Hello Benchmark DAC1, goodbye RC1090 ?

[vifferboy]

Hello all

Over the last year I have been slowly been drawn into the digital server approach to storing music and recently bought a used Benchmark DAC1 USD. The said unit is connected to my media PC, my TV and my RCD1072 is now serving as a CD transport.. So far I’m very impressed with the Benchmark and especially like the headphone amp as I do a lot of late night listening through headphones.

Reading the Benchmark manual it is suggested that for the best sound out of the unit it should be connected directly to the power amp via volume controlled variable analog outputs. This of course will make my beloved RC1090 redundant since the Benchmark will deal with all the inputs I now use and will in turn feed directly to the RB1080.

I have connected the Benchmark to the RB1080 but have not as yet had a chance to have a decent listen. I was wondering if any of you out there have tried this or have a similar set up and what your thoughts were?

Many thanks

Steve

[geeza]

Hi Steve

I have exactly the same approach and very similar setup (see my profile for details). I've never tried to connect my Benchmark directly to RB-1090 but I will do so for some tests. Anyway RC-1090 is really good pre. In this case the most important is quality of interconnects in the signal chain. I'm using AQ Jaguars XLR and I'm curious what happens if I remove RC-1090 with one pair of Jaguars.

By the way I tested different digital connection between media player and DAC-1 and noticed that optical toslink 'sounds' much better than coax! I'm sure the major advantage of toslink is electrical separation from (mostly) poor quality media players. Toslink eliminates opportunity to infiltrate any distortion coming via GND signal in coax termination.

If you have any questions regarding applications of media servers in audio/video, please feel free to ask me. It always will be nice to exchange some experiences.

[vifferboy]

Hi Andrzej
Thanks for the reply; I'll be interested in you findings. I have not used the XLRs as I already have some nice RCA cables, do you think the XLRs are better? I thought it was only better to use them on longer distances?

For a music server I have a "quiet" PC that connected to the flat screen for movies etc. Originally I was using a SPIDIF connection from the motherboard to a DAC Magic which worked very well. When I got the Benchmark I switched to the USB connection. I’m just using ITunes for a media player since I’m familiar with it and quite like the convenience. I used the Benchmark Wiki guide to set it up and ripped my CDs to Apple lossless.

Regards

Steve