Is berkeley dac as good as absolute sound review?

I have it and love it and the review is very accurate. It really does it right. I have an Esoteric X03SE and using it as a transport into the berkeley for HDCD is a revelation. I don't think the review mentioned how well an HDCD encoder it is.

And, the review is spot on when it says you really have to feed the berkeley hi res signals to hear what it does. True 24 bit sounds spectacular. Check one out. Used up for $3,500 or so. Can't lose.

As I said earlier, I have a Berkeley as well as an Esoteric X03 SE. Interestingly, my computer where my squeezebox server resides experienced some toasted ram to go with a toasted cpu when I installed the Juli@ so I have been listening to the Esoteric and very well recorded redbook CD's for the past two weeks. The server is back up and running so I listened to the Berkeley yesterday for the first time since. While I had always felt that the Berkeley and Esoteric sounded different (giving the edge to the esoteric on dynamics),I noticed yesterday that the Berkeley sounds very unike digital. It takes you into this deep, tall, wide, full of music soundstage with absolutely no glare, harshness, coldness. There is an incredible attachment to the music. It becomes a presentation. Obviously sources and the rest of the system matters and it is not cheap but you all need to listen to one to see what the fuss is about. And then there's hi res music...

I have heard the DCS Puccinni, though in a much better system than mine so I cannot make a compariosn. It was (and still is) the best system I have ever heard. The Puccinni chiseled out a detailed, refined 3d (3D!) soundstage that had to be heard to be believed.