February 15, 2009Benchmark DAC1 Pre
Digital-to-Analog Converter and Preamplifier
A company that names itself Benchmark has
got to have great confidence in its products. Such a name is not so much a noun as a
challenge, a line drawn in the sand that says, "We know we’re good."
It’s also a dare to other makers of digital audio equipment to pit their best against
a Benchmark and let the best DAC win.
The "bench" part of the corporate identity of
Benchmark, which is based in Syracuse, New York, reveals something about the company and
its products. Benchmark began as a supplier of professional-grade audio products for
musicians and recording studios. They maintain that line of products to this day, and the
influence of the pro-audio world is easily detectable in every Benchmark product made
today.
The DAC1 Pre ($1595 USD) has been converting digital
signals to analog in my reference system for several months now. But when I received the
review sample, I didn’t know much about it or its manufacturer. When I opened the
box, I was surprised at how small and light it is: its upper surface can be covered almost
entirely by two CDs. The DAC1 Pre weighs 3.5 pounds and measures just 8.5"W by
1.725"H by 9.5"D. A height measurement carried to three decimal places shows how
important precision is to the engineers at Benchmark.
As its name implies, the DAC1 Pre is both a D/A converter
and a preamplifier. It’s remarkable enough that Benchmark can fit two separate audio
components into such a small chassis; it’s more remarkable that the DAC1 Pre is one
very serious piece of high technology. If there’s a technology that can improve D/A
conversion that hasn’t been included in the DAC1 Pre, I don’t know what it is.
Benchmark describes its DAC1 Pre as a device of
24-bit/192kHz resolution that features two proprietary Benchmark digital technologies:
AdvancedUSB Audio and UltraLock. AdvancedUSB Audio allows the DAC1 Pre to accept
24-bit/96kHz digital signals via its USB input while UltraLock is Benchmark’s
jitter-reduction circuitry.
Like other Benchmark products, the DAC1 Pre is equipped
with the company’s highly regarded HPA2 headphone amplifier. And, of course, it
includes a preamplifier circuit to provide gain in the absence of a downstream preamp. The
DAC1 Pre has a rear-mounted three-way toggle switch that permits selection among a
calibrated (fixed) output level that bypasses the volume control, a variable setting that
responds to the front-mounted volume knob, and Mute. The DAC portion of the DAC1 Pre has
five digital inputs (three S/PDIF, one USB, one TosLink), while a single analog input is
also included to facilitate the connection of another audio source. The DAC1 Pre has one
set each of RCA and balanced XLR outputs, and the power connector is a standard 15-amp IEC
type. About the only thing the DAC1 Pre lacks is a remote control, which likely reflects
the fact that Benchmark makes most of its equipment with studio professionals in mind.
Benchmark says that the DAC1 Pre adheres to the
company’s "always on" design philosophy. This includes an automatic mute
function should the DAC encounter an error in the datastream, and power-management
circuitry to place the device in low-power mode when no connected digital source is turned
on. Nonetheless, should the user wish to completely power down the DAC1 Pre, its
source-selector knob is also a push-on/off power switch.
The excellent owner’s manual offers as much
information as any I’ve seen, while being an easy read that’s not overloaded
with technical terms.
System
My reference Simaudio Moon i5.3 integrated amp served as
the foundation of a revolving test system that included no fewer than four different
loudspeakers: the PSB Synchrony 2B, PSB Imagine B, Focus Audio FC7, and, right at the end
of the review period, the brand-new Paradigm Studio 60. Most of my listening impressions
were made using the Focus FC7s, but the Benchmark DAC1 Pre performed excellently with all
of the speakers.
My other system stalwart was a laptop running Windows Vista
and Foobar2000 playback software. Rips were all uncompressed WAV files copied via Exact
Audio Copy software, with the exception of two 24-bit downloaded recordings provided for
this review by Linn Records. At first I used a Kimber Kable USB cable ($42.50) to connect
my laptop’s USB port to the DAC1 Pre, but after a couple of weeks replaced it with
the significantly more capable Synergistic Research Tesla Tricon USB cable ($550, to be
reviewed in "The
Digital Domain" on SoundStage!). Comparison USB D/A converters were an
Audio Note Kits DAC2.1 Level B ($1699) and a Blue Circle USB Thingee (from $169). Power
cables to the DAC1 Pre and Simaudio Moon i5.3 were by Synergistic Research, in the forms
of their T2 ($660) and T3 ($950), respectively. Speaker cables were Supra’s Ply
3.4/S.
