Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC Owners?

How it compares to EMM labs and dCS DACs?

I think he compared the redbook performance as well and found it to be superior with the Minerva. I have listened to the Weiss Jason/Medea combo and find it to be one of the best around but I still thinks the Minerva is close to the MBL 1621/1611E combo on redbook.

Yes, the dealer list is very short and poorly distributed geographically, especially in the center of the country. Unfortunate, as I would like an opportunity to give one a listen.
They are a relatively new company and maybe (hopefully) this situation will change in the near future.

Just a reaction to the comment that the dacs give you access to high resolution digital where the CD players don't is not altogether true. Obviously, dcs gear does as do some newer CD players like the Cary Audio 306 Pro and there may be other examples of which I am unaware. I bought the Cary in large measure because it could play CD/SACD as well as do high res audio thru its digital inputs (up to 24/192).

You are correct, of course, that some of the newer CD players have digital ins...which leads to the opposite problem with respect to reviews - namely that the CD player reviews that I have seen focus on the "disk in the drawer" formats applicable to that specific player, and have only a few offhand comments regarding the digital in. I haven't seen much comparison at all of the "high resolution" sound achieved by using the digital ins on a given CD player vs. a given DAC.

In reviews, I hope we are moving toward the consideration of the relative sound quality of all of the formats that a player/DAC can handle, much like reviews used to (and sometimes still do) focus on both a player's redbook and SACD performance.

With respect to my current purchasing decision, I'm kind of looking for someone to say "I had a [high end CD player] in my home system, and I got a [high end DAC], and I listened to them side by side in my home system for a week and concluded that the DAC clearly bested my CD player on redbook performance."

Having not seen this in any review so far, I am reluctantly reaching the conclusion that while a DAC would be nice to have for the higher resolution stuff, DAC rebook performance is inferior to comparably priced standalone CD players. That is consistent with the conclusion that I reached in my own side by side test, but for cost and convenience sake I sure wish it was otherwise.