Any opinion on the Snake River USB cable? Maybe go for both their AES and USB, end up with a whole “snake pit” 
I’ll dig into the callisto /sinope. I’ve not done much reading on FTA products yet. Time for some reading / listening tonight 
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FTA have an AES too 
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I’m getting the hint that FTA is the way to go 
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Dollar for dollar and via experience every one of us, on this forum, that has used an FTA branded USB has been pleased overall with the sound character and performance. If anyone has sold one off or found something more economical they prefer i hope they speak up because i may have possibly missed the comment. It is a well known entity to spend hard earned money on especially since it is not particularly cheap. Yes cables get more expensive too and there are probably many others that will also give you similar performance but the FTA’s at least many of us here have settled with.
If that is not a decent enough recommendation i don’t know what really is?
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BTW if anyone on the forum is interested in doing the power mod on their Alpha USB let me know.
Includes disconnecting existing internal power supply. Installing a 2.1 mm DC jack with silver plated occ teflon coated internal power cable. Lining the case with a sandwich of layers copper and RFI cloth.
Donation of the parts and labor on me and if you want to you can throw some $ my way but the real spend will be in the form of a super duper high end 9V power supply you’ll need for it.
It does become a better DDC, that’s for sure.
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Is the mod reversible? At least in terms of reconnecting the internal power supply of needed in the future?
What power supplies have you tried or would recommend?
Other than the hole I have to drill for the 2.1 mm DC jack, yeah everything is reversible. I actually posted something a while back on the mod.
https://forum.sonusapparatus.com/t/2023-hifi-goals/1598/41?u=db_cooper
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Okay, I’m finally getting to a happy place with the Berkeley Alpha USB. My god, it’s a sensitive device! I would have expected a DDC that’s marketed for connecting to a PC/Mac to be more robust against source noise. In the end, my issue was with the ultraRendu. More specifically noise over the network coming in through the ultraRendu.
For my local network switch (MikroTik CRS305-1G-4S+IN) which is used only for audio devices (ROCK and network streamers connected to it, including ultraRendu) I swapped it’s power supply for an iFi Elite 15V, and switched out all of the non optical cables connected to it with upgraded Ethernet cables (linked below). And that did the trick. I’m back to a nice balanced neutral/punchy sound but with much better space and blackness in the background. Really impressive result. And I’m sure there’s more goodness to be had… I am very surprised so many issues could come through the network side of the ultraRendu.
The Ethernet cables I ended up using are these:
I picked them up on the recommendation of a friend. They are no joke thic boi cables! I’ve never had an Ethernet cable move the needle on sound quality as much as these did. Really impressive. Definitely worth the price to try them out.
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Sorry if I’m not following along on this update. What issues were you having, connectivity or a sonic issue?
And your fix was to remove the fiber optic line previously used with the UltraRendu for USB audio out?
Good question. My issue was sonic. When I added the Alpha USB my sound became more detailed and be better separated, very black background. But it also became a little bright/metallic, making it very fatiguing.
My change wasn’t to move any of the optical cables. Those where unchanged (connection to opticalRendu and connection to main network switch for my house). I changed the power supply on the switch, and swapped out the connections that used Ethernet cables (ultraRendu, ROCK, and Mac Mini). I was very surprised how much the Ethernet cable part made difference.
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I gotcha now, thanks for explaining it a bit more! I have noticed certain Ethernet cables I have give out interference if it’s too close to an analog connection, the Ethernet cables you linked are appealing as they seem to be shielded. Maybe that helps it from “leaking” over to other cables 
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I did my first commissioned power conversion of an AlphaUSB for a member of the forum. Looking forward to hearing his impressions of it as I’ll be shipping it out Friday. Basically did everything I did to mine but in a much cleaner better thought out way as mine remains a prototype at heart.
That said. I didn’t take any pics of my most recent mod for it but it’s bordering on crazy. I placed a layer of thick ply plastic sheet over the right side of the unit (where the clocks reside) and then filled that area with about a pounds worth of small ceramic beads to weigh down and dampen vibration inside the housing.
