Has anyone try the Benchmark DAC1 Preamp?

I know somebody who added an old Krell PAM-1 to his Benchmark DAC1 and said that it made an improvement.

The integration of a preamp and DAC makes no sense to me. I would rather have the DAC integrated with the transport. Reasons:

- analog signals do not benefit as much from short signal paths anywhere near as much as digital signals
- every interface you add in a digital system increases jitter
- putting a preamp in a DAC means that even more of your analog signal is exposed to high freq digital noise
- digital preamps are mostly lousy and should be avoided
- analog preamps are better anyway, and you are better off having a seperate analog preamp than to have it built into the DAC for so many reasons. If you are going to have an analog volume control - why have it built into the DAC?

I can't think of any good reasons to have a preamp built into the DAC. If you want a DAC, get a DAC ... but don't think that a built-in preamp in a DAC will be superior to a standalone pre. In almost all cases the standalone pre will be superior.

If you're referring to the DAC1 Pre, why not just eliminate your preamp from the system and go straight into the amp (if you have separates)?
regards, David

Ive lived with the Benchmark dac 1 as a pre-amp balanced driving a Jeff Rowland Digital amp. It actually sounded real good!

Amfbius there made some very solid points and agree with his conventional wisdom as well.

I have the Cary SLP98 which does do a wonderful job driving my amps.

It was for kicks that I actually try my DAC1 directly driving a pair of ASL 845 SET amps to my innersounds. I was delightfully surprise the outcome. The DAC1 gave more detail and immediacy to the sound and the big 845 tubes of the SET amp still allow the music to have body enough.

This experiment has lasted a couple of weeks now and now I have my Cary SLP driving my nuforce amps to warm those up with my vmps speakers.

So when I saw Benchmark actually is making a Pre-amp DAC, I'm hoping it's more than just a DAC with a volume control. Hopefully would do a better job as a preamp than the DAC1. That's why I started this post to see if anyone else has experimented.

I have been impress with how the DAC1 mix so well with my SET amp...