The Alpha Dac Series 2
The Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC is perhaps the finest and most versatile DAC available at any price in the high-end marketplace today. If you are considering the purchase of an outboard Digital to Analog Converter, the Alpha DAC should be at the top of your list!
“I’ll have a lot more to say about this extraordinary new product in my review next issue, but for now you should know that Berkeley’s Alpha DAC Reference redefines what we can expect from digital playback. The Reference is simply stunning in its ability to render instruments as real-sounding objects in three-dimensional space. This startling -and I mean startling- quality is made possible not just by the Reference’s spatial precision, but also by the timbral vividness and extraordinarily high resolution of the tiniest micro-details. What’s more, the Reference performs this magic trick on all instruments simultaneously, even in the most dense and complex passages. This unprecedented (for digital) quality allowed me to easily follow individual musical lines in a way I never thought possible from digital. The build-quality is many steps up from the original Alpha DAC, including a chassis milled from a solid aluminum block. The Alpha DAC Reference is an unqualified triumph. (Review forthcoming)
– Comment by Robert Harley on the 2014 Golden Ear Award the Alpha DAC Reference Series received in the September 2014 issue of The Absolute Sound
Product Highlights
- Highest audio quality DAC
- All distortion products below one part per million
- Unequalled interpolation technology up-samples 44.1kHz CD’s to almost 176.4kHz quality and provides superb fidelity at all sampling rates from 32kHz to 192kHz
- IR remote control of all functions including volume and balance allows direct connection to power amplifiers
Controls & Indicators
- Input selects AES, SPDIF, Toslink or BADA inputs
- Lock LED indicates input signal lock
- HDCD LED indicates HDCD code detected
- Phase sets absolute phase
- Invert LED indicates absolute phase inverted
Specifications
- Input sampling rate: 32kHz to 192kHz
- Input word length: 24-bit
- Two channel analog stereo outputs: XLR balanced and RCA unbalanced
- Digital Inputs: AES – Single XLR 110Ω, SPDIF – BNC 75Ω, Toslink – Optical, BADA encrypted – RJ-45
- HDCD decoding detects 16-bit flag at 44.1kHz or 24-bit flag at all sampling rates