Sound
That some new component allows a reviewer to hear details
in a recording that he or she had never noticed before is almost a cliché. I say
"almost" because, though the refrain is a common one, it’s often an
accurate description of what actually happens -- and is especially accurate in describing
my experience with the Benchmark DAC1 Pre.
The first place I noticed music where I’d heard none
before was in Metallica’s classic and monumental "Enter Sandman," from Metallica
(CD, Elektra 61113). Before I got to the fadeout at the end, I was already impressed with
the Benchmark’s ability to convey the track’s raw energy, and was reveling in
its thundering bass lines and arena-concert-big electric guitar. As odd as it may sound,
through some D/A converters this song can sound subdued -- perhaps restrained
better describes the phenomenon. Not with the DAC1 Pre. I’ve listened to "Enter
Sandman" dozens of times, and not once had I ever heard the washed-out guitar solo in
the background during the fade. It was such a surprise that I muted the amp, just to make
sure that a radio elsewhere in the house wasn’t playing. The experience was awesome.
Older recordings are a great place to listen for
information hitherto hidden, and two of my favorites come from 1959 and Columbia Records:
Dave Brubeck’s Time Out (CD, Columbia/Legacy 65112) and Miles Davis’s Kind
of Blue (CD, Columbia/Legacy 64395). There must have been something in the water that
year, because both recordings are simply amazing -- and I’m not just talking about
the music. I’m not sure speaker technology was nearly advanced enough to convey
either of these recordings in all their majesty when they were new, but today’s
technology gets more out of them than anyone has the right to expect from recordings made
half a century ago.
Benchmark served up another surprise for me when I played
the title track of the Brubeck, a recording I’d thought I was intimately familiar
with. But I was wrong -- the DAC1 Pre shone a light on a series of single tom-tom hits
during Joe Morello’s drum solo that were news to me. I couldn’t imagine how
I’d ever missed them, until I switched from the Benchmark to the Audio Note Kits
DAC2.1 Level B, and they were gone again. Nor was it just some obscure drum accents that
were new -- the entire track had a freshness that again had me marveling at the
accomplishments of those late-1950s recording engineers. It’s almost sad that
we’ve had to wait so long to get the full measure (or maybe not, even now?) of
recordings such as Take Five and Kind of Blue, but for now, I’m
thrilled with the result.
At the beginning of "So What," the opening track
of Kind of Blue, Bill Evans’s piano and Paul Chambers’s double bass play
one of the best-known passages in all of jazz. In my experience, the series of solo bass
notes Chambers plays just before sliding his way into the song proper almost always
collide with one another. The effect is a jumble of muddled and ill-defined notes. Before
inserting the DAC1 Pre (and the Tesla Tricon USB cable) in my system, I thought the
confusion of notes was on the master tape. I’m happy to say that it’s not. The
Benchmark somehow cut through the muddle to clearly reveal each and every note -- so
clearly that I literally shouted in surprise. It used to be my habit to play "So
What" to see how well a given component dealt with the bass jumble, but only now do I
know just how tough a test this track actually is. In my system, the DAC1 Pre has set a
new, um, benchmark.
The DAC1 Pre did very well with modern recordings, too.
Linn Records is among the few international music labels to permit downloads of
high-resolution recordings from whatever country you happen to be in, even Canada. So it
was to Linn that I turned for 24-bit/96kHz audio files to test the Benchmark’s hi-rez
credentials.
Because the DAC1 Pre is a native 24-bit D/A converter, it
required no special setup to take full advantage of Linn’s Studio Master recordings,
other than my changing Foobar2000’s default output word length from 16 to 24 bits, as
instructed by Benchmark’s very helpful Wiki,
which offers optimal setup tips for many types of audio-player software.
