Gadgetory

and I'm Rory Rowling with benchmark media systems out of Syracuse New York and we're here at the home entertainment show at Newport Beach showing our latest generation of deck tube bats D to a converters as well as a reference preamplifier both the deck to D and the deck HGC for hybrid gain control the deck to HGC adjusts digital volume in the digital domain and adjusts analog in the analog domain both of these units will accept up to 24 192 on the USB as well as in the coax input they both will playback DSD for those who have DSD downloads and would like to be able to enjoy those in addition we give word length and sample rate indications so if you're playing a 24-bit file 192 you know it is helps you adjust your software because a lot of mistakes we make the software settings you click one box on a 16-bit and it's going to do all kinds of things so our 24 192 might get down sampled 244 1 and that's not what you're looking for we also include a headphone amplifier unlike many headphone amplifiers ours is a zero ohm output which is what you'll find in a power amplifier a zero ohm output will control the driver will give you a great damping factor you haven't heard headphone listening unless you have tried it a benchmark DAC with a headphone amplifier all of our decks by the way include a headphone amplifier we have from our DAC one series to our Dec 2 series now the nice thing about the deck to the newest thing is we're using the new DSS Sabre chip we found that after using our other one for the deck one series for a number of years which has been the true benchmark and acts we're now into the next generation we think this is the next 10 years in deck performance in fact the performance of this unit will outperform basically any preamplifier or power amplifier in addition on the as far as features go we have polarity invert this does a complete polarity inversion on both left and right channel there are some people who are sensitive to polarity and there are known to be a number of of disks of CDs which have been issued in reverse polarity so now someone can sit back with a remote control and make that adjustment on the back side and I'll show you the differences between the back to HDC on the deck 2d which is our latest one what we have done is we have dropped the analog inputs on the DAC 2d we had a number of customers who said to us you know I'd love to get one but I have I don't have any analog sources it's all digital so we brought this unit out and it sells for a little bit less starting over over here these are our outputs we have three sets of analog outputs you wouldn't find this on a regular preamplifier usually at the most you'll find two we have two sets of unbalanced and we have one set of balanced and then as far as the inputs we have two sets of stereo inputs for analog so if you're playing an FM tuner or if you want to incorporate a turntable in this you can also do that coming from a phone a preamp stage to coax digital in to optical in USB and 12-volt trigger so now you can use this to start up an amplifier or the rest of your system it will power it up and power it down going up to the deck 2d as I said we've dropped the analog inputs we've also dropped the 12-volt trigger the DAC tune of HDC in 1995 the dec 2d 1795 we manufacture in Syracuse New York made in USA five year parts and labor warranty both the deck to deck to HGC here we have the power button you can either hit it once for a standby which means in about four minutes all the LEDs will go out you'll be in a standby mode it's still using a little bit of power or you can hit the power button twice a little complete shutdown over here we have the dim mute button for muting the entire signal or dim would be a lower level let's say for instance you're listening at a higher level of music and you want to carry on a conversation or maybe you're running your television through this you hit the dim button on the remote or on the face panel it'll bring it down to a lower level so you can carry on conversation the polarity button is for that polarity invert that I mentioned both channels reverse polarity can be done on the front panel or on the remote control input selection your two analog inputs USB and then D one through D for all your digital indicators and you toggle the input by these two buttons here and then HT for that home theater bypass or high throughput over here we have the sample rate and word length indication 24 or 16-bit 4448 2x and 4x would be your multiples of 44 or 48 to give you 80 896 176 and 192 if the top to the 4x and the 2x are illuminated that means you're playing a DSD file now you can create a playlist on your computer and you can be mixing DSD and 24-bit 16-bit and as you're going through on your computer software program this will automatically switch for you and then here we have our two headphone and and volume controls both of these units have what we call HT in our HT throughput we can stand for home theater bypass or can stand for high throughput what this allows you to do is to incorporate the htc model into a home theater setup you have one room for your home theater but yet you want to have the best stereo playback possible you can put the HTC model between your pre processor or AVR and your main stereo amplifier on the on the deck 2d that becomes a high throughput which would just give you a fixed output level like you have from a CD player so for the guy who insists on keeping his his preamplifier he can take this out as a fixed level from the deck 2d or the deck to HGC and go right into his pre amplifier in addition both of these units have full function remote control all of the inputs can be selected from remote control as well as mute button volume and on and off