This is a review and detailed measurement of Benchmark DAC1 USB DAC. I recently reviewed the much newer Benchmark DAC3 which did very well. So question was posed how much progress has been made since the original DAC1. As luck would have it, someone brought a DAC1 USB over for me to measure at our latest Pacific Northwest Audiophile Society meeting.
From overall form factor and design language, not much has changed:
It had maybe a little bit less polish than current units.
TIme was limited so this review will be short. Let's get into measurements and see how she did.
Measurements
Let's start with our Dashboard view as usual:
As you can see from the bottom text in green, all the measurements are for unbalanced analog output driven by AES balanced digital input. I think we tried USB but it was not plug-and-play with Windows 10 and with no Internet access we could not download its driver.
EDIT: later post says it is UAC compliant so it should have worked. So ignore the above regarding drivers.
Overall performance is pretty competent with 105 dB of SINAD (usable signal above power of noise and distortion). State of the art today is 10 dB better so no barn burner but good nevertheless. As a way of reference, the Benchmark DAC3 using its balanced output delivered 110 dB SINAD.
Digging into harmonic distortion versus frequency which is behind the SINAD/THD numbers above, we get:
As we see, the DAC1 finishes at the bottom of the rank of our best reviewed DAC while easily beating the Schiit Yggdrasil DAC.
Looking at intermodulation distortion we see similar performance ranking:
So once again competent but not very competitive.
Linearity test generated disappointing results however:
Wish I had tested balanced as even the DAC3 does worse in unbalanced output. Regardless, this is a very poor showing. The DAC1 USB is OK for CD 16 bit playback but errors climb pretty high for high-res.
Unfortunately I lost my J-test results so that is it.
Conclusions
Compared to current state-of-the-art modern DACs the Benchmark DAC1 USB trails in performance. It especially does poorly in linearity. As such it is not really a DAC that I can recommend for new purchases. There are cheaper alternative to what the DAC1 USB fetches on the used market ($800?).
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these types of hardware purchases using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
From overall form factor and design language, not much has changed:
It had maybe a little bit less polish than current units.
TIme was limited so this review will be short. Let's get into measurements and see how she did.
Measurements
Let's start with our Dashboard view as usual:
As you can see from the bottom text in green, all the measurements are for unbalanced analog output driven by AES balanced digital input. I think we tried USB but it was not plug-and-play with Windows 10 and with no Internet access we could not download its driver.
EDIT: later post says it is UAC compliant so it should have worked. So ignore the above regarding drivers.
Overall performance is pretty competent with 105 dB of SINAD (usable signal above power of noise and distortion). State of the art today is 10 dB better so no barn burner but good nevertheless. As a way of reference, the Benchmark DAC3 using its balanced output delivered 110 dB SINAD.
Digging into harmonic distortion versus frequency which is behind the SINAD/THD numbers above, we get:
As we see, the DAC1 finishes at the bottom of the rank of our best reviewed DAC while easily beating the Schiit Yggdrasil DAC.
Looking at intermodulation distortion we see similar performance ranking:
So once again competent but not very competitive.
Linearity test generated disappointing results however:
Wish I had tested balanced as even the DAC3 does worse in unbalanced output. Regardless, this is a very poor showing. The DAC1 USB is OK for CD 16 bit playback but errors climb pretty high for high-res.
Unfortunately I lost my J-test results so that is it.
Conclusions
Compared to current state-of-the-art modern DACs the Benchmark DAC1 USB trails in performance. It especially does poorly in linearity. As such it is not really a DAC that I can recommend for new purchases. There are cheaper alternative to what the DAC1 USB fetches on the used market ($800?).
-------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these types of hardware purchases using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
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