The 'reclocking' done by the Benchmark and the DA10 are radically different. The Benchmark uses an oversampling chip, which when it resamples at a higher frequency, maps jitter to broadband noise and changes the bits during the process. The reduction in jitter is very good and is cheaply achieved, but the bits are not the same as the source. Other DACs use the same method with the same chip, such as the Bel Canto, and others use much more computational power to do it even better such as the Audio Aero. The Lavry is a very different matter. Dan has many times expressed concern about oversampling and makes the point that making chips work at higher frequencies than are necessary just means we get worse sound because working faster means the chip becomes less accurate (analogous to typing faster means more typos). Some people like the sound of upsampling and it might just be that they like the sound of the jitter reduction achieved cheaply with a resampling chip.
The Lavry (and a number of other high-end DACs) use what I would call reclocking (I would call what the Benchmark does resampling, but you could argue reclocking occurs at the same time when resampling). The Lavry allows the incoming stream to fill up a buffer and the Lavry then extracts (reclocks) the data in that buffer using its own clock. This method of reducing jitter can be more expensive to implement for any targeted level of jitter reduction, but it has the advantage of being bit-perfect right up to the DAC (which the Benchmark isn't). FWIW I have owned but a Benchmark DAC1 and a Lavry Blue, but not a Lavry DA10. The Lavry Blue is more expensive than the Benchmark and was clearly superior. But I don't know that I could put it down to jitter differences. I would probably put it down to Dan's skill at voicing the sound of digital gear and the fact he had more budget to play with. But if its true that the Lavry DA10 can match the sound of the Lavry Blue, then it is a massive bargain. Sell your Benchmark's now while they still get good prices - particularly if you find the sound of the Benchmark to be a bit thin and fatiguing. -- Jenks ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jenks's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3413 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=22000 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
