B.M.C. Audio DAC 1 Digital-to-Analog Converter
All prices in euros (€) unless otherwise noted.
At time of report, 1 € is approximately 1.37 US dollars.

Frankly, DACs don't usually thrill us very often, but the more we looked at the DAC 1 from Germany's B.M.C. Audio, the more impressed we were with its build quality and feature set. The price, 2698 €, certainly isn't low, but the DAC 1 packs a lot of technology and features inside.

The DAC 1 is modular in design, and each section is also available to the do-it-yourself community as a platform for amateur projects. But as assembled into a finished product, the separate modules -- power supply, DAC, decoder, and variable output -- combine to make a very ambitious unit indeed -- the centerpiece of a high-quality stereo system.

One interesting thing about the DAC 1 is the way it interfaces with a transport like the B.M.C. BCD 09, which we featured on May 23. Its Superlink system is I²S based and uses using four 75-ohm BNC-terminated digital cables that, among other things, allow the DAC to slave the transport from its own clock to eliminate jitter. AES/EBU, TosLink and USB inputs are also included.

B.M.C. is a brand-new company based in Germany, but we're hoping to acquire one of these new DAC 1 units for review after we get back to North America.