A DAC that crushes price vs. performance ratio

@facten  
 
I am 98% certain the Pagoda is not more accurate than the Benchmark. If you have proof otherwise (as the company selling it sure doesn’t state anything meaningful), I would like to see it. I have proof that the <$300 DACs mentioned are pretty much audibly transparent.

I don't understand statements like this: "I am 98% certain the Pagoda is not more accurate than the Benchmark. If you have proof otherwise (as the company selling it sure doesn’t state anything meaningful), I would like to see it. I have proof that the <$300 DACs mentioned are pretty much audibly transparent."

If you are this certain, you should be the one with the proof. YOU'RE the one that made the claim of one thing being more accurate or better sounding than the other, yet you think it makes sense to then ask for proof of a claim that you made. 

I would love to see this proof of any DAC being audibly transparent. I imagine you must have recordings you've made, along with a transport, cables, line stage, amplifiers, speakers, and a room that are also audibly transparent.

It would seem to impossible without these things to say that one piece of equipment is audibly transparent. But maybe I'm incorrect. I would very much like a way to know if a component is truly transparent, as that is what I'm looking for.

And I'm 98% certain that you have to no idea exactly how transparent the Pagoda is, if you have no experience with it. Not that there was a claim made of it being transparent.

My problem with the Benchmark DACs, is all of the extra things in them. I don't need a preamp or headphone amplifier, I just want a purist's DAC that is transparent, neutral, and information rich. I also wish they had an i2s input, as I'm dying to take advantage of that output of my Jay's transport.

@lordcloud

The new Benchmark DAC3 B is for you then, no volume control and no headphone out, $1700 I believe.

Measurements of Topping D50:

* SINAD (Signal over Noise & Distorion, more challenging that S/N) of 109dB
* Channel matching within 0.1dB
* Jitter-Test score of better than -125dBFS
* Linear performance within 1dB down past -120dB, so better than 20Bit
* THD below -107dB
* IMD at or below -65dB for content down past -55dBFS, and below -90dB for content down past -15dBFS
* 3rd and 5th harmonics below -115dB for a 1kHz tone


Show me where it audibly colors the sound. Keep in mind even the best rooms only allow for a dynamic range (loudest sound in the music down to the room’s noise floor) of like 60dB to 70dB, which is also why 24Bit usually has no audible benefit over 16Bit (which has >95dB or dynamic range).

Also, I^2 S offers no benefit over traditional connections (just like how DSD has no advantages over PCM), so it’s shouldn’t be a must have feature.

I state I am 98% certain as the Pagoda as effectively no specs and is a tube DAC, so near improbable that it would be as transparent as the DACs mentioned.

The DAC3 B has no AES/EBU input. And while I'm sure the coax is great, I would much rather be using the best output of my transport (which is the i2s, but I'm more ok with the balanced out than I am the coax out).

I'm afraid that measurements don't tell us if something is uncolored or not.  Measurements aren't really the entire picture. There's no way to no if a component colors the sound, without knowing exactly what the source sounds like, and then having a completely uncolored playback system as well, in an uncolored room.

I'm not i2s has no advantage over other connections. I'd much rather be able to communicate with the DAC without having to go through an extra step of conversion, if I don't have to. I prefer as little on the signal path as necessary. It also makes sense to take advantage of the source as untouched as possible. 

When you have empirical proof of the transparency if the Pagoda, or any DAC, versus another DAC, I'm all for it. Again, I want transparency, not "good sound".