Benchmark DAC

The same question could be asked about any number of products on Audiogon. It makes me laugh when people like Celtic66 say product A will "smoke" product B in something as subjective as musicality.

And there is your answer as to why. Audiophiles are selling the Benchmark DAC1 by the boatload, as pretty much any decent product will smoke the DAC1...

They are everywhere. They are cheap. They are good. No surprise really. People try them and then try something else without breaking the piggy bank. They aren't going to solve a room acoustics, a speaker, aesthetics, sound flavor or an amplifier problem though. People buy and sell for many reasons - some may even prefer distortion over clean sound (why else are there CD loudness wars). They are great tool to clean up any old jittery digital (they claim to be able to clean up jitter down to 1 HZ which few designs can achieve)

The Benchmark DAC1 is no longer really a rave product. It came out about seven years ago and was a bit hit in pro audio (yes it was raved about back then) but the fact that it is still popular today suggests it is simply a good product (good sound at a good price).