Which DAC - Benchmark DAC1 or Musical Fidelity M1?

SpiceRoute

falconcry72 wrote: »

Congrats, Joe!:biggrin:

So... do you think it sounds better? I can't really tell by your post.

BTW, how do you have your speakers positioned?

Oh, I think it sounds A LOT better. I am quite thrilled. Haven't had a chance to take it out for a proper test drive, as I got home late from work and just had time to set things up and give a nice listen to Rickie Lee Jones "Naked Songs" - incredible clarity. Please advise as to the order of turning the components on and off: ON: source/preamp/amp==== OFF:amp/preamp/source? The speakers are not optimally positioned, or to state it differently, are in the worst place possible: Two recessed boxes in the wall about 10 feet above the ground. The speakers just fit into the boxes and I actually think they act as little bass resonators, on the down side, there is not much room for the "sound vent" in the rear to breathe. They rest on their sides/slightly angled inwards/tweeters closer to the center. There is tremendous room for improvement: better speaker placement, better gauge speaker wire, but.... the wife is happy and no value can be placed on that, and the system, at least after a 30 minute listen - has sweetened up considerably. The brightness of the adcoms is very much to my taste!

falconcry72

SpiceRoute wrote: »

...Please advise as to the order of turning the components on and off: ON: source/preamp/amp==== OFF:amp/preamp/source?

That is correct.

heiney9

SpiceRoute wrote: »

Oh, I think it sounds A LOT better. I am quite thrilled!

If that's the case, then why would you say this?

SpiceRoute wrote:

the GFA 545 II and GTP 500 II arrived today. Of course in reality I'm sure the Kenwood sounded as good, but it is sort of amazing to hear Rickie Lee Jones drag her fingers across the frets of her acoustic guitar and here [sic] that little friction screech. I'm sensing a deeper sound stage!

Sort of contradictory isn't it? It's either better or it isn't?

H9

SpiceRoute

Thought the tounge out "smiley" would have tipped y'all off that I was teas'in. Its better, its better.

SpiceRoute

6 days into the new system. Enjoying Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rickie Lee Jones, and tonight Nancy Griffith on the new system. Noticing a new depth of sound. Something richer. But most noticeably, less ear fatigue. Still acquisition disordering about a DAC, the MF V-II is at Crutchfield. I called them up today, to see if I could get some insight on how it compared to the M1. Sadly, the rep was not particularly informed about either.

The Cambridge DacMagic, continues to allure as well, and the Benchmark, well I know that's great on my friends system, but outside of budget.

DarbyPope

I have a few DACs, and the new Grant Fidelity-11 on the way.
In my opinion, a modern DAC can really help out an older digital player. Even a cheap modern one is way head of older digital players or older DACs.

Back to the thread title, I have a BenchMark Dac-1 Pre also. I use it on my deck.
It is very good, and to my ears, gives a less colored sound, and that is all one could ask from a DAC.

heiney9

DarbyPope wrote: »

Even a cheap modern one is way head of older digital players or older DACs.

Going to have to disagree, there is a reason it's cheap in many cases. I'm not saying it can't happen, but rarely will a modern cheap DAC outperform an older DAC unless the older unit was that era's cheap equivalent. Many of the older units worth anything had excellent power supplies, were mostly discrete and paid attention to the analog section. Some Modern, cheap DAC's use inexpensive opamps, switching power supplies and little attention paid to jitter or a proper clock. Don't even get me started on the "modern" inexpensive DAC and how they implement USB conversion.

I say some to most but not all.

H9

falconcry72

heiney9 wrote: »

Going to have to disagree, there is a reason it's cheap in many cases. I'm not saying it can't happen, but rarely will a modern cheap DAC outperform an older DAC unless the older unit was that era's cheap equivalent. Many of the older units worth anything had excellent power supplies, were mostly discrete and paid attention to the analog section. Some Modern, cheap DAC's use inexpensive opamps, switching power supplies and little attention paid to jitter or a proper clock. Don't even get me started on the "modern" inexpensive DAC and how they implement USB conversion.

I say some to most but not all.

H9

+1,000,000

I recently compared (4) DAC's in my system:

- Benchmark DAC-1 (2005)
- Musical Fidelity M1 (2010)
- Audio GD NFB-7 (2010)
- Parasound DAC 2000 Ultra (1998)

The Parasound was equally as resolving as the Benchmark or M1 on redbook material, but it had better dynamics and a better sense of realistic weight and texture. This was due to its superior analog section, power transformers/supplies, relays etc. It's only downside was that it can't play the newer hi-res stuff. The NFB-7 had it all.