I can’t immediately tell if it made a difference because I haven’t done no critical listening yet but it didn’t hurt anything that’s for sure and the additional heft is nice since the unit is very light and can slide easily on its platform while handling. No more sliding around.
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Your retirement career is blossoming and slowly taking form… 
Johnny C’s Kustom ModZ & Cables 
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Out of curiosity.
What would be “better” a Berkeley Alpha 3 or Berkeley Alpha reference 2?
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My opinion the reference series are built differently from their standard series. Even the reference Vs1 would have an improved SQ if nothing else simply due to the power supply and the fact that the newest version of their software can still be loaded onto it. Not an engineer and never had them side by side so this is my completely unqualified opinion 
Without a side by side of a known neutral reference system pretty hard to tell…
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Okay, I’m way over due to writeup my experiences with the Berkley Alpha USB.
First off, thanks to the amazing forum members here who give generous deals when selling gear. I would have never purchased an Alpha USB new. But picking it up here second (third?) hand made it an affordable summit-fi addition to my setup.
TL;DR
Very impressive DDC, but not a silver bullet for your digital signal chain. It can make a big difference, but requires some effort to put the right source, cables, and power supply in place. With that it can really do incredible things for soundstage, layering, and imaging. The blackness of the background is almost eerie. It will also expose other weaknesses in your overall signal chain - I ended up with an analog interconnect upgrade thanks to the Alpha USB 
. Highly recommend this device, but be prepared to upgrade everything around it too.
Background Information and Listening
OK, starting off, as several others have noted the Alpha USB is a “special” device. It can (and does) sound amazing. But it is also very cable / source sensitive. For a device that is advertised as a good way to connect a PC/MAC via USB into your hifi chain, I don’t think that would work very well. Or at least it would not bring out the fullest potential of this device.
I started out connecting the Alpha USB via an ultraRendu, and I was under impressed with the sound. Long story short, after much cable swapping and experimenting, it came down to noise over my network. I swapped out the ethernet cables and swapped out the power supply on my network switch and ended up with much better sound. Based on this I switched over to my opticalRendu. Even with just a basic Small Green Computer LPS on the oR, the sound is very impressive!
so… here’s what I mean by “very impressive”:
Clarity of detail on more distant sounds. Sounds that were further back in the sound stages and vague before are now very clear and defined and still apparent at the same depth (it’s not pushing it forward).
The blackness of the background is something else, almost eerie how empty the space around the music is.
Dead Power Supply
And now the story gets exciting:
The internal power supply died! 
After a few days of debug it became clear that the issue was only the internal power supply, nothing on the main digital board. It was handy to have an electronics lab at work that I could use for a little debug (shown in above pictures). I contact Berkley with the info from my investigation, and for $200 they would replace it. Not a bad price, especially given I’m far from the original owner.
But why get the stock replacement when you can just get a @dB_Cooper power supply upgrade? 
I shipped my Alpha USB off to dB_Cooper, and it came back about a week later better than ever:
With SN-2 I think I have a collectors item on my hands 
With this mod I need to provide an external 9V power supply, which adds some cost. And the sound is certainly sensitive to quality of supply (this thing is a bit of a money pit for all of the infrastructure around it required). I’m currently running a SGC LPS into an Uptone LPS 1.2 to create my 9V supply. A bit of a frankenstein setup, but it gives two layers of regulation, and so far it sounds fantastic!
Same sonic characteristics as above, but with some added warmth. The really crazy thing I’m noticing with this mod is how extremely well defined the center image is. The sound stage is very deep and layered and focused. I notice it most when I switch over to other sources. The middle of the sound stage almost sounds vague and blurry by comparison. This thing is now an absolute digital rock star!
I definitely am looking at better power supplies. Plixir looks very interesting… but for now i’m enjoying it and having fun! Certainly out of money for the moment to support this thing.
DDC vs Upsampling
A crazy one for me is that I’m enjoying the chord Qutest / Hugo2 more with the Alpha USB than with HQPlayer or PGGB upsampling over dual bnc (or even over the Chord 2Go network streamer).
