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Perfectwave PWD MKII, Benchmark DAC2, Wyred DAC2

I just obtained a Benchmark DAC2 and am really impressed by the transparency, clean, open kids, and solid bass. I use XLR output (hooked up directly to amp) and had to adjust the attenuator jumper to -20db to match the gain on my amp. In my setup, I rank these three in the following order, based solely on sound quality.

1) Perfectwave PWD MKII - best DAC among the three, does everything well. I specially like the solid bass, buttery smooth midrange, and transparency. I could listen for hours and not get ear fatigue.

2) Benchmark DAC2 - not quite as good a midrange as PWD MKII, but very close. This DAC is very versatile with analog input, excellent headphone jacks, and DSD capability.

3) Wyred DAC2 - warm sounding and detailed, but not as transparent as the other two. I was already happy with this DAC before I obtained the Benchmark. And I may just keep it for my third system. It's still an excellent DAC.
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Showing 2 responses by cal3713

cal3713's avatar
cal3713
1,421 posts
 
I have not done any comparisons across brands, but I really like the PWD. I actually upgraded to their DSD, but sold it because the PW just sounded more natural. Less detail, but it matched the rest of my system (Coincident) better.
cal3713's avatar
cal3713
1,421 posts
 
I had my DSD for about a month and left on 24 hours a day, but not always with a source pushing voltage through it. It may not have gotten fully broken in.

Unfortunately I had another issue that made it a mismatch for my system... I was using it as a pre-amp and was forced to use the high gain setting to get sufficient volume (and still could max it out if playing very loudly). At that setting, the unit had a very high noise floor and hissed badly. [I'm actually shocked this hasn't been raised in the reviews]

I live in Boulder, so I took it over to PS Audio to check out and got another DSD (a demo/testing unit of theirs) while they serviced the unit. Unfortunately it sounded exactly the same; very detailed, amazing imaging, but with a high noise floor, and the same analytic quality that I didn't like about the previous unit.

I missed my old PWD and eventually just bought another used unit to replace the DSD. Perhaps it's a system matching issue, but in my stereo, music just sounds more real out of it.
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