Reviews

DAC1 - "If you are looking to improve your monitoring ...you really must audition the DAC1"

"Its performance is quite extraordinary for the UK retail price, and it competes favourably against units costing considerably more."

"It is a very neat, well-designed package with an excellent feature set, including an internal mains PSU, usefully clean and powerful headphone monitoring, and the provision to configure the analogue outputs for fixed or variable levels."

"If you are looking to improve your monitoring, or to hear what your A-D converters are actually providing, you really must audition the DAC1. I must warn you, though, that this will be hazardous to your wallet — because you'll have to buy it once you hear it. I did!"

- Hugh Robjohns, Sound On Sound

"Whether considered as a standalone D/A converter or a versatile headphone amp, Benchmark's DAC1 is an audiophile bargain."

"The DAC1 will be an essential companion when I next record on location. I bought the review sample."

"Use it to revitalize the sound of your long-in-the-tooth CD player or the DVD player that you never thought sounded as good playing CDs as you had expected."

"Thanks, John Marks, for alerting both the readers and me to the DAC1."

- John Atkinson, Stereophile

"This column will examine two bits of kit from the polar ends of the price spectrum: Benchmark Media System's DAC 1 ($850), and TEAC's massive two-box Esoteric P-70/D-70 CD playback system ($14,000)."

"The Benchmark was slightly more articulate in the musical line, and slightly more detailed in spatial nuances, particularly the localization of individual images in space, and in soundstage depth."

"All you need is a transport to feed the DAC 1, a digital signal, a power amplifier, speakers, and a few bits of wire, and you have a stripped-down hot rod of a system that is ready to rock'n'roll."

- John Marks, Stereophile