AudioMedia - December 2008 - (Page 42) M A D E I N A M E R I C A : A P R O M OT I O N A L F E AT U R E Raising The Bar Benchmark Media Systems alling your company Benchmark (dictionary definition, ‘A standard by which something can be measured or judged’) means that you are setting the bar extremely high when it comes to the quality of your products. The moniker of the Syracuse, New York-based company, was obviously well chosen, as it has carved for itself an enviable reputation in professional audio. From its roots in the late s, its products have graced the racks of engineers in applications as diverse as CNN, ABCTV, and at Manhattan’s Carnegie hall. Allen H. Burdick formed the company in Dallas in , after he found he could produce much bettersounding equipment than the television company for which he was working. In , Burdick (and Benchmark) moved to New York and, though he has recently retired, the family connection remains in shape of his wife – who is currently the company’s President. Vice President John Siau joined the company about years ago, and initially came on board to bring Benchmark into the digital age. “My first products for the company were A/D and D/A converters, and then microphone preamplifiers,” says Siau, “These days, I design all of Benchmark’s products.” Though Benchmark’s genesis was in the broadcasting industry, it now makes up only percent of their total business. About percent of clients now come from professional recording studios and film production facilities, according to Siau. “One of the things that Allan realised early on was that to get the signal through the components that make up the audio signal chain, the broadcasting industry needed devices with higher bandwidth and very low distortion,” says Siau. Benchmark’s early products were well received, so they then started looking at the performance of the gear available to the audiophile. “It was significantly lacking,” says Siau. “We saw an opportunity there to bring some truly high performance equipment into the audiophile arena, and it’s been terrifically well received.” He says that the company is committed to bringing new products to both the professional audio and home markets and, as in the past, equipment that appeals to both type of customer. C Setting the standard in both name and reputation, in its 30 years Benchmark has moved from broadcast to recording, from analogue to digital, and remains forward-looking and ever-ready to innovate for the future. A C l e ar Path Straddling the fine line between the pro audio and hi-fi worlds, Benchmark was an early player in the high resolution digital audio market with its Numb er One respected ADC and DAC digital converters. “When I designed the original DAC , I also had the home hi-fi people in mind,” says Siau, “Our first success with DAC was in mastering rooms as they were first to realise the unique advantages of the DAC , but then the audiophile and recording industry came to appreciate its advantages.” The home audio and recording fields are often at loggerheads as to what is considered to be a ‘good’ sound, with the hi-fi buffs often preferring ephemeral abstracts over sonic accuracy. “A lot of home hi fi is designed to be a little more ‘musical’ and less revealing than recording gear,” says Siau. “But both parties benefit significantly from tight control of jitter, intermodulation distortion, and other problems peculiar to digital systems. It’s possible to deal with these, and that is what we do very successfully in the DAC and ADC converters.” For many whose day job it is to produce the highest quality audio, it can be frustrating that the end product may end up being compressed to lossy formats and listened to through inferior converters – but Siau is pragmatic about this. “If you listen to a MP through a DAC , you’ll hear clearly just how poor the sound is. What is encouraging though, is that there are several higher resolution download sites now appearing, and one of the nice things about the DAC USB computer connection is that it has a very high performance -bit, kHz path – and these kind of things are just as important even when playing -bit CD quality recordings. Benchmark’s new DAC PRE stereo playback preamplifier has been designed as the central hub in a high-performance stereo playback system, and to interface directly with digital media devices such as CD and DVD players, music servers, satellite radio, digital cable boxes, and televisions – without ignoring ‘legacy’ systems like phono pre-amps, analogue tuners, and so on. “I always enjoyed the stunning delivery and breathtaking realism of Benchmark converters in my own home,” says Siau, “But have often wished to have additional inputs to connect all of my digital, computer, and analogue sources. The DAC PRE delivers the connectivity that today’s systems require but without compromising performance or quality.” The company’s latest product for the recording industry is the MPA microphone preamplifier. “Like its predecessors, the MPA was built with a focus on purity and it achieves some of the lowest noise and distortion specs of any mic-pre on the market,” says Siau. The unit features a unique -position discrete gain control, which allows for exacting gain control in precisely matched discrete dB steps over a total gain range of - dB. Phantom-protection circuitry is incorporated to protecting the transistors, and there’s also a phantom-disabling circuitry to protect when using the increasingly popular ribbon microphones. It’s an all-analogue design – though it is of course possible to connect it up to the company’s ADC if you need to get the signal into the digital domain. “We worked really hard to get a wide range of gain at peak performance with the MPA ”, says Siau. In May , Benchmark moved to a new manufacturing site in DeWitt, New York. According to Siau, the company’s equipment is all designed and manufactured on site using the finest components from all over the world, but all assembly and testing is done on site. “We’ve got some specialised rooms here we use for testing of our products that we didn’t have in our previous location,” says Siau. ”We’ve got a listening room that’s set up for auditioning and evaluating our audio products. The move has been very good for us and given us the room to grow, which we needed as has been a phenomenal year for us.” He is at pains to stress that the people working for Benchmark are just as important as the product itself. “We have a really high quality of staff here now, who are extremely committed to delivering a quality product on time to meet customer demands. We are very pleased with the people we have working here. As we ship all over the world, it’s essential we make high quality and reliable equipment.” With the rapid move to home distributed audio/media systems and ‘in the box’ mixing, Benchmark seems to be ideally placed to bring digitally recorded audio in pristine condition to the ears of both engineers in the studio and listeners at home for years to come. ∫ Mi c Machine CONTACT DETAILS Benchmark Media Systems Inc. 203 E.Hampton Pl.,STE 2, Syracuse, NY 13206, USA t +1 315 437 6300 w www.benchmarkmedia.com 42 AUDIO MEDIA DECEMBER 2008 http://www.benchmarkmedia.com http://www.benchmarkmedia.com
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