[TonyTripleA]

Okay, my Benchmark DAC1 finally arrived today. Its totally unjustifiable for me to make any judgements with only three hours of burn in and listening accomodation but... some questions to owners of both the NAD C542i and DAC1.

First off where did the beautiful NAD upper treble go... the DAC1 does not deliver this to me. And yes, I connected the DAC1 to my Talisman T-3H amp, the same one the NAD drives. Will burn in address this?

Second, bass... the benchmark has been reported as light on bass as far as my limited research shows. However, its certainly not to my ears. In fact, it has "gobs" of bass. Do other NAD owners find the bass significantly "more" from the DAC1? Funny, I never perceived the NAD as light on bass but in comparision it sounds it at the moment. Now for the very tough subjective question "is it better bass or not"? I'm not prepared to answer that at this early stage but would like to hear your thoughts.

At this early stage, listening to the DAC1 headphone out, for the first time my MS-pros sound better then the Sony SA5000. Odd hey. Another interesting but premature observation is that the DAC1 sounds marginally better out of the Chaintech soundcard than from the NAD CDP... could this be the higher sampling rate out of the Chaintech?

Ah, questions, questions. Your thoughts appreciated.

***EDIT: note my admission of error in the post below, my poor quality cable seems to be the problem ***

Cheers,

TonyAAA

 

[morphie]

welcome to the benchmark's dark side of the force...

 

[TonyTripleA]

Morphie: are you saying I should get used to this sound... or is there an equal "light side of the force" I should look forward to?

TonyAAA

 

[morphie]

well, the burn it does smooth things out, but I find the benchmark to be detailed and tight. Its quite fast as well. If you dont like analytical sound i dont think its a unit for you though ^^

 

[TonyTripleA]

I love analytical sound. Which is why I love the Sony SA5000. I just get less upper treble and less perceived analytical sound out of the Benchmark at the moment. Will this change with burn in?

TonyAAA

 

[TonyTripleA]

***OPINION REVISION***

Okay, I have to admit I "stuffed up". Yep. I just switched from coaxial cable to toslink optical from the NAD. Wow... now that is quality sound...

Boomy bass now gone. In fact, bass could be described as a bit light but very tight. Treble now present and very nice. Up to or exceeding NAD sound quality for upper treble.

So what did I do wrong. Possibly the coaxial cable or some burn in...

I've edited this again to add the final facts... that I cleaned up the Chaintech as well. Sound is now quite good from the Chaintech - not quite as good as the NAD in my opinion but very good. The solution... don't use windows media player. I switched to Itunes and popped a cd in. Wow, what an unbelievable difference to windows media player through the Chaintech AV710. My wife was also taken aback. What is wrong with media player (latest version too)?

Now I just have to work out how to rip lossless into Itunes for the DAC1 while keeping a separate library for compressed files for my ipod.

The quest continues... and continues

TonyAAA

 

[some1x]

If you are using Chaintech AV710 with digital only, the best solution for sound quality is to flash it with Prodigy firmware and use Foobar player with ASIO output.

http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=75844

 

[Asmo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyTripleA ***OPINION REVISION*** Okay, I have to admit I "stuffed up". Yep. I just switched from coaxial cable to toslink optical from the NAD. Wow... now that is quality sound... Boomy bass now gone. In fact, bass could be described as a bit light but very tight. Treble now present and very nice. Up to or exceeding NAD sound quality for upper treble. So what did I do wrong. Possibly the coaxial cable or some burn in... I've edited this again to add the final facts... that I cleaned up the Chaintech as well. Sound is now quite good from the Chaintech - not quite as good as the NAD in my opinion but very good. The solution... don't use windows media player. I switched to Itunes and popped a cd in. Wow, what an unbelievable difference to windows media player through the Chaintech AV710. My wife was also taken aback. What is wrong with media player (latest version too)? Now I just have to work out how to rip lossless into Itunes for the DAC1 while keeping a separate library for compressed files for my ipod. The quest continues... and continues TonyAAA

Keep us up to date, I am still being temped by the DAC1 upgrade, the more favorable reviews I read the more I want one hehe.

You should defiently give foobar a try, and follow the instructions for setting up the chaintech properly. And let us know what you think.

 

[yfei]

Tony, can you say more about the difference between Dac1's headphone out vs. Talisman T-3H ? I am very interested to know.



Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyTripleA I love analytical sound. Which is why I love the Sony SA5000. I just get less upper treble and less perceived analytical sound out of the Benchmark at the moment. Will this change with burn in? TonyAAA

 

[Nospam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyTripleA ...Now I just have to work out how to rip lossless into Itunes for the DAC1 while keeping a separate library for compressed files for my ipod....

Sorry for being off-topic, but since you mentioned it, here's what I did:

1) Ripped all my CDs into iTunes using Apple Lossess.
2) Converted from Apple Lossless to 320-AAC for iPod.
3) Created iPod-specific smart playlists that filter out Apple Lossless files and in-home smart playlists that only contain Apple Lossless.
4) Edited run time for AAC files to prevent the songs from being cut off when playing out of the iPod (only seems to happen to some songs, but it was easier to just edit all of them).

 

[Zoide]

Or maybe you should do the ripping in EAC with Secure Mode....

 

[TonyTripleA]

First up: thanks for the advice guys... much appreciated. Especially since I should be apologising for this "premature" ranting that I have posted.

I will look at getting foobar ASIO streaming up and running. At the present time I find Foobar is giving the same sound as itunes... and nospam that is a good bit of advice on setting Itunes to use playlists to discern between high and low bitrate files... I might just do that if foobar looks too daunting (some parts certainly do).

Its still early days but I can update you to say that I am now discerning some "subtle" differences between my NAD/Talisman setup and the DAC1 using its own headphone amp. First up, listening to Norah Jones, yes a poor recording with far too much sound volume and terrible dynamic range... well in the very heavy bass notes the NAD/Talisman alway had a little distortion. Not huge but easily detectable and one reason I don't often listen to Norah (forgive me Ms Jones, I do like your music). Surprise, surprise, the DAC1 cleans this up - no distortion detectable by my ears at all. Amazing.

I can also say that the MS-pros really shine from the DAC1 headphone out. Geez can I really bear to part with these cans???? The very slight increase in treble over the NAD and the perceived slight tighness in the bass just sits so well with the MS-pros. The SA5000 on the other hand don't need any extra upper treble and I am still not sure the DAC1 "suits" them the same way it does the MS-pros.... more time and more burn in needed here for any conclusion. My immediate preference is probably SA5000: NAD/Talisman and MS-pro: DAC1 but there really isn't night and day differences here.

To answer you Yfei: I can also say that its very hard to completely define if the Talisman is better or worse than the headphone out of the DAC1. I have tried running the Talisman from the analogue out of the DAC1 and I cannot perceive a "real" difference, I feel the Talisman may be just a tiny bit better in the upper treble maybe but I also feel I'm imagining this. Let me put it this way, if there is a difference it would take such a determined A/B comparision as to be effectively meaningless. It would also only be perceived on the most demanding audiophile recording I think. So, for what its worth, let me jump to an early presumption - the Talisman and DAC1 headphone amp don't have much difference I can perceive. Early days, so please bear with me if I jump either way at a later date.

So, the saga continues, next to get digital working well from the computer...

Thanks again,

TonyAAA

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

So how's the DAC1/SA5k combo sounding there?