Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC Owners?

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.

Well, I cannot comment on comparison's to stand alone dacs. I will be doing some side by side testing with a friend's benchmark dac1 soon. From what I have heard so far on both CD and digital inputs, I do expect to prefer the sound of the Cary (I had heard the Benchmark prior to purchasing the Cary), but as you correctly say, side by side evaluation is certainly preferable to going from memory.

I also agree that with players that provide digital inputs, it would be very helpful to have the review focus on the characteristics of the dac separately. I will be surprised if manufacturers are using an inferior dac setup for the digital inputs as compared to the dac used with the cd in the drawer, but I have no data one way or another.

I am looking forward to 10audio.com's upcoming review of the Cary 306 pro in part because I know Jerry used the digital inputs and I would expect him to comment upon their performance relative to the Benchmark and the PS Audio dacs that he had previously reviewed.

I would be nice to have the Lindemann 820B. I could play a music server through its digital input and sacds just using it. Unfortunately, it is expensive.

That is what you can do with the Cary 306 Pro as well, tho it is not cheap (list is $8k). The previous version which is very similar sonically according to the Stereophile review can be found on Audiogon relatively inexpensively. I am sure there are other players that can do the same like all the Wadia SACD players as I think their current releases have digital inputs.