Benchmark DAC1 pre or Lavry DA11?

wow...i didn't know lavry came out with a new model....i wonder if the dac section has changed much from the da10 or it just builds on the da10/adds new features?

apparently...and lavry's website is notoriously opaque

DA11 Impressions

As of today have tried the DA11 but not the DAC1. I hope to audition the DAC1 soon. Hopefully this will help you in your decision




DA11 Impressions



How it sounded
Note: Audition was done with beyer 880s and a HD-25-II so I cannot comment on the preamp section

The first thing I noticed was that the bass and treble extensions were very deep and effortless. Through the HD-25-II, the bass slam had significantly more oomph and was faster and more impactful than what I am used to with my current system.

I found the DA-11 to be very detailed in its articulation of the music. I started noticing little nuances that I had not heard before through the HD-25-IIs, of which I used to think of as somewhat veiled. It was neither too dark nor too bright but settled for a comfortable middle ground that sounded pretty good. The DA-11 obviously has a very good DA converter.

However, one flaw that I noticed was that the DA-11 is quite forward in its presentation at preset 0. As such, its synergy with other components has to be thought through thoroughly. The 880 had much better synergy with the DA11 but the HD-25-II actually sounded more detailed. I generally prefer a forward presentation myself, but through the HD-25-IIs, which are naturally forward in the first place, the combination is probably too forward for most, and I would prefer something more laid back. This brings us to the “PiC” mode



“PiC” mode – Soundstage control
Conceptually I feel the idea of controlling the soundstaging through the DAC is a good idea. However, the implementation on the DA-11 needs abit of polishing (perhaps through monitors it’s a different story? It would be good if someone could comment.)

When I first plugged in the 880s into the DA11, the first thing I noticed was that the soundstage was kind of wider than usual. At first I found that when I moved the right soundstaging lever from “+1 to +2” I realized the right channel became slightly softer. It was quite awhile later when I figured out how the “wide” and “narrow” leavers worked, and that it was set on +1 at first which explained the wider soundstage.

With the 880s, the soundstaging did not need tweaking and I set it to the “0” position most of the way. I did most of my tweaking of the modes with the HD-25-II.

At +0 the HD-25-II sounded too forward. At +1, the soundstaging sounded somewhat more normal but also slightly unnatural. At +2, the “unnaturalness” outweighed any advantages of the better soundstage. I think the best way to describe it would be:

+1 instruments lining up at the centre and sides of a small stage with nobody in the neither regions
+2 everyone lining up at edges of a football field slightly BEHIND the audience
-1 and beyond smaller and smaller stages until all instruments are compressed into a line

This may sound extreme, but note that the initial small soundstage of the HD-25-II probably exaggerated the effects. The PiC modes for both channels are also controlled separately, which I found to be of no advantage whatsoever for normal listening especially since the volume seems to be slightly different in different modes, which I found most apparent from +1 to +2.

I can see the PiC being useful in the studio, however I personally will not use it for listening with headphones as the control is not sufficiently fine. There is a large gap between 0 to +1 and from +1 to +2. That said, I found the lack of distortion on PiC modes as compared to software DSP’s to be very impressive. Hopefully Lavry could make PiC continuously variable without compromising the good distortion characteristics with the DA12.



Fit and Finish
This is the section where the DA11 does the worst in. I noticed several quirks with the control system. For example depending on how you use the volume control, it may “skip” from say volume 25 to 27 (missing 26).

On the unit I tried, changing the volume with the stiff volume control caused the volume LCD to move. I looked at it carefully and wearing the display off at the edges due to rubbing on the enclosure does NOT look like a problem. However, depending on the mechanical tolerances the DA11s are made to, it could possibly be a problem on other units.

The whole idea of a numerical display for the volume is brilliant. It means I can quickly set the volume to a known value before I start playing, avoiding unpleasant surprises. I can see advantages of this in the studio as well.

Unfortunately if I change from a high impedance can to a low impedance one and forget to change the volume, it’s going to be allot easier to rack the volume to 0 on a rotary rather than play with the lever switch thing. I say keep the volume display and use the rotary pot like the one the grace 902 has.

There should be a way to change the PiC for right and left channels together. Having to set it twice gets old pretty fast and there’s no point in my mind for setting it differently for both channels when the volume is not perfectly “level”

There are no rca outputs and although you could use a XLR to RCA, I still count this as a disadvantage because there’s only one XLR output. If I wanted to leave the XLRs connected to a pair of monitors and use RCA for a discrete headphone amp you can’t without swapping cables. Having only one headphone output does not help either.

I could not find out how to change the gain control on the headphone amp. I am not too sure if there even is a gain control, or if Lavry has set it up such that there is no disadvantage not having a gain control.

Excellent review! Very helpful.

