Berkeley Audio Design Announces The Alpha USB Asynchronous Interface

to this. How does BAD have your money? I was not aware that they sell direct? Do you mean that your dealer has your money? Believe me, dealers do not pay in advance for product. If you did pay your dealer, this should be between you and him, and has nothing to do with BAD, how this is dealt with by BAD is between the dealer and them.<br />

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If I were waiting for one of these, I would certainly be frustrated, but as Gordon alluded to, I would be happy that BAD is not taking the other path: a lot of manufacturers would go ahead and compromise the product to deliver it as scheduled if parts came in that did not meet their spec. Be glad that BAD is not making this kind of compromise.

Barrows, correct, a dealer has my money and I have no idea what the agreement is between them and BAD or how they prioritize shipping order etc. Of course I recognize the effort to "get it right" but honestly that is what I expect anyway so do not see it as a real bonus here.<br />

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Again, it's just really screwed up and I'm frustrated.

your frustration. Your beef should really be with the dealer then, they have your money. I have never heard of a dealer pre-paying a manufacturer for anything, in fact it is usually the opposite: manufacturers offering the dealers merchandise on terms.<br />

I would hope that your dealer will try and make you happy somehow on this.

I've ranted about this elsewhere, but in short, I agree. The situation is ... suboptimal. And while I do appreciate the enthusiastic optimism from Barrows & Gordon, this is still equivalent to putting "technical excellence" lipstick on a "logistical" pig.<br />

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As I've been advised many times since last year: if you can't wait, there are quite a few excellent alternatives out there.

You wait for it, and if you object to waiting, well, we don't care! There are 50 people who will eagerly hand over their cash to get the one you don't want hard enough. <br />

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It kinda sucks, but if you want the best stuff, you have to live with it, and be patient.<br />

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On the other hand, why in the world would you ever give a dealer more than around 10% of the price of an item to order it for you? Unless it is a very odd situation where they do pay in advance for it, all you are doing with a prepayment is putting a little skin in the game so they don't get stuck. <br />

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At least, that is the way I look at it. <br />

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In any case, you are really gonna love it when you get it. <br />

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-Paul<br />

From what I could tell when I inquired before ordering, the geographic regions for BAD's distributors/dealers is somewhat blurry. I have my order in with a dealer who put me in line, and said he expected them next month. I'm OK with waiting until next year if necessary, but I didn't prepay. You may want to ask for a refund, and place your order with another dealer who would charge you (assuming you used a credit card) upon shipping. I'd rather have it to spec and endure the wait myself.

No. My frustration is with BAD. My dealer gave me a timeline based on what he was told. Basically, they put him in a pretty bad position...repeatedly. I'm way cool with getting delayed but this is way above what is right. As for compensation...we all know there will be none from Berkeley although this particular dealer takes pretty good care of me historically.

Appreciate the validation Scot. I thought I may just be losing it there for a second! Well stated.

I have to admit I am a bit disappointed with the delivery time as I remember being told September of 2010 was the target date. I then relayed that to many people including here on CA. <br />

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However, the dealers I talk to have not put themselves in a bad position as they refuse to accept money for the Alpha USB until it's in the customer's hands. These guys work this way for all products. It's a far cleaner way of doing business for a dealer. <br />

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Latest re my 5/27 comment. From what I hear, having a Word Clock and/or SPDIF reclocked input may be no better than a properly implemented USB interface. Sometimes the exact opposite. A recent review in TAS of a DAC having these features proved this point explicitly. Several DACs in its price range beat it sonically.<br />

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We need to be careful, no matter how convincingly the HOPE and CHANGE, er, I meant, the HYPE, has been crafted.<br />

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Price is no indication of quality.<br />

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We lost the Cold War, the Russian chicks invaded the Hamptons and are gobbling up rich men, take their homes, and then divorce them. Sounds like the audio hobby.<br />

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Par for the course in the Land of the Free and the Brave.

I don't suppose anyone has received their Alpha USB yet? Is the official ship date still mid-to-late August?<br />

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I'm receiving my Alpha DAC in a few weeks and I've been trying to research the best way to connect my PC to the Alpha DAC. I was originally thinking of picking up a reclocking piece of equipment like the Brainstorm DCD-8 or Antelope OCX, but received a thoughtful PM recommending against going for a pro solution like that.<br />

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I'm now waiting to hear if people say the Alpha USB is definitely an improvement over the Wavelength, otherwise the Wavelength seems like the most economical way to go. It seems the consensus is that a USB-S/PDIF converter is superior to the Lynx AES16.

