ralphpnj wrote: > > And finally, as I've stated over and over, either the Benchmark DAC2 or > the Weiss used in a super-mega-buck audio system would be > indistinguishable from any of the super-mega-buck DACs currently > available, except of course for their solid faceplate, constructed out > aircraft quality aluminum.
Almost, if you disclaim with any " low distortion flat frequency response and low noise " [insert apparatus ] ,then they are indistinguishable . Excludes the mystic designs . Some of the nonsense praised by TaS etc has got several rounds in this reality disconnect and thus are designed with almost no reality check it's a three part dance "hyped nonsense brand" - "cargo cult magazine" - "audiophile" . This stuff can sound truly different ,but it's not Hi-Fi any more . It has gotten to such great length that almost everything written about audio is nonsense if written in an audiophile context , so no magazine that relies on sighted testing can't make any proper observation of a products behaviour . Tried to read a review on 6 moons (utter crackpots ) the article was supposed to be about a dac ,but i stopped reading 1/3 in when the review started to drift and compared different lengths of expensive USB cables and found them to sound different ?? etc . This is very insidious the consequence is that if you round up product a,b,c,d and perform these flawed test methodology and d stands outs head and shoulder above the others and are very "different" (a,b,c being neutral ) then something is really wrong but not in their world-view . Or in many cases the products are truly equal but the final verdict it's in best case based on look and feel and other biases not accounted for its a toss up . Look at the audio jewellery some produces they look awesome and thats the point a fair comparison would tell another story . I especially like the tube dudes accusations of that modern high performance transistor stuff "sounds the same" of course it does thats the whole point :) There are of-course many aspects of product that does not have anything to do with they audio performance ,quality, features, brand recognition second hand value serviceability et al . These guys tried to write accountable audio journalism http://www.theaudiocritic.com/ read some of the old numbers ,they truly pick the stuff apart . I like an old article on CD players where they compared a Sony and an Accuphase that costed 5*more and performed worse ,it basically had the older versions of the Sony's drives etc (in the 90's accuphase used sony drives inside ) ,but a lot of added accuphase value that did nothing sonically . Here is an old review of the benchmark 1 . http://theaudiocritic.com/plog/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=40&blogId=1 Benchmark 2 has bettered this performance by a wide margin . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mnyb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4143 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96407
_______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles