Berkeley dac1 versus Esoteric K-03

What were you feeding the Berkeley?

I was using a gateway computer (windows 7, JRiver 18, Jplay, ESI Juli@ sound card); 10 meter apogee spdif cable into an Esoteric G25U upsampler/clock - the clock went to the Berkeley via an AES/EBU Purist Audio Design 20th Anniversary digital cable; the other surce was my Esoteric X03 SE into the upsampler via a Tara Labs The be Spdif digital cable, into the berkeley (this sounded better than the X03SE by itself).

Cerrot,
It is interesting that you use the spdf out from your PC and not the usb. I have not tried this but the usb route from my computer to my K-01 player is nowhere near the sound from the CD transport, even with hi-res downloads.
I may try the spdf way but need to get a better pc set-up like yours first before running it to the spdf input of the K-01.

Jon,

I would never use the USB out of my PC. Nor, would I ever use the usb input the dac. usb is the poorest interface you can use. USB was desgined to attach peripherals like mice and keyboards and printers and transmits data in packets, not streams.

God luck Jon.

An interesting development for me. My puter was going into an esoteric clock/upsampler (G25U) and then into Berkeley DAC. The stand alone K03 blew that away but I have had two recent developments. One was to add the G25U (w/o clock engaged as internal K03 clock is a bit more accurate)between the puter and K03 - and the benefit (using 192k) was pretty incredible. The 2nd development was to have my PC 'tuned up' my a microsoft level 5 tech (I am a computer guy but these gys take it to a whole other level) and, never mind the speed I picked up (I was not slow before) but the improvement in sound from their clean up and tweaking was also amazing.