Very Nice

At $16,000.00 USD, the Berkley Audio Design Reference Series Alpha DAC is about what you would pay for an elbow pad, were you in the business.

Magico Q-Sub 18, Solution 701, CEO (N/A), and Q7 Loudspeaker.

That is, it's the right amount for a component today, manufactured in quantity. We'd say that $4000 USD is the traditional amount to pay for a pre-amplifiier* You'd expect to pay $100,000.00 USD were it a reference level component today...



A component like the Solution 701 Monoblock Amplifier (Levis Optional - $150,000.00 USD / pair), shown here with Magico CEO Alon Wolf and his QSub-18 Subwoofer ($36,000.00 USD) and Q7 Loudspeaker ($185,000.00 USD). Not shown is the Solution 720 Pre-Amplifier (110.000zł), Baetis Audio music server, or Vovox cabling from Switzerland.

We're not quite happy with this photo of the Berkley Alpha DAC, but we do think it is very nice in terms of industrial design. Very nice. So we can't find things to fault, really. It does 24/192. That's nice. We'd like to see more detail in the photo of the Alpha DAC Reference Series label.

That it is chosen by Alon Wolf for his CES 2015 [January 7, 2015] presentation is rather interesting. It gives credit to the product more so than it's review in The Absolute Sound, to our eye.

You'll see the same diamond design in the metal feet of the Alpha DAC that you will see in the FiiO. Olympus. The inset on the front panel is a nice touch. It's a solid look.

We were inclined to post a photo of the rear-panel, because that looked perfect, from a component design. But the photo looked worse, and made this article poorer.

Should we leave off what we see? We'd like to see 2X DSD. 16X, preferably and specs to agree: a Moola Moola on Steroids. We wonder when The Absolute Sound proclaims the Berkley Alpha DAC Reference to be "A New Digital Standard."


How is this the case, then when:

(1) it's 24/192 playback
(2) what about the Bricasti M1, a reference professional product of similar interest? [and now upgraded to DSDx4, though originally 24/192]. www.bricasti.com

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* In 1992, you would pay $13,950.00 USD for a Mark Levinson No. 30 Reference Digital Processor, a competitive product (16/44). Adjusted for inflation to 2014, it would be $23,607.91 USD. Which is + 69%.