Digital Processor Reviews

More Manufacturer's Comments

Editor: This is very interesting. I would urge readers to read the whole of Jon Iverson's review and not just the conclusion.

The accuracy vs listenability debate has run since the beginning of audio time, and will likely outlast both BorderPatrol and Benchmark.

Given the left-brain/right-brain relationship of the BP and Benchmark DACs (as Herb Reichert would have it), alarm bells rang when I saw that John Atkinson had selected the owner of a Benchmark DAC to write the Follow-Up review.

I shouldn't have worried: Jon Iverson was more than fair, and even though the BP was not for him, his partner liked it sufficiently to ask whether they should buy one, and the members of the Central Coast Audio Club preferred the BP to the Benchmark for a wide variety of reasons. The Benchmark was judged to be better only with pristine studio recordings. Surely the reason we buy audio products is so that we can listen to music, not analyze recordings, and any product that allows more music to be enjoyed is the better product?

Jon writes that he feels the BorderPatrol DAC lies to him, but the "truth" issue is an interesting one. Which DAC is telling the "truth": the one that lets you hear the violinists breathing and turning pages, but makes strings sound steely and piano insubstantial—or the one that portrays the wood around the strings, the body of the instrument, and makes the orchestra more live?

Perhaps the most disappointing part of the review is that JI didn't try the BP DAC with its [power-supply] tube turned off, which gives a crisper, less romantic sound. I suspect he would have preferred it that way.

Thanks to JA and JI for arranging and writing the review.—Gary Dews, BorderPatrol Audio Electronics