Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

"Although they are very good, I preferred the DAC in my room, the ODSE."

But, of course!

That does not suprise me, DCS has been on top of the digital world the last 25 years!

09-11-14: Aplhifi
But even Almarg (or anyone else with such extensive experience) would agree that the new Berkeley converter should at least make possible for DSD64 through the S/PDIF inputs via DoP format and let their customers decide whether Pure DSD is better than DSD converted to 176/24 PCM.... Please correct me if I am wrong.

Having no specific familiarity with the tradeoffs that might be involved, I take no position on that. My only point, as I said in the first of my posts dated 9-10-14, is that "quality of implementation is likely to trump the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of any particular design approach."

Audiolabyrinth, thanks for the nice words in your post yesterday.

Regards,
-- Al

A few minutes after submitting my post just above I received my copy of the October 2014 issue of TAS, containing the Berkeley review and interview Erik referred to earlier. In the interview Michael Ritter of Berkeley addresses in a reasonable amount of detail his rationale for not including a USB interface and DoP capability in the design.

His comments about the lack of USB are very much along the lines of what I said earlier. His comments about the lack of DoP IMO represent a credible, plausible, and well stated design philosophy, especially for a component in this price range. I certainly recognize, however, that similarly credible and plausible cases could be made for opposing philosophies.

Accordingly, I would not categorize the arguments on either side of the coin as being BS, or as being grounds for either rejection or acceptance of a particular candidate. Again, "quality of implementation is likely to trump the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of any particular design approach." But after reading the review and interview, like Erik if I were willing to spend $16K for a DAC I would certainly put the Berkeley on my short list.

Regards,
-- Al

Using one op-amp is a lot different that cascading several of them. They do add compression, just like any active stage will, even tubes (but to lesser extent). The fewer the better. That is why I use one. The one I use is a lot more that just I/V converter too. It has 4 different functions.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio