
jinjuku
Moderator
Who cares? It's all moot till I have both the Benchmark (I don't think they will ship me another for 30 day trial) and the Kingwin in front of me for a few weeks any determination could be made.Well... this is where a greater debate can be made regarding circuit design. I personally put my money on the diamond differential with those WIMA caps, custom spec NOVERs, the dale relay microprocessor controlled I/V conversion volume circuit and the bin sorted jap transistors and other TOP NOTCH COMPONENTS and BRILLIANT layout.
It's no contest...
The thing is Kingwa's piece is LAUGHABLY $35 dollars CHEAPER
IMHO the Kingwin looks over engineered. It's a heavy part count design. Also IMHO the Benchmark is over priced and sells on name.
My advice is if you want a good sounding DAC there are plenty under $1K and plenty under $500. I already linked to one
Here is the only review that I could find on the Ref 7.1 and it's not too flattering of the build quality. The Chinese still haven't gotten it all figured out unless you are there hawking over them.
So a high part count (which the review confirms) with sloppy SMT work. Poor enclosure finishing. They had a problem with an input selection knob. Sorry but I have to stand on that. I would personally take a pass.
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