Hi-rez 24/96 files are much larger than their 16/44.1
brethren. Claire Martin’s Dreamsville (download, Linn Records) is 258MB in
16-bit lossless FLAC format, while the 24/96 Studio Master version is almost four times
bigger: 1GB. Does this mean that the 24/96 recording contains four times as much
information as the "Red Book" version? That’s hard to say for certain, but
the detail, clarity, life, imaging, spaciousness, and soundstaging of Martin’s
beautifully and intoxicatingly performed cover of "It Never Entered My Mind" all
seemed to point to a great big YES! Once you go 24-bit, it’s hard to quit
(™ © Colin Smith, 2009). Plain old 16-bit tracks sound, well, plain and old in
comparison. I can’t wait for the 24-bit remasterings of Kind of Blue and
Time Out.
As superb a D/A converter as the DAC1 Pre was, I had to
remember that it’s also a preamp and a headphone amp. Unfortunately, I don’t
have a good set of headphones for review purposes, so I can only assume that the HPA2
headphone circuitry is as good as the rest of the DAC1 Pre. (That’s a big hint to let
you know that the preamp section is excellent too.) I was able to try out the
Benchmark’s preamp section by virtue of the flexibility of my Simaudio Moon i5.3
integrated, whose preamp circuits can be bypassed to allow the i5.3 to be used only as a
power amp. It made comparing the i5.3’s and Benchmark’s preamp sections as easy
as flicking a switch.
It wasn’t always possible for me to tell the
difference between the preamp sections because they both performed at a high level. Where
there were differences -- mostly in the level of crystalline clarity each offered -- they
were slight and, I think, probably had more to do with Simaudio’s optical-relay
volume control, which keeps the signal path short and pure, vs. what I believe is a
potentiometer in the Benchmark. Whatever the reason, it was evident that the preamp built
into the DAC1 Pre is a high achiever. It was neutral, conveyed a realistic soundstage, and
offered imaging on a par with its DAC roommate. If it were a standalone preamplifier, it
would be an easy recommendation for the $1000 price point. The absence of a remote control
is surprising in a device containing a preamp, especially in light of Benchmark’s
otherwise thoroughgoing approach to design. It makes me wonder if a remote was left out
simply because there was no room left inside the chassis to accommodate an infrared
receiver.
Comparison
The DAC1 Pre was put up against the two other USB D/A
converters I had available, the Audio Note Kits DAC2.1 Level B and the Blue Circle
Thingee. The comparison wasn’t on an entirely level field -- the DAC2.1 has a tube
output stage while the Benchmark is solid-state, while the Thingee is far less expensive
than the Benchmark and lacks a power supply of its own, drawing its 5V from a
computer’s USB bus. But, as they say in racing, "run what you brung."
The Audio Note is much more laid-back than the Benchmark.
It doesn’t sound lazy or as if it can’t keep up with the music, but it’s a
mellower, elbow-patches-on-tweed-jacket kind of DAC. It does very well with jazz and the
fuzzy rock of the 1960s and ’70s, and is a commendable performer when it comes to
retrieving detail, but, especially on that last point, it’s not in the same game as
the DAC1 Pre. The Benchmark never sounded etched or sterile in comparison to the warmer
Audio Note, but it was more musical, and more true to recorded instruments and voices.
Blue Circle’s USB Thingee is a fantastic performer,
not only for a device that’s incredibly inexpensive, but as a USB DAC period. It has
its limits, the chief one being that it relies for juice on a computer’s never-pure
power supply. Blue Circle takes pains to clean up that power through their innovative use
of a built-in power conditioner, but there’s no substitute for a dedicated power
supply, as is found in the Benchmark. Blue Circle’s new Thingee HO (for High Output),
complete with its own power supply, will arrive here soon, and will make for a very
interesting comparison with the DAC1 Pre. But for now, it almost goes without saying that,
as good as the Thingee is, it doesn’t compete with the Benchmark. Nor should it, for
$169.
Conclusion
From the moment I set it up until I very reluctantly sent
it out to be photographed, the Benchmark DAC1 Pre was a stellar performer. It did it all,
and did it extremely well. Despite its aptitude for detail retrieval, it never sounded
hard or artificial -- in fact, quite the opposite. This is one audio product that will
breathe new life into old recordings you thought you knew intimately, and it’s among
the very few components I’m comfortable recommending without advising a listen before
buying. The DAC1 Pre comes back from the photographer tomorrow, and that will be its last
trip outside. I wouldn’t let this thing go for love or money, but I’ll spend
some to keep it.
. . . Colin Smith
Price of equipment reviewed
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