New vs. old DACs - opinions?

"I always recommend getting a great transport first"

- why would you buy transport first not knowing what type of DAC you'll end up with. Fancy transport with upsampling DACs like Benchmark DAC1 or Bel Canto DAC3 is a waste of money since all transports will sound exactly the same.

The only advantage of expensive transport over cheap DVD player is low output jitter. Benchmark DAC1 has jitter bandwidth of 3Hz and at the frequency of interest (kHz) reaches over 100dB rejection. If you take into consideration that jitter caused artifacts were at level of roughly -85dB to start with then it is virtually impossible to hear any difference between transports unless one of them is not bit transparent (DSP processing, digital volume control etc).

Kijanki,
All transports do not sound exactly the same plugged into upsampling DACs. I know this because I have one of those DACs (MSB Platinum DAC III, ~$7k retail, upsamples everything 4x). I can plug my OPPO DVD player into it, and the sound quality goes down compared to my music server. And it goes down substantially enough that a laymen can hear the difference (as I have A and B'd this with friends).
I shudder anytime a DAC claims that it can be hooked up to any old transport and sound great (or the same). This is like claiming (to me) all cables sound the same. The do not.

Keith

On Benchmark forum people tried DAC1 with different transports and only few stated that they noticed faint difference (placebo effect?).

My point was to try first, before buying expensive transport and feeling stupid afterward when cheap DVD performs alike.

I read manufacturer description of your DAC. It states 16x and not 4x but it specifically says that it does not reclock (asynchronous upsampling). Without reclocking there is no jitter rejection and DAC is sensitive to jitter/transport. Upsampling by definition uses non-integer oversampling rates while simple oversampling (usually done by PLL) is always integer. So if it states 2x, 4x, 8x 16x oversampling be assure it is not jitter rejecting DAC (as stated on MSB website). Benchmark has equivalent of over 1 million times oversampling.

I say my MSB Plat DAC upsamples 4x because it upsamples everything to either 176khz ($ * 44.1) or 192khz (4 * 48.1). If you include the 24 bit upsampling, I would guess that is where the other multiple comes in.

You are right about it not re-clocking the data.

However, I do know there are lesser and greater re-clockers. And I doubt the Benchmark has the best re-clocker of data out there (Ultraclock?). My OffRamp Turbo2 coming out of the computer does re-clock the data using a Superclock4 (one step below Ultraclock).

Interestingly, I would guess the biggest differences people hear with transports that do not re-clock the data better than the Benchmark is probably in the differences in the different digital cables they use. I have heard big differences in digital cables... I cannot explain why these differences occur per se... I only can observe them. I am glad I do not have to deal with that anymore. Although people have touted the differences in USB cables, and I did recently move to a more expensive USB cable (Wireworld's Ultraviolet 5), and I did get some sonic improvements.

I still think that re-clocking is not the magic bullet that can make all transports sound the same. Error correction is important as well. And that is where most transports fail when compared to a music server. Exact Audio Copy has amazing error correction in it, and this just cannot be duplicated on the fly with a traditional CD transport.

Keith

Keith - I'm sure your DAC is great sounding and I noticed that it gained Stereophile class A recommendation. It just needs good transport to show its full potential (and good digital cable).

Benchmark has such strong jitter suppression that not only the transport doesn't make any difference but also digital cable is not important. Benchmark tested DAC1 with up to 1000' of cable and they could not hear any difference. There is no other parameter than jitter that affects the sound of transport or digital cable.

Reclocking is in a sens "magic bullet" but only for the jitter and other parts of the DAC like clock, power supply analog stages etc have to be great as well. In addition not everybody likes the sound of oversampling and upsampling DACs - many prefers sound of NOS (non-oversampling) DACs.

EAC is a great program but it doesn't come in version for MAC (I recently switched).