The older Benchmark DAC's do not have a USB input.

I believe the point John was making in pairing the Bel Canto USB and the Benchmark was that the Bel Canto device will work well with DACs that have good jitter rejection - like the Benchmark. It will not work well (at least it will have lots of jitter problems) with older DACs that lack jitter rejection features.

Now the fun questions would be how does the Benchmark sound via its USB connection versus its S/PDIF input via the Bel Canto device?

As far as I can tell, unless the data are reclocked, most USB connections for digital audio are rather compromised in the jitter department. I wonder if using the Bel Canto USB work be better than the Benchmark input or worse...

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The older Benchmark DAC's do not have a USB input.

Right. The DAC 1 I bought is one of the original versions that does not have a USB input. The review sample of the USB model I reviewed went back to Benchmark a long time ago.

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I believe the point John was making in pairing the Bel Canto USB and the Benchmark was that the Bel Canto device will work well with DACs that have good jitter rejection - like the Benchmark. It will not work well (at least it will have lots of jitter problems) with older DACs that lack jitter rejection features.

Exactly so.

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Now the fun questions would be how does the Benchmark sound via its USB connection versus its S/PDIF input via the Bel Canto device?

It would probably be a wash as both use the same Texas Instruments TAS1020 chip running the Centrance code to convert the USB audio data.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

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It would probably be a wash as both use the same Texas Instruments TAS1020 chip running the Centrance code to convert the USB audio data.

Probably