Can everybody here just chill? I am an audiophilleo owner who can honestly say that it achieves 98% perfection. What are you all going to do if the Alpha usb achieves 99.5% ? I am quite sure that all sins will be forgiven, besides you'll all be too busy cleaning your diapers from sheer joy...

Above. I have nothing to add to his comments, only that in some cases where USB has been implemented correctly, the SPDIF converter will not improve anything. Most of the time it should. I am not sure it will with, let's say, the Wyred4Sound DAC 2.<br />

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If anyone finds otherwise, pls let me know.<br />

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Otherwise, you're wasting your money that can be better spent on a $1000 a night hooker.<br />

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One more note: Audiophilleo publishes their impressive jitter specs. Alpha, as far as I know, does not.<br />

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And it is those jitter numbers you don't hear on the first. As it should be.<br />

I think you make a very good point re value vs pro USB converters and re-clockers. This is why I was very disappointed that the Absolute Sound review compared the BAD USB to PCI cards rather than other USB converters or DACs. It seemed like Harley had never used any other USB converter, but still felt qualified to do the review. He couldn't get a $200 V-Link, at a minimum? I'm looking forward to the Stereophile review. Hopefully it will have measurements and more meaningful comparissons.

Is there a good thread which discusses the various USB-S/PDIF devices on the market? I've read generally negative sentiment for the hiFace when paired with high-end gear, whereas comments on the V-Link, Wavelength, and INT 202 are generally positive.<br />

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I'm not going to bash the old horse other than to say that I agree that $1695 is a pretty questionable amount for something that was designed to convert USB to AES with as little electromagnetic interference from the PC as possible.<br />

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Heck, a lot of the pro reclockers do USB/Firewire to AES. Is there something that goes on with the pro reclocker that makes it less desirable to use as a converter than an Alpha USB or INT 202? The DCD-8, OCX, and Big Ben are all $400-700 cheaper, used or new. My assumption is that pro gear is supposed to be as neutral as possible, so if you have it properly powered and shielded, isn't a reclocker+converter solution just as good?

I started off in this hobby with a good old Hiface which in my opinion roughly falls in the league of a Marantz 8003 SACD player. It is not stellar but is a good introduction to setting up a computer for audio. Considering the price tag though one is blown away. I have it currently running in my secondary system in my study and although it is not in the same league as my Esoteric SA-10 also in the study, I thoroughly enjoy the sound which has a warmer quality to it than the Esoteric. I can unequivocally state though that the Audiophilleo is in a totally different league. I had the opportunity to do a head on between it and a Esoteric P-03 (note the price) and the P-03 was only marginally more defined at the edges. Since then I have equipped the Audiophilleo with a dedicated power supply from AQvox as well as a Nordost usb cable and each brought large improvements. The sound is unearthly.<br />

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It is good to step back a little and see what is happening here. CD players are a legacy architecture which incorporate mechanical and electronic components in one box. How can a mechanical solution ever have the precision (jitter wise) that a purely electronic one does?<br />

We are fortunate that we are living in an age where that notion and architecture is being challenged. As such traditional values fly out the window.<br />

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Back to Berkeley... What strikes me upon opening the Alpha dac is the absence of silver and unobtainium. The results are purely achieved by a superior mind dedicating itself to the design problem at hand. I don't think there is anybody better placed to understand how to particularly feed the Alpha dac than Berkeley themselves. The key here is that the Alpha dac obtains its clock from a PLL of the incoming signal. That says that low incoming jitter is the most crucial of all elements. I think Berkeley have done everything in the power of their minds to achieve this and they do have truly talented minds.<br />

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Now wouldn't it be a pity if that effort was spoilt by a substandard component from a supplier? One needs to understand that we are trying to redefine what digital is capable of (no joke). I think that having equipment like this in one's own house is a great privilege that goes beyond the buying price - as I stated above architecture has redefined the the concept of relative value.<br />

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It is this notion rather than only that of Berkeley being perfectionist that has forced them to delay shipping of the Alpha usb.

