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Article: Berkeley Audio Design Alpha USB Review


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Chris, thanks for your review. A nice read, as always. The downside is no real comparision to the COMPETING products.<br />

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By competing I mean dCS U-Clock, Diverter HD and the Off-Ramp Turbo 4 (soon to be superceded by Turbo 5).<br />

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I have already read a review where prefered someone preffered the (cheaper) Off Ramp Turbo 4 to Alpha USB ...

Adam

 

PC: custom Roon server with Pink Faun Ultra OCXO USB card

Digital: Lampizator Horizon DAC

Amp: Dan D'Agostino Momentum Stereo

Speakers: Magcio M3

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Mark,<br />

<br />

I think that was a wise choice. dCS gear can be upgraded almost to no end. The main board is a bunch of FPGAs and DSP chips, that can be reprogrammed to acomodate any future formats, digital filters, interfaces etc. That gives you a certain peace of mind in terms of future proofnes that others produccts lack.<br />

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In fact Debussy main processing board is exactly the same board that is used in Scaratti. Since Scarlatti launch in 2007, they had no problems in reprogramming it to include asymetrical (apodising) digital filters, to accept 24/192 input signals on all inputs, to perform DSD upsampling (on the same board, in Puccini), to add USB interface (in Debussy), and most recently - to accept DSD over USB. All on the same board !<br />

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The old board from Elgar was used for 11 years, and was only discontinued because some chips they were using become unavailable (those chips were not ROHS compliant and manufacturers of those chips, instead of designing a new ROHS compliant version of those chips, discontinued them). That board was also reprogrammed many times - first to accept 24/192 signals on Dual AES, then DSD over FireWire and also asymetric digital filter for 192 signal (that was around 1999, when their upsampler came out; BTW - dCS, not Meridian was the first company to implement asymetrical digital filters, although that fact is very often forgoten, since it was the Meridian who made the whole fuss about this type of filter in 2009 - some 10 years later !).<br />

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Anyway, getting the dCS stuff, you are subscribing to a certain upgrade program, that noone in the industry is offering.

Adam

 

PC: custom Roon server with Pink Faun Ultra OCXO USB card

Digital: Lampizator Horizon DAC

Amp: Dan D'Agostino Momentum Stereo

Speakers: Magcio M3

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