Is berkeley dac as good as absolute sound review?

What difference does that make? He still chose to pay something and keep it in his system. Hard to deal with fine shadings of "levels on implied endorsement". Buying it says something positive - no more, no less. How much one is willing to spend says more about the ability to spend then anything inherently about the quality of the sound when most differences at this level are way beyond the point of diminishing returns financially.

I have it and love it and the review is very accurate. It really does it right. I have an Esoteric X03SE and using it as a transport into the berkeley for HDCD is a revelation. I don't think the review mentioned how well an HDCD encoder it is.

And, the review is spot on when it says you really have to feed the berkeley hi res signals to hear what it does. True 24 bit sounds spectacular. Check one out. Used up for $3,500 or so. Can't lose.

Whether the reviewer paid one-tenth, one-fifth, one-half or full list price for the gear makes a big difference to the reviewer’s pocketbook. If you don’t believe me, ask him. And you are right, hard to separate the pocketbook from the endorsement.

He would not spend a $100 if he did not like it, of course he might give a better review to a fella offering a steep discount, other than Atkinson's measurements and "between the lines" I take all reviews with a grain of salt. But as far as the DAC, there a lot of evidence that it is very good indeed.

Could be a nice Dac to the reviewer ears, but you need to try it before buying. :)