Honestly, part of it now is just knowing for certain what I want. I can afford to drill holes in shit because I’m keeping it. lol It was neatly done, just like Berkeley would do it, I promise!
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I’m pretty sure I’m keeping mine as well, but considering I only bought it a month ago, I’m not ready to drill holes in it /quite/ yet, lol
Still, I’m really glad to hear your mod is paying sonic dividends! All the power supply stuff you’ve been doing is really cool to see!
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I was able to demo a berkeley Reference 2 dac that was loaned to my by @Draaly.
I was able live with it for a couple weeks to get a real feel for it.
Most of my listening was done o my 2 ch rig with maybe 10% listining done with my raal setup. Details of both can be seen on my profile…
A brief history of the dacs ive owned.
I started out with a schiit bf2 then upgraded to a yggdrasil a2, now known as the og.
After that i was able to pick ug a tt2 then side graded to a spring 3 kte with pre.
This will be mostly a comparison between the berk and the spring since i dont have any experience with dacs of this level lol.
I
I had the berk r2 with an alpha usb as the source.
Spring was fed oversampled content with hqplayer and with files upsampled with pggb.
Berk does not work with above 48k content. Ill explain in the next post.
Warm up took about 48- 72 hours.
Here is a mon style list of attributes im confident with expressing.
Soundstage depth spring>=berk
Soundstage Width spring>=berk
Soundstage height berk>spring
Imaging berk>>spring
Seperation berk >> spring
Detail berk>spring
Macrodynamics berk> spring
Liquidity berk>spring
The soundstage on the berk is very well defined compared to the spring that just seems to fade off into the distance which leeds me to feel that the springs Soundstage is greater.
The soundstage quality is much higher on the berk. Music begins to take real shape shape with the berk in its smaller, denser stage. Music on the sping is 2 dimensional, Kinda like on a school play where all foreground and background elements are carboard cutouts, but are still well seperated from eachother.
Idk how to properly explain it but i felt that the berk was more relaxed compared to the spring. It might be a combination of the berks greater liquidity and the springs upper midrange glare.
I found the berk to be downright relaxing with my mola mola amps surprisingly.
Im not yet confident enough to judge the tonality of individual componants in a system but i think i can safely say that the berk is no heavyweight in this catagory. Did not seem rich, Warm, bright, or thin. Probably neutral with not a whole lot of organic realism attached to it.
The berk is a fair bit more unforgiving of music, but seemed to sound very smooth and relaxing with some recordings and violent and intense with others. A much greater swing of extremes than what my spring is capable of.
I dont own a preamp so my listening on 2ch was done using the volume control on the berk.
The volume controls, while capable of showing the strengths of the dac are not great. It did sound a lot more well defined the higher it was on the volume.
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It looks like the alpha usb i was using had a defect where the phase in the right channel was off compared to the left.
This happed with all content what was above 48k.
44.1 and 48k measured just fine.
88.2 and 96, the right channel has a a couple ms delay
44.1 and 48, no delay
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Interesting, I wonder if it’s an issue specific to the particular unit or not.
2ms is a long time in audio.
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Yea, 2ms is enough to drive me nuts with my raals.
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Most of us mere humans would not be able to figure that one out but, you’ve got the right equipment! Thanks for sharing, a lot of conversation around here of late of weirdness in various digital interfaces and the Alpha USB has been named in twice.
It’s difficult to difficult to definitively say without a lot of equipment swapping back and forth to ever point a finger, but just proof that “weird” does happen…
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Hey guys!
How is the alpha 1 at 1095$?
Just curious if its worth it.
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I think Wavetheory uses one to do his reviews on youtube. Annnnd i just realized he is not a member of the forum here…
He use the alpha s2!
Yes, he is not a member…
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There was something discussing it a while back and iirc the conclusion was just to avoid MOT as a general rule, but it has been a while so maybe it wad more neuanced than that
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Thanks for the reply!
I was just joking around.
