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DAC3 - Bench Test - John Atkinson, Stereophile
DAC3 HGC - "All I can say is 'Wow!'"
"The Benchmark DAC3 offers extremely low levels of harmonic distortion from all its outputs. Intermodulation distortion was similarly vanishingly low."
"The Benchmark DAC3 featured extraordinarily low levels of analog noise at its outputs."
"No power-supply–related spuriae can be seen, and the random noise floor lies below –160 dBFS!"
"With its very low noise floor and correspondingly very high resolution, the DAC3’s reproduction of an undithered 16-bit tone at exactly -90.31 dBFS was perfect."
"When the DAC3 decoded dithered 16-bit and 24-bit data representing a 1 kHz tone at -60 dBFS, the increase in bit depth dropped the noise floor by more than 30 dB, indicating that the Benchmark’s resolution is at least 21 bits."
"This as good as a DAC can currently get!"
"Channel separation via the digital inputs was superb, at 124dB in both directions at 1kHz, and was still almost 110dB at 20kHz."
"The analog inputs offered a very wide frequency response that was not affected by reducing the load impedance from 100k ohms to 600 ohms or by varying the volume-control settings.The channels were superbly matched, both dropping by only 2dB at 200kHz."
"As with its predecessor, the DAC2 HGC, which Erick Lichte reviewed for Stereophile in February 2014, Benchmark’s DAC3 HGC offers state-of-the-art measured performance."
"All I can say is 'Wow!'"- John Atkinson
Also in Reviews
Why do you own Benchmark products? - AudioScienceReview.com
Why Did You Buy Benchmark Gear?
"I'm asking because clearly Benchmark is a highly regarded company here, and plenty of ASR members own Benchmark amplification/DACs. We know they are top of the heap in terms of measured performance, outdoing plenty of the competition in terms of typical distortion measurements."
- @MattHooper, AudioScienceReview.com
AHB2, LA4, DAC3
- Subtle aesthetics? Check.
- Unobtrusive size? Check.
- Solid build? Check.
- Made in America? Check.
- Transparent? Check.
- Best in class? Check.
- Superior performance proven by Amir? Check.
- Superior customer service? Check (and not just in audio world; best customer service I have experienced from any company, anywhere, ever).
- Expensive? For me, yes. Limit of my budget, but buy once cry once.
- Worth it? Yes.
- Would I do it all again? Absolutely.
- @KellenVancouver, AudioScienceReview.com
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 ..."
"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
AXPONA Show Report - Stereophile Magazine
"Sound was extremely well-integrated and controlled, and the bass memorable."
"The Note received signal through the introductory version of the company's Liquid Cables. Each cable contains 27,000 wires. The company's introductory Elephant memory player joined Benchmark Media's AHB2 power amps, DAC3 B D/A processor, and interconnects."
"With the aid of a forthcoming DEQX HDP4 processor that's due in the fall, the system sounded super on a 16/44.1 file of the famed rendition of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, recorded by Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra for Reference Recordings."
- Jason Victor Serinus, Stereophile Magazine