DacBuyer

I am not familiar with the items you list, but I don't recognise a preamp. In theory you don't need one with the Berkeley DAC, as it has remote controlled digital source switching and control of volume built in. This has proved a useful fallback while my preamp is away for servicing. However, I have quickly learned that doing without the preamp is not a permanent fix. Getting the volume level exactly right is a big contributor to realism, and it is much easier to set the preamp, a Mark Levinson model, to a desired volume level than the Berkeley DAC. I shall certainly reinstate the preamp when it returns.

My Berkeley Alpha DAC is fed by a Mac Mini, and also by a Humax satellite tv decoder. The Humax is an entirely unrecommendable heap of junk, getting wrong things that Tivo got right a decade ago. One of its foibles is that whenever it receives a high definition broadcast, it outputs DAC Dolby 5.1 sound that the DAC can't make any sense of. Though there is a menu option that appears to defeat the Dolby 5.1, it doesn't appear to do anything. Can anyone recommend a small box that takes SPDIF signals and passes 2.0 audio through unchanged, but mixes 5.1 audio back down to 2.0? Alternatively, might there be software that would allow the Mac to do this conversion on the fly?

Your Mac mini has an optical output and will connect directly to a Berkeley Alpha. It will support sample rates up to 24/96. This is the arrangement I use. If you want to enjoy higher resolution audio than that, then you will need a USB interface or some other means of connecting the Apple to the DAC. But if your motive is that you've read that USB or AES is a better interface than Toslink optical, and you merely want to listen to ordinary CD resolution music, then I'd urge you to do nothing until you've listened to your Berkeley with an optical connection for a number of weeks. I've listened to several devices in my system with a variety of connections and find that the Berkeley is the most satisfying of them. Though there are many suggestions in this forum that the sound quality is strongly correlated with the connection method, it is my experience that this idea is grounded in theory rather than what I actually hear.

On the strength of this evidence, you should renew your subscription to Revue du Son. Its findings are what I heard when I had the Ayre in my system. I'm astonished at the Stereophile choice for product of the year.

"Player" in both cases was a Mac Mini, as already explained, using vanilla iTunes. Both DACs were listened to for many hours using ripped CDs encoded as Apple Lossless files. The 176/24 DVD was listened to fleetingly on the Berkeley only and no comparative conclusion was drawn from it.

USB to Ayre, optical out to Berkeley using unremarkable cables in each case. <br /> <br /> The Berkeley comes with a disk of 172/24 samples. The Mac can't run at more than 96/24, and so no doubt does some interpolation of its own when it outputs these recordings at that setting. Even so, they sound better than I've ever heard anywhere, so I'd love to here them unmolested.

I have now in my system an Ayre QB-9 and a Berkeley Alpha DAC, driven by the same Mac Mini. <br /> <br /> As the review says, "there is no such thing as an Ayre Acoustics all-out-assault DAC for $2500... the Alpha DAC had a very deep transparent soundstage, and much larger price tag, that the QB-9 just couldn't match. There was no hearing all the way to the back of the hall during an orchestral performance with the QB-9, but one can't have it all without paying for it.". <br /> <br /> Even non-audiophile friends found the Berkeley held their attention in a way that the Ayre doesn't come close to. <br /> <br /> Rest of system is Wilson Watt 8, Krell FPB monoblocks, Levinson preamp. At that level, the price difference between these devices is insignificant.