@celander
That graph is plotting dBFS along the horizontal axis, 0dBFS means music that is at the loudest it can go before clipping, undithered CD has a noise floor of -96 dBFS; for modern music, 105dB is peak, and since the average treated room noise is around 30dB (my living room is ~45dB as it’s open, so things like the refrigerator’s compressor and whatnot contribute), so that’s a range of 75dB, so everything from 0dBFS to -75dBFS needs to be looked at. Now, at -35dBFS the IMD of the D50 is -65dB, so 5dB, so audible but not in-room. There’s still stuff like IMD+N though.
Also, while the 2Vrms output of the D50 will allow most any amp to reach its spec’d wattage output, the much more powerful output of the DAC3 will allow you to do heavy DSP (which involves lowering headroom) while still keeping >2Vrms.
But yes, the D50 and similar put to shame so many esoteric DACs that can cost $5K of more. Now, something DACs do perform better than the Benchmark, it’s just we are well past audibility, I would only pay a tad more if the performance was similar but the asthetics were better.
I presumed running it at 0.00 dBFS would remedy that concern.
That graph is plotting dBFS along the horizontal axis, 0dBFS means music that is at the loudest it can go before clipping, undithered CD has a noise floor of -96 dBFS; for modern music, 105dB is peak, and since the average treated room noise is around 30dB (my living room is ~45dB as it’s open, so things like the refrigerator’s compressor and whatnot contribute), so that’s a range of 75dB, so everything from 0dBFS to -75dBFS needs to be looked at. Now, at -35dBFS the IMD of the D50 is -65dB, so 5dB, so audible but not in-room. There’s still stuff like IMD+N though.
Also, while the 2Vrms output of the D50 will allow most any amp to reach its spec’d wattage output, the much more powerful output of the DAC3 will allow you to do heavy DSP (which involves lowering headroom) while still keeping >2Vrms.
But yes, the D50 and similar put to shame so many esoteric DACs that can cost $5K of more. Now, something DACs do perform better than the Benchmark, it’s just we are well past audibility, I would only pay a tad more if the performance was similar but the asthetics were better.