Benchmark DAC1 or Ah Reference Tjoeb 4000

There are others to consider; I owned the Ah! 4000 with upsampler for a while. Nice, but not extravagant sound. Moved to the Rega Apollo, totally outclassed the Ah! in every respect. No comparison. The Apollo is both very detailed AND analogue sounding.
There were issues with soldering initially on some Apollo units, but I understand from the Rega dealers that all Apollo units now are perfect operationally.

At price point of $1k, the Apollo is EXTREMELY difficult to beat for sound. Have not heard the Benchmark, but would love to hear them A/B.

Rega in a couple months will come out with the Saturn here in the U.S. It will be an improvement over the Apollo. They are gunning for competing with the $5-6k competitors; price will be about $2,400

The Apollo is so good that you could buy unheard, simply going off of reviews, etc. and be confident that you are at the point of the best sound quality available at that price. Some very good reviews of it on audioreview.com

DAC1 will be on the bright, forward side of things. It may make you not want to listen to some CDs as it is very picky and will not forgive a badly recorded cd and will let it all through. And a lot of CDs are recorded just bad. The DAC1 is what it is, a monitoring tool. I completely agree with that assesment made by Bob Reynolds. If you want smoother sound, a bit more liquid mids and highs with deeper bass and no loss of resolution, then you should consider Bel Canto DAC2. I had both the Benchmark and Bel Canto dacs in my system for comparison and kept Bel Canto. I felt that Benchmark lacked musicality. It was just simply digital sounding, way too digital, as a matter of fact.
Haven't heard the Tjoeb, can't saying anything about that one.

Clio, allow me to disagree with you on the AM dac level of performance. I do say that it sounds pretty good for a $500 dac, but that's about it. I wouldn't put it in the same league as Bel Canto DAC2. I can see though where I can prefer the AM dac over Benchmark, simply because it doesn't sound as digital in comparison. But there are better choices out there than Audio Mirror.

P.S.
I was driving the Bel Canto DAC2 with a $60 Philips DVD player and it sounded great via both the coax and optical outputs.

Consider a Lavry DA-10. It's a relatively new DAC. Do some research.

Hello--

Speaking of Bel Canto DAC's, Bel Canto is just now releasing the DAC3 which will also have a digital high-end volume control so you can eliminate your preamp completely if it suits you. The info is available at belcantodesign.com