It may have the lowest price of any dCS model now made, but you wouldn’t know that from unwrapping and hefting it. I was still thinking that way when the Bartók DAC, from Data Conversion Systems Ltd., aka dCS, arrived at my door, just as COVID-19 began tearing around the globe.ĭCS is based in Cambridge, UK, and its Bartók ($14,500) is named for Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945). In fact, until recently, I wondered how anyone could justify spending far more on a boutique ladder DAC or FPGA-based converter when off-the-shelf chips from Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM), ESS Technology, and Texas Instruments offered so much sound quality at so little cost. Since then, DACs costing less than $2000 have improved by leaps and bounds - now, almost every maker of audio electronics produces DACs that sound not merely good, but great, and in the years I wrote for SoundStage! Ultra sister site SoundStage! Access, which focuses on affordable gear, I heard many inexpensive, high-performance DACs. And at the DAC1 USB’s modest price of $1295 (all prices USD), that kind of sound made it a steal. My previous source had been a cheap Sony CD changer (don’t judge - I was 23), and the Benchmark DAC offered a big step up in sound quality: that immaculate, analytical sound that digital sources of the aughts all seemed to possess.
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That was in the infancy of high-end computer audio, and the well-regarded Benchmark was one of the first mainstream DACs with a USB input.
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I like to think I was ahead of the curve when, in mid-2009, I bought a Benchmark Media Systems DAC1 USB (discontinued) off a dude on Audiogon.