How did you listen to the unit? Did you do it with a fixed gain, the way it comes out of the box?

The gain control for the headphone amp is the volume switch. It gives you 56 steps of 1dB each. You can activate or deactivate the rear panel outputs from the front panel, the headphone jack is always active. You can find details about the front panel gain settings and the XLR and headphone levels in the product manual.

I will comment later, when I have time, about the other points you made.

Regards
Dan Lavry

I listened to the unit through the internal headphone amp. The volume switch works fine, but on other DACs you would ordinarily find a separate gain control as well as the volume pot to allow higher impedance cans to be driven better. I did not see this on the DA11 and am wondering if the DA11's volume control is implemented in a way that makes the separate gain control switch unnecessary.

@ The OP

What did you decide on in the end? I am making a similar decision and will like to know how it went.

Thank you for sharing your impressions aCuria and your informative review,

I have definitely not noticed this forward sound neither with my balanced K501 (in this case using the DAC in the DA11 only through XLR outputs) nor with my Creative Aurvana Live (Denon D1001 clone, used briefly with the DA11 internal headphone amp).

Are you talking about the build in headphone amp, or the DAC itself ?

I agree, the volume control mechanism and other front end selectors are indeed not really "soft" to the fingers, but not to the point of beeing an issue for me. You can simply adjust the volume with almost any universal remote, which was in fact a real plus (I was able to choose the remote that best suited my use).

Read this thread, in particular the technical posts from Dan Lavry himself that detail why he made certain design decisions:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f158/l...s-only-410565/
HTH

I've read a review about the comparsion of DA11 and DAC1 before from a Taiwan forum and maybe I'll just conclude it in point forms

I had quite a lot of difficulties in translating the vocabulary describing the sound
The translation maybe slightly different from what the article actually wanted to mean, sorry about that

The system:Philips LHH500 CD Transpotr+DAC1+Jeff Rowland Capri Pre-AMP+Jeff Rowland 102 Power AMP+Klipsch Heresy III Speakers. P100 and 2x AR1P for power supply

They think that DAC1 is :
1.Superb Clarity
2.Impressive high extension
3.The bass' response is fast
4.Spacious
However:
5.Thin Mids and Bass

They mentioned that the owner did spent quite a lot on power cords, power supply and Toslink Cables to try to improve (5)

Then the DA11, connected through XLR
They immediately found out that
1.The body of the mids and bass improved
2.The replay of Strings was smooth
3. Sticking on the "soft" sounded side
Comparing to DAC1
4. The speed was slower
5. The dynamics was also not as good as that of DAC1
However, they thought that the tone was more balanced and full in general

Conclusion:
1.The DA11 improved the weakness of DA10, mainly the transparency of the mids and highs and the high's extension, even close to that of DAC1
2. DA11 performs better than DA10 significantly for classic and symphony etc.
3. Dynamics is still not the strength of Lavry
4. DAC1 is more "Hi-Fi" sound, having a bit better dynamics, speed, sound stage and high extension, but DA11 has rich and full Mids and Bass, the texture of instrument and vocal is still better than DAC1
5.If you like vocal, instrument performances such as jazz or classical, DA11 may be the choice. On the other hand, if you are looking for "Hi-Fi" sound(extension in bass and high) and more complicated music , you may be
looking for DAC1
They also compared DA11 with Mark No.30.6, using Mark Levinson No.31CD Transport
1.The details, speed, dynamics of 30.6 were better
2.However the tone of DA11 was more soft and sweet

The extraction ends here

PiC for both channels

There is! You can change the PiC levels for both channels simultaneously using the remote. Pressing '2' increases width and '5' decreases width on both channels together.

It's all detailed here in the manual, see page 5:
http://www.lavryengineering.com/whit...A11_Manual.pdf

I only used the DAC through the built in headphone amp. It was more forward and had a smaller soundstage at "0" than what i am used to.

I still feel a rotary digital volume control will be nicer, something like what the grace 902 has. From a technical standpoint. EliasGwinn once pointed out that a digital volume control has a side effect of reducing the dynamic range. Having to use a remote is not a plus for me. I lose those things all too often and the DAC will be sitting right in front of me anyway.

@USAudio thanks for pointing that out. I never bothered with the remote when i auditioned it.

I have owned both a Grace m902 and Benchmark DAC1 Pre. The m902 volume control might be preferable in a professional recording studio application, but for home audio use, I strongly prefer the volume control of the DAC1. While the m902 enabled very precise volume adjustment, I found it disconcerting that you couldn't tell how much the volume would change when you turned the knob without looking at the display. (How fast you turned the knob altered the speed at which the volume changed.) With the DAC1, you always know what the volume is by the position of the knob, and you always know how much of a turn will have what effect on the volume.