Jond,

Thanks for the comments.

The Sim Equinox certainly is a wonderful CD player. But it's just not a fair comparison to the Benchmark. From what I can tell, the Sim just tends to sound a little "dark" compared to the DAC1. While I know it's somewhat heresy to reduce the equinox to a transport, the Benchmark really does open up some detail in the recording. At a loss of a better description, it sounds a little more "open" than the sim's output.

With that said, the Sim's sound was actually a better match with the Triangle Comete ES (which tend to be a little "hot" if you're sitting in the sweet spot). But, with the Dynaudio Contours, the details really come through in the Benchmark DAC1. I've been doing A/B tests for several weeks now, and I keep coming back to the DAC.

Speaking of Hi-Fi heresy: I just hooked up the Apple Airport Express to the DAC1's optical input and am now using my laptop to stream Lossless-encoded files to the system. The Express actually seems to be quite a decent "transport" since it has a built-in jitter buffer (about one second's worth, it seems) to compensate for the ethernet/802.11 jitter. In combination with the DAC1, the bitstream seems damn near bullet-proof -- and I certainly can't hear the difference between that and the coax input from the Sim Equinox.

Aah. Geek heaven. :)

jonahsfo October 05, 2005 06:16

System edited: Updated speakers and added photos.

jonahsfo October 04, 2005 06:16

Thanks, Hooper.

So far, I'm very happy with the sound. The one observation is that the Triangle Comete ES speakers deliver an amazing amount of detail -- but they're very sensitive to their sources/amplification. My dealer cautioned me that I needed to drive them with a quality amp. A couple weeks of listening to them on my Denon 2102 receiver(that I still use for home theater stuff) quickly drove me to the Simaudio for 2-channel listening. The I-3's direct preamp-input (A4) makes it easy to integrate with the Denon's L/R output for DVD watching.

And you're definitely right about the Benchmark DAC1: It's truly amazing how much more detailed the Benchmark sounds -- even compared to the Equinox player.

The latest turn:
I hooked up my computer (which is currently driving the TV for DVDs, etc) to the Benchmark DAC1 via an optical TOSlink cable (the Equinox outputs on S/PDIF copper). Now, iTunes lossless-encoded music is indistinguishable from the CD output.

jonahsfo September 27, 2005 04:38