Reviews

LA4 - "Best Volume Control"

"By far, without question this is the best volume control I have ever encountered."

"I must single out for special mention the volume control. While the whole unit is completely relay controlled, with a total of forty “precision relays switching high-precision metal-film resistors,” each channel has its own gain control with 256 steps in 0.5dB increments."

"Suffice it to say that, as with every Benchmark product I’ve used or reviewed, everything works smoothly, precisely, flawlessly."

- Paul Seydor, The Absolute Sound

LA4 - Absolute Sound Product of the Year

"Suffice it to say that, as with every Benchmark product I’ve used or reviewed, everything works smoothly, precisely, flawlessly."

"I must single out for special mention the volume control. While the whole unit is completely relay controlled, with a total of forty “precision relays switching high-precision metal-film resistors,” each channel has its own gain control with 256 steps in 0.5dB increments."

"By far, without question this is the best volume control I have ever encountered."

"The LA4 has been widely tested with results that tell the same story as those from the AHB2 power amplifier, i.e., the measurements merely confirm the manufacturer’s claims except in those instances where the limits of the test gear are reached before this or that specification can be precisely verified, almost every tester reporting that the unit beats, often handily, any other ever tested in its product category, regardless of price."

- Paul Seydor, The Absolute Sound

DAC3 B - "Neutral and Transparent"

"In the areas of tonal neutrality and transparency, the B sounds like every other Benchmark I’ve heard, which is to say neutral and transparent. But the DAC3 also has new conversion processing, which is said to make for a 3.5dB increase in headroom above 0dBFS, in turn preventing the DSP intersampling overloads."

"This increase in headroom ... is said to result in subtly improved sound."

LA4 - "Line Amplifier"

"Benchmark prefers to call the LA4 a line amplifier (which may be the more correct term because that is what preamplifiers in fact do: amplify the signal) and offers it in two versions: linestage only, and the identical linestage with an onboard headphone amplifier, called the HPA4."

AHB2 - "A Genuinely Innovative Design"

"Before properly introducing the preamp, however, it is worth the while to recall that the AHB2 amplifier is a genuinely innovative design, even, if you will, revelatory, and it set new standards in having by a wide margin the lowest noise and distortion and the widest bandwidth of any amplifier on the market then or now."

DAC3 B, LA4, AHB2 - "The Presentation is Uncanny in its Purity"

"There’s a complete absence of any sort of artifacts or noise; on very clean recordings, the presentation is uncanny in its purity."

- Paul Seydor, The Absolute Sound

LA4 - TAS Golden Ear Award

"I am so floored by its performance that a Golden Ear is a forgone conclusion."

"The LA4 comes closer to measured and measurable perfection than any audio product in any category I've ever reviewed."

"It has lower distortion and noise than any electronic component known to me, and its transparency is without equal in my experience, with no sonic signature that I can identify."

"Its dynamic range is likewise at the highest state of the art. An amazing 256-step volume control maintains 0.5 dB/step resolution and flawless channel-tracking at any setting throughout its range."

"This is my new reference standard for a linestage."

- Paul Seydor, The Absolute Sound

HPA4 - TAS 2019 Product of the Year

"I thought the HPA4 sounded as good as any headphone amp I’ve heard for dynamic headphones, and it might be the best of the lot ..."

"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."

"... wish the review sample didn’t have to go back."

- Tom Martin, The Absolute Sound

AHB2 - Absolute Sound 2016 Golden Ear Award

"Used within its 100Wpc rating, this is in any practical sense a perfect power source, with by far the lowest measured noise and distortion of any amplifier currently on the market."

"... if you need more power, buy two and strap them for dual mono at 380 watts a side."

"Either way, power just doesn't get any cleaner or purer than this."

"Neutrality and accuracy are the names of its game ... a sense of being plugged right into the source."

AHB2 - "Essentially Perfect"

"Benchmark products ... are made for the professional market (where they are ubiquitous) and designed to the most exacting standards of performance and reliability."

"Within a remarkably short period of time ... my mental processes shifted from comparison mode to enjoying music, all the attention drawn to the source material and the rare sensation of feeling as if I were listening back to the source."

"... the AHB2 gets as high, enthusiastic, and confident a thumbs up as my arm is capable of reaching."

- Paul Seydor, The Absolute Sound, April 2016

AHB2 - "Virtually Flawless"

"A precision instrument designed to perform the precisely defined task of reproducing music and sound accurately, which it does to perfection."

- Paul Seydor, The Absolute Sound

AHB2 - "A Technical Tour de Force Without any Question"

"The Benchmark amplifier is quieter than any other amplifier I am aware of."

"It has noise of around 110 dB down relative to 1 watt, and since it has 100 watts of power, the signal-to-noise ratio that is relevant to resolution is around 130 dB."

"The Benchmark also has extremely low distortion—among the lowest around and surely far below known thresholds."

"The Benchmark can be used in bridged mode, to give 400 watts into 8 ohms (actually 380W is specified). That ought to be enough for most applications except in extremely large rooms."

"The Benchmark AHB2 amplifier is a technical tour de force without any question."

- Robert E. Green, The Absolute Sound, April 2016

DAC2 HGC - "Combines Digital with Analog Gain Controls for an Optimal Result"

"The HGC moniker stands for 'hybrid gain control' which is a 'dual domain' attenuation system that combines digital with analog gain controls for an optimal result."

- The Absolute Sound

DAC2 HGC - "The Bottom Line ... Good for Any Mastering or Recording Project"

"With all the headphones I had available the DAC2 headphone amp rivaled the sonics of the stand-alone iFi iCan headphone amplifier ..."

"For me the bottom line on the Benchmark DAC2 HGC is that is it not only good enough to live with long-term, it’s good enough to use for any mastering or recording projects that might come up."

"The DAC2 HGC is easy to listen through, highly revealing, and with well-recorded material astonishingly three-dimensional."

- Steven Stone, The Absolute Sound

DAC1 HDR - "You will have to spend a very, very great deal of money to find a better DAC"

"When Benchmark Media’s DAC1 digital to analog converter was introduced a few years ago, it not only garnered rave reviews, but those reviewers who performed rigorous laboratory tests only wound up confirming Benchmark’s claims that it was a virtually distortionless device...every now and then, word gets out about really exceptional professional products...and soon audiophiles start buying them."

"... you will have to spend a very, very great deal of money to find a better DAC and linestage than are in this unassuming but nearly perfect unit."

- Peter Seydor, TAS

DAC1 PRE - "Marks something of a new era in audio"

"I have been listening to the Benchmark conversion method (in the DAC1, which I bought) for more than a year. To say that it wears well would be to understate the case. It has become for me simply the way I listen to CD when I want to hear exactly what is on it. And it seems to do the job so nearly correctly that if I am disturbed by what I am hearing, I look elsewhere for the cause without hesitation."

"To my mind, it is the beginning of a new era in audio, in which the regeneration of the recorded signal has become a solved problem."

 - Robert E. Green, The Absolute Sound