Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC Owners?

I don't know of any way that I can listen to this unit in my system - there are only 7 listed dealers, and not a single one in my quadrant of the country - so like the originator of this thread I have been trying to find out whether this unit compares favorably on redbook to good, standalone players.

Has anyone done direct comparisons between this unit and highly regarded standalone players on redbook in their systems? I have searched widely and read reviews but there aren't many of these types of comparisons.

I ask about direct and specific comparisons because I had a recent experience with another very highly regarded and very well reviewed DAC which sounded good in the abstract, but when compared directly with an Ayre CD player in the same system at the same time it wasn't even remotely in the same league.

If this DAC is comparable to an Ayre (for example) on redbook in a direct comparison, then it is a perfect solution for the system I am about to build. If it isn't, then it makes no sense for me to sacrifice redbook quality on all the disks I own in exchange for the "next gen" features of this unit.

Thanks for the response.

I have seen some of Jeff Fritz's comments, but they are mainly focused on the fact that 24-bit/176.4kHz, etc., resolutions are far superior to redbook, and that the Minerva and Alpha One give you access to these resolutions, whereas standalone CD players don't.

I have seen his comment about the ARC CD7 vs. the Minerva but I was hopeful of something that was a bit more substantive. I'm not slighting Jeff here at all - I respect him as a reviewer - but it seems clear from his review that he didn't have the CD7 on hand for comparison when he made his comments (he was moving from a different, inferior DAC to the Minerva), and the CD7 isn't even an ARC current model.

Because aural memories are inherently unreliable, for people like me who are making an "in lieu of" instead of an "in addition to" purchasing decision between CD players and the Alpha One DAC, it would be great to find someone who has done a real time, side by side comparison of their redbook performances.

You are correct, of course, that some of the newer CD players have digital ins...which leads to the opposite problem with respect to reviews - namely that the CD player reviews that I have seen focus on the "disk in the drawer" formats applicable to that specific player, and have only a few offhand comments regarding the digital in. I haven't seen much comparison at all of the "high resolution" sound achieved by using the digital ins on a given CD player vs. a given DAC.

In reviews, I hope we are moving toward the consideration of the relative sound quality of all of the formats that a player/DAC can handle, much like reviews used to (and sometimes still do) focus on both a player's redbook and SACD performance.

With respect to my current purchasing decision, I'm kind of looking for someone to say "I had a [high end CD player] in my home system, and I got a [high end DAC], and I listened to them side by side in my home system for a week and concluded that the DAC clearly bested my CD player on redbook performance."

Having not seen this in any review so far, I am reluctantly reaching the conclusion that while a DAC would be nice to have for the higher resolution stuff, DAC rebook performance is inferior to comparably priced standalone CD players. That is consistent with the conclusion that I reached in my own side by side test, but for cost and convenience sake I sure wish it was otherwise.