Hey majid, any early impressions yet?
If I had to make a price point and name my own feature set, the HGC is EXACTLY what I would be looking for. But then I would be afraid of asking for just too much for the money... which makes me afraid the Benchmark will sacrifice other areas compared to recently released competitors (ie, they've compromised on sound quality - at least, relative to what else can be bought right now for a similar price, albeit with reduced features). My hope is that what was "sacrificed" in the Benchmark budgeting/marketing process was investment in the aesthetics (let's face it, even if you're okay with the pro appearance, nobody will be writing home to say how beautiful it is, or what an artful evolution it is over the DAC1, or gushing with pride they would with Chord, Calyx, or AMR stuff)
and my 2 audiophile cents...
I find "neutrality" is a bad word for what people dislike in that general group of sound signature styles...
"Neutrality" is hardly a displeasing characteristic, assuming the music was recorded and engineered even half-way decently. What is not "for everyone" are characteristics like upfront treble, especially when not balanced by good bass, or extreme clarity of detail not balanced out by good timbre or tonality. Note, e.g., that a WEAK bass is not the same thing as a NEUTRAL or ACCURATE signature - if music is recorded to have strong bass that the system cannot reproduce, that deviation is by definition not "neutral" or "accurate." I hope that when the above people talk about "neutrality" they do not mean a relatively low bass output partnered by relatively prominent treble, because such a sound would be most decidedly NOT neutral.
Without balance, neutral becomes analytical - and that's what people tend to dislike. For example, a system can have a flat frequency response but different types and quantities of distortion (harmonic distortion, jitter, etc) and still be called neutral. Or it can have a bump in the bass and some mid-treble lift, but be relatively low on distortion, and so still be called neutral. Both sound types achieve a type of "faithfulness to the recording," and so both are accurate, but they will not sound the same and will have different adherents. It's the way it gets pulled off - flat FR with impressive dynamics? low THD? fast rise times and long decays? low jitter? - that influences whether or not someone will prefer a neutral sound (composed of other characteristics, good or bad) to an imbalanced signature (but meeting audiophile criteria in other ways).
My point is that "neutrality" is not what puts people off, as there are different ways of achieving what can still be called "neutral." If the Benchmark HPA2 is not well-loved, it is not likely for being "neutral" but for lacking other sonic traits that its detractors highly value.
