Zaikesman, you took 3 pages and probably a week of manipulation of your setup to hear what I heard under normal listening and a/b conditions, and we came to essentially the same results. What makes your method superior if folks can come to the same conclusion without all the added complexity? KISS, right?
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I said I was reluctant to dip my toe in this thread - but dip I did... Uva_hifi: As I believe I mention in the linked thread, the formal testing did tend to confirm my casual listening evaluations, which were similar to your own. But to my mind, that fact in no way invalidates the worth of the test method, partiuclarly in light of how many listeners and reviewers subjectively rated the Link DACs highly. The test gives more than a subjective impression - it gives an aurally qualifiable and quanitifiable demonstration of exactly how much and in what ways any DAC deviates (or doesn't deviate) from the signal fed it, without requiring technical measurement gear and expertise (which still don't tell us much about how something like a DAC actually sounds). I don't hold that my test is in all ways "superior", if what we're after is mainly sound that's personally enjoyable. But I do think the method is valuable and enlightening, and would like to see it used by reviewers as an adjunct to strictly subjective auditioning. (I feel the same way about interconnects and preamplifiers, both of which are relatively easy to run bypass comparison tests on, though reviewers virtually never do this.) I invite you to try my test, providing you're set up to do it, and then tell me if the experience was a waste of time. If I'd found it so, I wouldn't have bothered writing an article about running it. I even had fun doing it. (But then, maybe I'm simply more curious than some other audiophiles, and/or less afraid to rigorously examine my own opinions of what I think I hear.) Thanks for making the effort to read it and sharing your take though. |
...the two DACs that seem to go head to head in the value for the money sweepstages are the dAck and Benchmark. You can read about both of them right here on Audiogon. P.S. ...though I have 4 possible DACs to listen to, I have not yet heard the Benchmark DAC. Very envious of the sound a loaner dAck 2.0 production unit I got to borrow for a day. Happy tunes, |
Hi all, I've been away. I need to apologize to those who have been waiting for the "improvement" info for the Benchmark dac-1. As it turned out the effects were astonishing... but not universally so. We basically ran the IC's from the headphone amp with some internal changes but mostly the effects were due to the 0...zero output impedance of the HP amp and unless that was an issue with a given system the effects were slight. Several people who had the issue who we shared this info with were shocked by the improvement. So basically what we discovered is not something worth marketing a product around but that would fall more in the category of significant info for those who are load (impedance) challenged in regard to the benchmark. Sorry again for the gross delay. |
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