I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with PGGB and HQPlayer. The Chord DACs are designed to receive up sampled PCM (via the MScaler / dual bnc). I’m a believer in what high quality digital filtering can contribute to an overall good strategy to reconstruct the original signal. And I’ve listened a lot of hours on the Qutest with both PGGB and HQPlayer, really enjoying the result. (Using the Audiowise USB to dual BNC converter for this playback.)
But I am now getting better depth, layering, and low level detail retrieval via the db_cooper modified Alpha USB than with PGGB or HQPlayer! To me this is a lesson in priorities / importance of digital features. You can do very sophisticated digital filtering, which is lovely. And a necessary part of most good digital to analog reconstruction strategies inside the DAC. But the Alpha USB is showing me that I can get equal and better results by paying close attention to the quality of the digital input to the DAC. Low noise, low jitter =
At this point I’m taking a break from experimenting up sampling and just enjoying the music!
Alpha USB → Yggy via AES
Alpha USB → Hugo2 via Coax
Conclusion
Highly recommend the Alpha USB. And HIGHLY recommend the db_cooper mod! but be ready to spend a little more money on the gear around it to get the best result.
cheers!
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David Berning (LTA uses his circuit designs) designed power supplies as his job before getting into audio. It’s one important aspect of the LTA sound, IMO.
This may be worth looking into, and it’s reasonably priced for what you’re getting.
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This is an interesting approach, would you mind elaborating on it a little as it sounds like you are using a linear PSU to power another linear PSU?
The specs on the Berkeley website indicate the following:
Great care was taken in the design of the Alpha USB Series 2 to isolate streamer/server noise on the USB input from the AES/SPDIF digital audio output. The USB input receiver and processor are powered by the USB input source, while the AES/SPDIF digital audio output master clocks and line drivers are powered by a separate isolated linear power supply. There is also no DC connection and a very high degree of capacitive and inductive isolation between the USB input and the AES/SPDIF digital audio output.
I guess what I’m not fully understanding is the use of two linear PSUs when a simple replacement would have kept it within spec. Anyway, if you are able to elaborate a bit, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
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this is a good one for @dB_Cooper to chime in on. but big picture, the internal power supply board in the Alpha USB is an AC to 9V DC power supply. and the 9V powers the digital board that performs the DDC function. part of the modification db_cooper made for me is to disconnect the internal AC to 9V DC power supply and run a DC barrel connector out to the back of the unit. This way I can directly supply from an external power supply the required 9V.
the way to think about my setup for the 9V supply is that i’m using the Uptone LPS 1.2 as the 9V supply. But the Uptone LPS 1.2 runs on a DC input, not AC input. You have to provide it a 7V to 24V DC supply. The unit comes with a basic switch-mode 7.5V power supply for this purpose. instead of using that switch-mode supply, i’m using a SGC LPS. So the chain looks like the following
AC Wall Outlet --120Vac–> SGC LPS --7.5Vdc–> Uptone LPS 1.2 --9.0Vdc–> Alpha USB
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Couldn’t have explained it better.
All I’ve done is remove the built in Alpha USB linear power supply and allowed the use of a much higher quality ps to power the digital side, or to use Berkley’s own documentation.
The AES/SPDIF digital audio output master clocks and line drivers are now powered by an external isolated power supply of your choosing.
I also use copper and emi/rfi shielding on portions of the case and beef up the lateral division between the USB in and the rest of the board with copper and shielding as well as use EMI/RFI paper over the USB input chip. Basically reduce stray noise where possible.
This sounds like voodoo but a lot of vendors use internal shielding like that. Ben at Mojo, Sonore does this to further separate their opticalRendu from their signatureRendu. I can’t say I noticed a night a dramatic difference but it did help and everything sounded more “correct” to me.
The one thing I did do on mine but it’s too messy and too potentially risky to do for others unless they’re as stupid as me. I filled the empty space over the AES/SPDIF clocking section with ceramic beads. I put a layer of thick ply plastic as a barrier and then filled it with the beads. The idea is to further dissipate vibrations. That added a lot of heft and took it another step.
I’d say that 85% of the improvement however is coming from the better power. It’s always about better power.
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