That's a very insightful post and there's nothing there I disagree with. This is the reason I've come to CA over the other audio communities for this particular issue, as like most here, I've boxed away my vinyl and CDs for a purely PC-based setup. I do miss the vinyl sound, but for CD, I'm fine with trading off a slight deterioration in quality (that you'd get with something like SDR-4000) for the convenience of my hierarchical library. I know it's not a new subject here by any means, but it really does seem like the old guard (who have difficulty just managing their email) are having difficulty adapting to the new reality.<br />

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I have a great deal of faith in the Berkeley team which is why I ordered the Alpha DAC without demoing the unit, and decided to go with the Alpha DAC over the Weiss 202 (which professional reviewers seem to prefer, but is more of a toss-up among consumers). I think they definitely know what they're doing, such as their reason why they didn't include a USB transport on the Alpha DAC.<br />

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The part I'm struggling with is whether there are good alternatives, and unfortunately there just doesn't seem to be a lot of even subjective experience to reference. Among the pro crowd, I read a lot of positive comments about using a reclocker as a converter, but I don't have a good idea of what they're listening for vs. what a consumer is listening for. In terms of both subjective listening and engineering, how does using a DCD-8 or OCX as a converter differ from an Audiophilleo or V-Link? I have the same reservations about Harley's review, as what I'm interested in reading are comparisons (subjective and/or objective), not sample sizes of 1.<br />

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Also, how would it sound (or even function) creating a loop between:<br />

PC firewire output -> DCD-8 (into Alpha DAC) (is it possible to word clock sync the PC to the DCD-8 directly? how do you do that?)<br />

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PC -> Lynx AES16 (word clock synced and AES connected to the DCD-8) -> DCD-8 (into Alpha DAC)<br />

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I sent a PM to jonmarsh who seems to have a DCD-8 working in his Alpha DAC setup, so hopefully he responds; it'll be interesting to hear his experiences and opinions.

To me it makes little sense to consider buying a limited interface just capable of 24/96, when your DAC performs up to 24/192 and if you have 24/176.4 and 24/192 music.<br />

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There are enough superb 24/192 digital interfaces available for me to declare 24/96 digital interfaces to be obsolete.

This is really quite simple. The pro devices you list are not asynchronous, for starters. They use PLL technology to do the "re-clocking" and as such are still affected by the timing errors on the incoming data stream. Additionally, pro devices operate in world where jitter levels are generally measured in thousands of pS. Most pro devices are very happy to state jitter levels below 1 nS (1000 pS). Audiophile products are built to much higher standards, with the best asynchronous USB converters achieving jitter levels 10 times lower than the pro devices.<br />

If you do not understand how true asynchronous operation is an advantage, I would suggest you go to ayre.com, and read some of the information available there regarding asynchronous USB and jitter (Ayre also uses the Streamlength Async USB approach developed by Wavelength Audio)-there is some very easy to comprehend writing there that explains it really well. <br />

Pro devices generally cost less for three reasons: <br />

1. They are built in higher quantities for a broader market, as such they can take advantage of better economy of scale.<br />

2. Audiophile products have higher margins, as they are sold in less units, so more profit must be made per unit to stay in business.<br />

3. Audiophile products are generally built to a higher standard, and feature more sophisticated deign, especially in terms of power supplies. Audiophile companies may choose to include parts (clocks for example) which cost ten times more than the parts used in something like a Big Ben.<br />

Since you have an Alpha, you need a really good USB-SPDIF converter. It is pretty well known which ones are good. I expect that the BAD USB-SPDIF will be very good, as it uses the proven Streamlength Async USB code developed by Wavelength Audio, combined with the attention to detail and digital design expertise of the BAD design team.

Different people have different ideas on this subject. If there is one thing I have become convinced of in this hobby it is that specs as well as listening are necessary to draw a proper conclusion. Often one's ears lie or alternatively the specs do not fully describe all the variables (some of which the computer audiophile community are only starting to appreciate now). I am certain that we will have more of both quite soon.<br />

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Regarding the digital signal there are a lot of factors involved. People like DCS actually dither their clock signal as it allows better recovery by the PLL. Rise time of the signal ideally should be as low as possible to mitigate the effects of signal reflection in the digital cable. This however can present recovery problems for the receiver circuit. Some usb-spdif converters break the spec as regards output voltage. What is optimal? In regards of the Alpha Dac Berkeley are best positioned to appreciate what is required and fortunately they can thus focus their implementation here. This comes down to a holistic architectural view of the problem rather than aiming for a single figure.<br />

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Given the pedigree of Berkeley I think the result should be outstanding. These guys are not a silver in a box mickey-mouse outfit.