My buddy Carl and I did some listening at his house (and beyond last
night) and I thought I'd share what we did.

I brought over my preamp (as he is w/o at the moment) and my DAC to put
into his system and listen for a while.
As I said, he is sans preamp right now...awaiting an Audible Illusions
tube pre. I brought my Y-S Audio Symphonies tube pre for the purpose
really of being able to quickly A/B our two dacs.

the system:
parasound transport (not sure of the model, but belt driven and sort of old)
Y-S Audio Symphonies tube pre
McCormack DNA-1
Taylo reff monitors w/external Xover and monstrous tayler SUB.
MIT term 2 biwires, and DH labs IC's throughout. Digi cables were
nothing special.


His: the Benchmark DAC-1
Retails around $850 i believe. Great features. Its variable gain output
allows you to not use a preamp (as long as you stay in the digital
domain, obviously...). All sorts of digi input, so that is nice. Great
headphone amp as well w/two jacks.

Mine: ART/DIO
this is a cheap ass $130 DAC that has been modified (heavily) by boulder
Cable in CO. It is at what they call the smART upgrade ($250). there is
another one beyond this that is supposed to be a significant upgrade as
well that will run another $250. the "mensa" . witty
Not much for features on this black box. digi in via coax only. Output
on RCAs after the mods. Stock, its a ADC as well and it has a tube in
there (though I never saw it when I took it apart). BC yanks all of
that functionality out when they upgrade.

We used his Parasound transport as our source and ran dig outs from that
into both DACs and then analog out into the preamp.

We chose the new Steve Winwood "about time" CD as our primary reference
disc as it is WONDERFULLY recorded. Plus, various bootlegs of our
favorite bands, recent recordings we've done..etc.

Our thoughts?
Overall, the benchmark sounded better. Cleaner. It was strange
though...it depended greatly on the source. On some things, the
benchmark sounded louder, heavier. Better decay of cymbals and things
like that. Just more realistic. On other sources, we couldn't notice a
difference at all between the two. Sometimes the changes were instantly
noticeable. Other times you really had to concentrate to notice what was
different and it was equally difficult to articulate what that
difference was.

Our overall thoughts was that the benchmark sounded best when the preamp
was not in the loop, but we couldn't A/B that w/o taking the time to
unplug and rewire...something that completely renders the test useless
as I believe you can't really "hear" a difference accurately unless its
instant A/B comparison. I don't trust my memory.

BTW, the Benchmark claim to defeat jitter and "transport doesn't'
matter" is complete horse ****, IMO. there was defiantly a difference
between digi out of the Philips 963 player we also had and the
parasound. the Philips sounded aggressive to me, hard to relax and listen.

I've got all the gear at my house now to listen through my system. I'll
post my thoughts as a follow up, should they be any different. Our
speakers are vastly different (my electrostats vs. his monitors/SUB), so
it should be interesting.

We closed the evening at Tweeter, where we completely took charge of
their "A" listening room. There, we played with Martin Logan Ascenti
speakers and Sonus Faber "grand piano" floor standing towers.
We both loved the SF's over the logans..but the comparison was not quite
on the level as each set of speakers were driven with different B&K
components.. The SF side had the super sweet Sony 999 SACD source or
whatever their flagship is. the ML side was a multi-channel system that
we didn't trust. Plus, they had the speakers set up so poorly....and
they call themselves professionals! Jeeze. Any way, Carl left wondering
where is Taylor boxes were should he "need" to have those SFs in his house.
I left wondering if my tastes are changing away from ML's.
I tell ya what...we had those SF's set up in 3 seconds and they sounded
fantastic. It took 30 minutes to get the Logans in a decent
location..and they sounded bright and almost painful.
Personally, I blame the components. That's what I keep telling myself
any way.

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