Is berkeley dac as good as absolute sound review?

If you don't find it meaningful, than don't - but it is meaningful to me since buying something has meaning to me, especially when I have the opportunity to buy anything and from that I choose to buy something in particular. Perhaps reviewers function differently, but I doubt it. Unless they are buying at a discount to sell at a profit, but I suspect that is not their motive, no, they may actually like the piece of gear, and happy to have gotten a good price on it, or they could just buy it used on Audiogon. I do agree though, that if he paid $10 for a $5000 DAC it might questionable, but I suspect they are getting a wholesale price, nice savings, but not a giveaway either.

I respect your opinions. Fair enough.

So, how many actually own the Berkeley and how does it compare with the
likes of DCS, Esoteric, and EMM Labs? Are these the top brands today? Do they
really distance themselves from what seems like a really well regarded effort
by Bryston on the player and DAC fronts? They do hit a much more
reasonable price point. I would love to put it up against my EMM Labs player.
By the way, to this day I really regret selling my Audio Logic 24XL (I think that
was the model) that unit is a bit old today, but I thought it was a very nice
sounding DAC and not really sure things got better since then. I would surely
recommend it if you can find one used - of course, no USB input.

I know of two A'gon members who tried the Berkeley and Bryston in their own systems and while they found the Berkeley was better they couldn't justtify spending the extra cash for the extra performance and purchased the Bryston. Now, how much does the extra price represents to them, I don't know. Maybe it's 10% of what they save in a month, or maybe it's 6 months savings...very different picture. Yet these were two real world decisions after A/Bing.

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.