Benchmark dac - why such diverging opinions?

"Fact is though, on A'gon it seems that most comments about the Benchmark DAC's have been negative."

Perhaps because most of people seek very warm sounding gear. Let see what Benchmark's Technical Director John Siau said about it:

"We designed the DAC1 for maximum transparency. If you want to add warmth, you can't add it with a DAC1. Personally, I do not like what warm sounding equipment does to the sound of a piano. Warmth is wonderful on vocals, guitars and certain instruments, but it beats against the stretched overtones of a piano. The overtones in a piano occur at slightly higher than harmonic ratios, and these create beat notes with the exact integer ratios produced by electronic equipment (and speakers). Too much harmonic distortion will
make a piano sound out of tune."

That would suggest to me that warmth is not a virtue and more experienced listeners, including professional reviewers prefer neutral sound. It is also likely that rest of the equipment they use don't have many faults that Benchmark ruthlessly reveals.

I suspect it true that most who do not like Benchmark are seeking warmth in their digital for whatever reason.

I have a warm sounding tube DAC (mhdt Paradisea) in my second system with speakers that tend towards the transparent and analytical side and a similr more "analytical" sounding ss DAC (mhdt Constantine) in my main rig which needs no additional warmth otherwise.

Gotta get the mix of ingredients right and to personal taste in any system to sound good.....

What I have sounds really good, but I wouldn't mind hearing what the BEnchmark sounds like in my main rig. I was leaning towards the BEnchmark originally for a SS DAC but the mhdt came in at less than half the price and sounds fantastic and is hard to fault.

I was going to post about my experince with the Benchmark HDR, which I sent back and replaced with a W4S DAC-2. But Daverz wrote my post for me already, so I'll paste that:

I also auditioned a Benchmark HDR at home several months ago. Like a lot of people, I found it too lean in the mid-bass, and while the treble was impressivly extended, I found I didn't really like the sounds that were revealed "way up there" (I believe in a live situation that extreme treble frequencies never make it to the ears. I remember a cartoon showing two audiophiles walking out of a concert and agreeing, "Not enough treble!".) I did like the exceptionally clean and bell-like midrange. Also the sound was very immediate and "quick". I really wanted to like it more because it's such a cool piece of gear, but it's not really how I want to hear the music.

Maybe it's an issue of "you can't handle the truth!" Maybe all the other equipment I like is plump in the mid-bass and rolled off on top. Quite possible given that I gravitate towards tube gear.

"you can't handle the truth!"

That's very accurate observation. One person even expressed opinion that Benchmark is too resolving making each instrument sound independently while he got used to all instruments mushed together. My experience was similar. Sound was so clean that I thought some instruments must be missing. Now I enjoy clarity of Benchmark and can see why it became a benchmark in audio.

Apropos of perhaps not much, but tracks these days are mixed with all sorts of divergent goals in mind, and often done for the genuine lowest common denominator (ie, mixed to sound good on a car system with a percentage of the speakers blown, downsampled to AAC, at 60 miles per hour with the windows down). But when the mixing goal is absolute fidelity -- and it often is not, but when it is -- this is frequently done with the most etched, unforgiving, resolving, analytical gear achievable, on the express theory that if one can make something sound listenable on that type of setup, it will sound good on anything. (And, inversely, the type of system that many things will very much NOT sound good on...). That is the extreme that I understand really good professional gear to be designed towards -- and by all accounts, an extreme that the Benchmark excells at. In other words, no-compromise professional gear is designed to be a tool, a magnifying glass if you will to reveal and accentuate every last flaw. Home reproduction gear, very frequently, is designed with different -- not mutually exclusive by a long shot -- but certainly very different priorities.

Putting aside whether "truth" is subjective or objective or whatever, that particular flavor of "truth" in home audio reproduction is simply not something that all folks, playing most software, will want to live with on a day to day basis. Hell, wouldn't eat chocolate every day, either. But, if that's what you want, you'll by all accounts love the Benchmark. If it's not what you want, you may not like it one little bit. Whether or not this adds up to an accurate verdict on Benchmark, however, is perhaps beside the point. As I understand it, the Benchmark is professional gear designed with that goal in mind -- and the fact that it has developed a huge following and achieved real success in the non-professional market says about all you need to know regarding whether it's a viable design goal. It obviously is. Whether it's the piece of gear for you or not, or could find a happy home within your particular system firing ideosyncratically in your particular room, however, that one is up to you and no one else. Or, at any rate, my theory at the moment (and, incidentally, what drove me to consider other DACs when it came down to the one I wanted to live with).