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by Benchmark Media Systems June 12, 2019
"In the past decade, Benchmark consumer products, especially its digital-to-analogue converters, have achieved acclaim for ultra-low distortion and clean sound."
"While the company is very strongly engineering-oriented, it maintains that listening tests are critical to product development."
"The HPA4 is Benchmark’s latest headphone amplifier. This amp is unusual in that it features a THX-888 Achromatic Audio Amplifier, which is claimed to reduce distortion by 20–40 db through a patented feed-forward design resulting in the world’s most linear amplifier."
"In addition to the THX amp circuitry, Benchmark has gone slightly nuts (in a good way) with the volume control, offering 256 levels in 0.5 db steps via an array of relays."
"Benchmark doesn’t stop there. The HPA4 is a high voltage, high current design to allow low sensitivity headphones to work well."
"In addition, the damping factor is high (near zero ohms output impedance), with the aim of sounding the same with low, medium, and high impedance headphones."
"That’s all great, but many fancy-sounding circuits sound like dirt. Happily, that isn’t the case with this one."
"The HPA4 is exceptionally good at presenting a layered, dynamic yet relaxed sound."
"You can hear these rich results on, for example, Eliza Gilkyson’s Hard Times In Babylon [Red House], where the instruments not only are clearly differentiated but also sound fully rendered, as live instruments do."
"You also can hear the overtones of each instrument as they decay, which makes them sound more real."
"This adds up to a super-revealing amp that isn’t going to correct the mistakes of the rest of your system. I thought top-flight headphones sounded great as a result, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the amp for you. I, however, wish the review sample didn’t have to go back."
- Tom Martin, HI-FI+
Read the entire review at HiFiPlus.com →
After this review, Hi-Fi+ selected the HPA4 as one of the "Top 100 Products of the Past 20 years" (1999 to 2019).
by Benchmark Media Systems December 01, 2024
"There was some debate about whether anybody can hear the differences above a good Chi-Fi DAC like the Topping D90. Unless you are missing most of your high-frequency hearing, you can hear where a high-end DAC makes a difference."
The Bricasti M3 is a great example of that performance in a $6,000 DAC."
"The Benchmark DAC3 B is an audiophile DAC, with pro audio roots, that punches way above its weight."
by Benchmark Media Systems November 18, 2024
"Benchmark Media Systems made its reputation in both pro audio and audiophile circles by designing gear with extraordinarily low noise and distortion, and selling it at reasonable prices."
"A high-quality volume control is much of what makes a superior preamp shine, and the Benchmark’s volume control is outstanding. The Benchmark LA4 uses a bank of precision resistors switched by gold-contact relays to set volume in 256 steps of 0.5 decibels each."
"If accurate reproduction is your wish, you won’t find a preamp with meaningfully better objective performance than the Benchmark LA4, especially one made in the United States at anything near the LA4’s price."
"Very few preamps at any price reach the LA4’s level of objective performance."
"On the subjective end of things, the Benchmark LA4 preamp puts the lie to the old audiophile myth that neutrality means clinical, cold, or sterile sound. Instead, here neutrality means musical, involving sound, with precise, stable imaging, a sense of space (if one is on the recording), and exceptionally truthful timbres."
- Mike Prager, FutureAudiophile.com
by Benchmark Media Systems September 23, 2024
"For years, the audio world acknowledged one main contender (at least at sub-five-figure pricing) for the quietest, cleanest, most neutral power amplifier around. That was the Benchmark AHB2, whose specifications are still, for all practical purposes, unsurpassed, even by today’s excellent Class-D amps."
"10 years after its release, the Benchmark Media Systems AHB2 stereo power amp is still a standard-bearer in clean, neutral sound in the audiophile world."
"I greatly enjoyed having a pair of AHB2s in my system – their purity, neutrality, and seemingly unlimited power provided a clear window on the music and a lot of joy."
"I especially appreciated the AHB2’s smooth, well-integrated treble, free of splashiness or grain, and its natural reproduction of the human voice."
- Mike Prager, Future Audiophile