DACs and reproduced sound

I agree that high-end magazines are delusional and unscientific. Nowdays it's very commercial rather than acheiving something scientific.
DAC despite processing 1's or 0's is a complexed logical device (especially today's advanced ones).
Our todays' CD digital format has 16-bit on 'vertical Y axis' and 44.1kHz samplig freequency on 'horizontal X axis'.
Giving example of the highest range of audiable freequencies such as 20kHz will roughly have only 2...3 digital samples * 16bit will yield 36bits of overall resolution.

First DACs processed one bit at a time. The advantage of these DACs is simplicity of the design and logic. The disadvantage is high probability of error meaning to give instead of 5-bits amplitude 3 or 7 bits amplitude since the 'receiving one-bit register' only cares about signal presence or absence i.e. '0' or '1'. Hence the quality of a digital equipment was 90% depended on the analog process which is filtering and buffering garbage.

Nowdays DACs are much more advanced they process sample by sample which may contain upto 24 bits amplitude and upto 192kHz sampling freequency. The proccessing by 'word' or taking the whole sample onto the register allows to logically analyze 'condition' of a particular word hence reducing drastically the probability of error. The DAC ICs are just like jewelry can be dirt cheap and can be pricey depending on what capability they all have and certainly newer and advanced models (such as Benchmark's relocking) would run at the higher price tag but soon will be reduced as the time passes by just like with PCs.

The listening difference vs. old processors is substantial especially on higher freequency details and also dynamics. Less listening fatigue and more natural sound.

The corresponding price of a digital equipment is another point of convincing price paid vs. performance, but often it's not true and not scientifically proven where I agree with poster since the fully functional digital unit that supposingly has the best DAC IC(s) and all possible functions, read all possible high resolution formats can't be priced $10k. Hence I don't think that there's something possibly more advanced and perfect than Grace Design M902 DAC-Preamp-Headphone amp.

anyone that says dacs don't sound different are full of crap. Anyone who says the benchmark gear is neutral or adds no "color" to the reproduced sound is even more full of crap. The thing upsamples, that in and of itself changes the sound, particularly of 44.1 redbook data. And it's a bright sounding dac. though a very clean sounding dac with tons of detail.

The comment was surely about the analog preamp. A good preamp should indeed reproduce the input signal as closely as possible and good preamps should sound nearly identical, as they reproduce what they are fed. It s very hard to hear the difference between one excellent neutral preamp and another. No surprises there.

DAC's do sound different as they process the signal although differences are also very small but many people can hear these slight differences when listening critically and switching back and forth on the same track.

The Benchmark has some good things as well as some budget compromises inside. There is an active aftermarket of modifiers offering upgrades in areas like soft recovery diodes, Bybees, op amps, and chassis sheilding. Modified units have received good reviews.

http://www.odysseyaudiohk.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1246198439

I have a strong personal policy of not making "ad hominem" arguments, i.e., debating a point by attacking the person making the point, rather than the point itself. However, in this case it should be pointed out that the comment quoted in Dangelod's initial post was made by Peter Aczel, The Audio Critic.

Twenty-five or so years ago, Mr. Aczel's reviews routinely and intensively delved into the subtle sonic nuances and differences which he perceived as characterizing the sound of electronic audio components. In more recent years, however, he metamorphosed to the extreme opposite end of the audiophile ideological belief spectrum, maintaining very assertively that all electronic components meeting basic measurable standards of performance will sound identical.

Mr. Aczel is a very intelligent person, and he writes extremely well and very persuasively. His "day job" long ago was that of an advertising writer. But nevertheless he can often be completely wrong, as evidenced for starters by these diametrically opposed positions he has taken about electronic components over the years.

And (to Shadorne), no he was not talking about just the analog preamp section. Here is a quote from his concluding paragraph, to cite just one of many statements in the review which make that clear:

All in all, the Benchmark DAC1 HDR is damn close to a perfect piece of equipment. Neither its digital performance nor its analog performance could be meaningfully improved. That’s really all that needs to be said.

Kijanki said:

Important to remember is that there is no perfect DAC and everything is a compromise (and very complicated). Listening test will give you much more than reading specs.

I second this 100%.

To get an idea of the kinds of complexity and subtle technical factors which are involved, begin by flipping through this 39 page datasheet for a family of advanced dac chips:

http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pcm2707.pdf

And then take a look at these excellent whitepapers from Ayre:

http://www.ayre.com/PDF/Ayre_MP_White_Paper.pdf

http://www.ayre.com/PDF/Ayre_USB_DAC_White_Paper.pdf

And consider that the dac datasheet is just for an integrated circuit chip, and doesn't begin to address the complexities and potential design pitfalls of the surrounding circuitry. And consider that the least significant bit of just a 16-bit dac provides a resolution of 1 part in 65,536, which is 0.0015% of the upper limit of its output range ("full scale"), and the least significant bit of a 24 bit dac provides a resolution of 1 part in 16,777,216, which is 0.000006% of full scale. There are innumerable ways in which the accuracy which that resolution can theoretically provide can be and will be vastly degraded, both within the dac device, and in the surrounding circuitry. Real-world devices simply aren't that accurate.

Regards,
-- Al