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Which DAC for $5K or less?

I have been reading about the Benchmark Dac1 Pre (Equation "solved"?!), Berkeley Alpha Dac (rave review by same mag.), Audio Research Dac7 (no reviews that I know of but I respect company), Weiss Dac, et al. I am trying to make sense of all this. I like the idea of getting an external dac rather than a higher end CD/DVD player for various reasons--both cost and flexibility. I know the Benchmark is by far the cheapest and can be auditioned in home easily for 30 days, which is great. I might be able to arrange a loaner in a month or so of an ARC unit, tho no guarantees. The ARC is a good bit less than the Berkeley Alpha Dac and the Weiss, but I have no clue how it stacks up. Anyone have some insight as to what the current state of the art is without blowing the budget completely on dcs current gear?

Thanks!
luvwine

Showing 1 response by bigamp

bigamp
219 posts
 
All dacs sound different. So, if you have a chance to listen first, do so. These are just my opinions. Others will disagree, and I would likely disagree with their choices.

If I were in your shoes and based on my tastes, I'd get a used Emmlabs DCC2. They go for around $4K. I had a DCC2 and upgraded it to the DCC2se. IMHO, the difference was very subtle, and probably not worth the upgrade. So for $4K you get extremely close to the state of the art DCC2se, plus it includes a great preamp.

I also had a Benchmark DAC1 w/USB in my system at the same time. The Benchmark was in a much lower league than the DCC2 and sounded dry in comparison--which it should since its $1K price point is much lower than a new DCC2se ($14K).

The other option I would consider is the new Empirical Audio Overdrive DAC for around $2500. In my experience with PC-based audio so far, no one does USB audio better than Empirical Audio. YMMV.
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