Newer does not equal better, even with DAC's. Digital 2-channel audio has not changed much in the last 10-15 years, with the exception of newer hi-res sampling rates. There are always new chips coming out, but they are not inherently better sounding, even if their specs say that they should be. the Anolog section plays a huge roll in the sound of a DAC.

And as far as poor USB implementation, that's why I always try to sway people towards using a separate USB to SPDIF converter and DAC. There are several excellent options for inexpensive USB to SPDIF converters, and then you can buy any DAC ever created on the used market .... like that Parasound, that you could pick up for probably 4 or 5 hundred bucks... if you could find one. , and it would smoke a 4 or 5 hundred dollar modern DAC. Plus, as with all separates, you can upgrade one at a time instead of all at once. There are some expensive converters I'd like to try down the road.

Anyway, my .02.

Cheers,


Ben

tonyb

Agreed with the 2 yuts above, way too much weight is given these days to chip sets. Build quality is more important and to tell the truth,some of the higher end dacs still use older burr brown chips, though by no means exclusively.

SpiceRoute

Added the new V-Dac II to the chain. Need to clock in some use time. As noted above, the DACs in my Rotel 1072 are quite fine and there is not a huge amount of difference with the Dac. The V-Dac II incorporates asynchronous usb, not sure what this is, but its supposed to be good. The itunes sound quite remarkable filtered through this thing. Going to borrow Airport Express from my son and see how itunes sounds from a wireless connection. (Did a head to head comparison with the old Kenwood receiver. It held up quite well actually v.s. the Adcom rig, but in the end the depth of the Adcom, and its soundstage reproduction could not be overcome.) Having fun. Thanks guys for all of the enabling.

falconcry72

SpiceRoute wrote: »

Added the new V-Dac II to the chain. Need to clock in some use time. As noted above, the DACs in my Rotel 1072 are quite fine and there is not a huge amount of difference with the Dac. The V-Dac II incorporates asynchronous usb, not sure what this is, but its supposed to be good. The itunes sound quite remarkable filtered through this thing. Going to borrow Airport Express from my son and see how itunes sounds from a wireless connection. (Did a head to head comparison with the old Kenwood receiver. It held up quite well actually v.s. the Adcom rig, but in the end the depth of the Adcom, and its soundstage reproduction could not be overcome.) Having fun. Thanks guys for all of the enabling.

Nice one! Glad you're enjoying it.

Now, iTunes is a no-no. If you're going to use a computer as a source, you need to make sure of a few things:

1) That You're playing files that were ripped with an accurate ripper (such as EAC).*

2) That those files were trans-coded to a a lossless format (such as FLAC, WAV, APE, SHN, etc).*

2) That you're using a media player in a "bit-perfect" or "bit-transparent" mode (such as ASIO, WASAPI, or Kernal Streaming).*

* Feel free to google any of the above terms if they are new to you. There have also been several long threads here about the topics, so search this forum, or wikipedia, as well.

Make sure you do the things above, or that "asynchronous USB" capability will be wasted. If you do computer -> USB DAC the right way, the SQ can rival a solid mid-fi CD transport.


To test your V-DAC II vs. the Rotel, I suggest the following:

Connect the Rotel via analog to the Adcom Pre, and Digitally to the V-DACII. Connect the V-DACII and Rotel to different inputs on the Adcom Pre.

Play a CD.

If you have an input-switching remote for the Adcom Pre, just sit there and switch between inputs. If you don't have an input-switching remote on your Adcom Pre, then get off your butt and press the button necessary to switch inputs.


Have fun!

Cheers,



Ben

SpiceRoute

Ben thank you for this advice. I need to develop the easiest plan for my MacBook running Leopard 10.5.8. xACT or MAX? Again which will be easiest to use and which will permit me to use iTunes as my interface for playback.

Ben writes, "That you're using a media player in a "bit-perfect" or "bit-transparent" mode (such as ASIO, WASAPI, or Kernal Streaming". How do I configure the Mac to "bit-perfect/transparent" playback mode?

Will I need to configure the Mac in advance of playing back each song depending on its sample rate or will xACT or MAX avoid the following incredibly tedious and discouraging Mac issue:


"The output sample rate does not automatically change to follow the sample rate of the file being played.
The user must set output sample rate to match the sample rate of the file being played. Failure to do so will introduce severe distortion due to sample rate conversion."
Playlists with mixed sample rates cannot be played without sample rate conversion."

Many thanks in advance to all!!