AXPONA Review - Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity
"The afternoon before the start of the show I ran into John Siau of Benchmark Media Systems. He says to me quietly, “make sure you stop in our room, we have a surprise!” "
"With curiosity suitably piqued, Co-Editor Jim Clements and I paid a visit on the Saturday to be greeted by two 87” tall white sticks in the middle of the room."
"These skinny posts that for all the world could pass as antennas were in fact a pair of line array speakers by a company called Laufer Teknik. Called The Note, each speaker is an array of 50 tiny full-range drivers. The arrays are crossed over to a pair of SVS subwoofers."
"The whole shebang was controlled by a DEQX preamp/processor. Next in the signal path was a pair of Benchmark DAC3 B DACs and a pair of AHB2 amplifiers running in mono. An Elephant memory player rounded out the gear."
"The intent of this setup is to create a 360 degree sense of sound with an image that didn’t change at any point in the room. Jim and I tested this out by walking the room and even standing between them. The results were pretty astonishing. A stable, enveloping stereo image that was devoid of any distortion whatsoever."
- Carlo Lo Raso, Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity
Also in Reviews
HPA4 Review - AP Mastering
"This is the best headphone amplifier that I have ever tested. In every conceivable metric, absolutely perfect."
"If you've got the money and you want something that is an engineering masterpiece, this is such a thing."
- AP Mastering
Benchmark System Review - Ricky Dasler, Living Sound, New Zealand
"With over 40 years as an audiophile and more than half those years as a hi-fi retailer, I feel I’ve finally put together a stereo that ticks all my sonic boxes. Those being in order of priority, dynamics, scale, tonal accuracy, fatigue free resolution and soundstage."
"For the last 25 years I’ve been fortunate to have a dedicated listening room. I use acoustic treatments from Real Traps, Vicoustic and Primeacoustic."
"My Benchmark components consist of the DAC3 B (connected to a Naim NDS streamer), LA4 line amplifier and two AHB2 power amplifiers run in bridged mono mode. All cables are Benchmark too."
"The Benchmark gear in my system has brought what I have wanted in my list of sonic priorities as listed above and then some. They have delivered way beyond what I thought could be possible in my system in my room."
"I’m delighted and stunned daily as my vast music collection comes to life on a whole new level."
- Ricky Dasler, Living Sound, Nelson New Zealand.
Benchmark Converters at Abbey Road - Geoff Pesche
"What are the Latest Advancements in Mastering?"
"Geoff Pesche weighs in on how the mastering team at Abbey Road Studios achieve first-class results." - Mix with the Masters
"The biggest sonic improvement in mastering in the last 5 or 6 years is D/A and A/D converters and that's very very important - what you have at the front and the back of the chain."
"We use fairly new Benchmark converters front and back."
"Abbey Road like a uniformity between the rooms so all of the rooms have the same A/D and D/A conversion."
- Geoff Pesche, Mastering Engineer, Abbey Road Studios
