Upgrade from Benchmark Dac?

Anything out there in the digital world that will blow me away like the Benchmark? I don't want to spend ten times the dough to get a debatable 10% more "sound".

I suspect a lot depends on you.

If you are skeptical (as your thread suggests) then it might be hard to get even a 10% improvement.

However if you are ready to stump up the dollars for something rare and truly high-end then you may find it quite easy to convince yourself that you have a 100% improvement.

After all what is 10% ? What is 100% ?

Human nature...more dollars has a big influence on "expectations" moreover the cosmetics and build on something ten times as expensive will be extremely impressive compared to the sadly austere functional DAC1 (even though it has an unnecessarily expensive faceplate).

I never thought about it but I can imagine that power and cables would probably have a much greater impact on digital rather than on analog gear.

Clean power does seem to affect digital - well it has in my experience. I suspect switched mode power supplies can be a problem. However, before spending $3000, I'd suggest you experiment with say $100 monster power bar filter first and see if it makes an audible difference. FWIW the power supply in the DAC1 is linear (not switched mode like a DVD player) and it runs quite hot - like a hot mug of coffee to the touch. That and the signficant weight of the little box suggests that it probably has a decent power supply to begin with.

Another avenue to check is to ask a question on Head-Fi org to Elias Gwinn (Benchmark engineer). I expect he will tell you that the DAC1 is designed to work in studios with dirty power and should not need conditioning in all but very extreme cases.

Good Luck!