Should I pay a lot for a DAC?

Well, it's the DAC's job to take the 1's and 0's being read off of the CD by the Transport and translate it into the music. Whatcha think?

Winchell,yes a DAC can make a tremendous difference in the sound of your system. The Benchmark will sound much better than the Adcom. For around the same price I would suggest you try to Audition a Bel Canto DAC II. I believe it is better sounding then the Benchmark and also is very immune to jitter so you still get great sound with just an ok transport. Either a demo or used one should be in your $ bracket.Hope this helps. There has been posts on DACS in this price range recently here on the GON,look them up I think they would be helpful to you.

If you're really serious about this, or find yourself getting more serious as the quality of your listening grows, you're going to find out that EVERYTHING is important.

Not wanting to scare you off, but you're going to find that your system is a whole unit that's only as good as the weakest link. The world's best amp can only amplify the signal coming into it, and then pass it to your speakers. It's like that with every piece, including your albums and CD's, power being fed into your equipment, and even your room and how the music bounces and/or is absorbed.

You'll have to decide how important this is and how much you want spend. The bottom line is that the only thing that's important is "Can you sit back and smile when you are listening to your music?". If you can, that's great!

Chuck

You should state what your system is. An inexpensive system that is only worth 1500 would not usually make a 700 dollar dac a decent investment, then again it's possible. If you're using highly transparent speakers, amps etc. then the dac can make a big improvement.