extra cables, electronics, etc). We recommend using the DAC1 USB without a pre-amp simply because ANY device in the audio chain, no matter how well designed, will add some noise and distortion. Since a pre-amp is not needed with the DAC1, you will enjoy better performance by leaving it out of the signal path. With that said, there are people who particularly enjoy the sound shaping that a specific pre-amp achieves. For those people, using that pre-amp is a subjective decision.
I'd like to also add that the new DAC1 USB has specially designed high-current output drivers that will rival most any stand-alone pre-amp. These output drivers can drive almost any load impedance, capacitance, or inductance imaginable without any loss in THD+N performance.'
Then again, mine sits right to my left when I'm using it.
Linear Mode
