Tascam DA-3000

Music Direct and Benchmark themselves also have trial periods.

I agree I would rather go straight to disk, but if you have a computer near by you can go direct. All you are sending is the bits, the timing is not an issue. For the price of the Tascam you can even buy a PC and then transfer to your main system over Ethernet. You could even use the PC as your music player if you do not have one already.

I'll be interested in the results you get from the Benchmark.

If you happen to be in the Boston area, you can try my Korg.

Topten - sorry for diverting the thread. Have you make any decisions?

DTC:
Spoke with an engineer at Benchmark today. Extremely knowledgeable and very straightforward with me. When asked about the analog front end he told me they did extensive listening tests and originally settled on the AD797, but switched to LME49860 which was even better. He agreed the performance of the analog front end was critical to the sound quality. They use one electrolytic coupling capacitor in the entire chain, and it is triple bypassed with film caps and NPO ceramics (which is unusual due the cost of NPOs).

He mentioned that the 5532 is long outdated (fine in the 80's) but op amp development has left this part far behind.

He agreed that recording to the Tascam would be the preferred method, because some PCs with Windows OS can mess with the sampling frequency (using software driver frequency converters) and you may not even know it. There may also be hardware issues with the USB ports re data reliability. Remember that connecting a USB cable from a computer to an audio device enables high frequency noise an entrance to your audio device (unless you optically couple like Ayre does).

The Benchmark has a word clock output that can be hard wired to the Tascam word clock input to synchronize the clocks. The Ayre only has this on the uber expensive pro model.

So it looks like I may order one from Audio Advisors because I could return it if I don't like it. Not so lucky with the Tascam as the seller wants a 15% restocking fee, so I may keep it just as a hardware recorder.

Also, apologies to TOP TEN for high-jacking his thread.

Sounds like you are making progress. I will say one reason I went with my Korg was to avoid usb.

I think you can output to the usb and the Tascam at the same time. It might be interesting to do that and compare the wav files. I believe you can also do 24/192 to the Tascam if that is of interest. Not sure the usb supports that.

Good stuff. Hope the Benchmark works.

DTC:

I think Benchmark only outputs 24/96K via USB. It will output 176 and 192k via the AES/EBU and digital outputs (including optical). Another reason not to go USB (and record to the Tascam), if you want higher than 96K. However, I was told 96K may be the optimum sample rate and higher rates may not sound as good or better.

The other thing I discovered was the Benchmark has much more flexible input gain ranges. You can get up to 29 dB of gain, whereas the Tascam will give you a max of 12 dB. This was an issue due to the low output voltage of the Spectral with a MC cartridge, and the highest signal levels I could get were about -10 dBU at the peaks when recording an LP.

The gain is also set in the Benchmark via analog devices like switches, resistors, and pots. The Tascam uses digital methods as you enter the gain numerically in 0.5 dB steps via the LCD screen.