I’m pretty happy with how this forum turned out and I read the 2year post. Trying to be more active if that helps.
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Also, there is one alpha 2 for 1950$ (US audio mart)
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Spent some time listening to the Reference 2 with both Aperio and AIC10.
It doesn’t make you want to listen to it more and more, and I can’t even pinpoint what’s the real issue and root cause. I do think it worked better with Aperio than AIC.
It gave me the feeling like it’s a tool more than a musical enjoyment component. Very weird experience.
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Ive been playing with the alpha usb for a few days now and cant seem to replicate the issue. I wodner if it was a software thing?
Could be,maybe my mac specifically hates that ddc over the other one i had.
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I’ve been running the Alpha USB for a few weeks now. (Thanks again @Draaly for the sweet deal and the quick shipping). And I have very mixed feelings about it, love it and hate it 
. But I really don’t think it’s the Alpha USB fault.
For reference the signal chain is ultraRendu → alpha USB → Yggy OG → V550. USB cable is dh labs mirage, AES cable is dh labs d-110, XLR cables are Kimber Hero, power cables are all Pangea AC14SE.
Alpha USB replaced a Sonore ultraDigital in the chain.
I love the “space” I’m hearing with the Alpha: black black background, improved separation, improved layering, tons of air and in general a more holographic presentation. I’m hearing a bigger change with this DDC than I have heard with many other DACs. Very impressive unit!
I hate that it is so sensitive to cables and source. Swapping ultraRendu with OpticalRendu is very noticable. Swapping USB, AES cables is very noticable. I feel like the alpha USB opens a new level is sonic awesomeness, but it’s exposing the fact that my cables are underperforming.
In general i love the improved presentation, but it’s also causing some tracks to sound too distant / vague. And some tracks sounding more bright than I care for. Switching to OpticalRendu improved all of this, but not quite where I want to get to.
My next guess for sonic weakness is the AES cable. But I’m open to recommendations for how to attack this problem. My goal is a fun, punchy, even slightly warm leaning signature. Could it be the Alpha USB is too analytical of a piece to achieve this goal?
[edit]
I’ve been wanting to try Snake River Audio cables for a while now. Maybe now is the time to make the move with a USB and AES cable? Any opinions or experience with Snake River cables and the Alpha USB? I’ve also been considering trying Anticables… . Maybe I should move this to the “help” thread 
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The power supply for both the opticalRendu and the Alpha USB can have an additional impact on the sound as well. So you’re not just looking at improved cabling.
How many times should we have simply quite while being ahead, instead we keep digging. lol
Yep, it’s a very good but very picky unit lol
You’ve already got a wamer leaning aes, I’d personally try out going higher on both aes and usb to really nail things in. I personally focused on getting pairings that kept it more balanced/neutral but also removed potential for harshness or overforwardness. I do think it’s an inherently more clinical leaning ddc and there’s no cable swapping that really changes that (but perhaps @dB_Cooper’s power mod would lol). I thought the fta callisto/sinope or purist 30th diamond was a really good match, but on the cheaper end the twl passion usb was really good at keeping it more neutral but also making it a bit more forgiving at the same time. If you wanted to lean into something more relaxed and smooth the phasure lush^3 with the right shield settings is also a great pick
AES wise I’m actually liking it most with the allnic zl mu7r for something more neutral yet more organic. But for something a bit cheaper I’ve really liked the snake river boomslang, but that being said there have been people on here with weird issues with this cable and ddc so be warned there, I’ve not encountered that personally
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I couldn’t agree more on this, Never heard the Sinope but from what I’ve been told it’s just more of the good things in the Callisto. I’d proceed with care like @M0N says on the AES but if you’ve already got an AES cable working fine I think the worry should be deeply lessended. The Boomslang is a great match and I enjoy mine but there’s been a few here (myself included) with the Alpha USB and Mojo that haven’t played nice together but if I had to point a finger I’d not point it at any one pice but simply that chain simply didn’t like something.
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