Should I really, really buy a Berkeley Reference DAC...Testify!

If you care about what your music sound like, and you have the cash, do it. Life is short and not many pleasures money can buy for you.  If you like the DAC you have, the new one will blow your mind.  Just do it.  Its almost Christmas.  Enjoy!  

There are a lot of great and cheaper DAC's that you can buy now a day.  DAC technology has evolved so much over time that the sonic difference among the high-end ones becomes subtle at best.  One thing that I learned being in this hobby for over 20 years is that price and performance do not go hand in hand.  Hifi is one of the hobbies where the law of diminishing return clearly applies.

I have a Modwright Elyse DAC which I love.  I also compared Mojo against Chord Dave, two DAC's from the same company albeit a large price gap.  To my ears, the difference between Mojo and DAVE are subtle.  A few other people have expressed the same opinion.  I mentioned this on Head Fi DAVE forum and almost was eaten alive by most of the members there! That forum is the most biased one that I have ever come across.  Don't post anything there unless your conclusion is DAVE is the supreme DAC!  Even the people who have never done an A/B comparison between Mojo and DAVE came out  to defend DAVE vigorously. There is one particular Head Fi member whom I think is secretly either getting paid or getting a kick back from Chord since all of his posts are about how DAVE is the best DAC that has ever been made.

Good DACs were hard to find in the 80's and even the 90s....but in 2016 do I dare say that digital conversion is still a challenge? 

I would not buy any uber expensive dac before first trying other highly regarded products that cost less first.  Take you pick.  There are many very good ones out there these days.    It's increasingly becoming the norm not the exception.  

I've never heard the Berk Ref DAC but I do wonder why I see them up for sale so often considering how new they are.

I'm a Meitner/EMM Labs man myself and would step up to the MA-1 as gateway drug option from where you are now before going whole hog on ANY $15k DAC

These days, I just don't see the point spending that kind of scratch on a DAC. These things go the way of the dodo Bird within a year kind of like dropping $5-8K on a new flavor of the month Flat Screen TV. Within a 6mo to a year that same TV will be 1/2 it's current price.

Just my 2cents

+1 for Erik's post.
I own the Schiit Bifrost and Modi Multibit DAC's and couldn't be happier.

Um, listen to the latest from Mytek, Schiit and Ayre. I think they are going to be far less expensive, and you might like them more, or at least, not tell a difference, than the "reference."

But to your own ears and wallet be true.