Product Description
The Perfected Technology Alpha DAC Reference Series 3P achieves a level of time domain coherence never available before in an audio D to A converter. The result is profound musical realism. Time domain incoherence erases subtle spatial and timbral audio information essential to the experience of live music. Perfected Technology goes beyond sounding excellent to simply sounding real.
Read Robert Harley’s comprehensive review of the Alpha DAC Reference Series 3P and the new Alpha USB Reference Series in the July/August 2025 issue of The Absolute Sound.
The Alpha DAC Reference Series 3P embodies everything we know about digital to analog conversion taken to a new level – a level that requires proprietary design concepts and components that combine to redefine the level of what is possible.
New proprietary RF waveguide isolation technology used in the Reference Series 3P produces unprecedented imaging precision, timbral purity and resolution. The result is an immediacy and presence of music reproduction that is simply real.
• Input sampling rate: 32kHz to 192kHz
• Ultra low phase noise Precision Clocking at 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz and 192kHz sampling rates ± 100 ppm
• Input word length: 24-bit
• Two channel analog stereo outputs: XLR balanced with pin 2 positive and RCA unbalanced
• Digital Inputs: AES – XLR, 110; SPDIF1 – BNC, 75; SPDIF2 – BNC, 75; TOSLINK – Toslink optical connector
• HDCD decoding detects 16-bit flag at 44.1kHz or 24-bit flag at all sampling rates
• MQA Rendering and multiple digital filter options
• Balanced analog output level: +18dBu (6.15Vrms) maximum,
+12dBu (3.1Vrms) or lower recommended
• Unbalanced analog output level: 3.25Vrms maximum, 2Vrms or lower recommended
• Digital volume & balance control: 0.1dB/step with .05dB/step L/R gain trim, 60dB range
• Frequency response at ≥ 88.2kHz sampling rates: ± 0.1dB from < 0.1Hz to 35 kHz,- 3dB at 59kHz for 176.4kHz and 192kHz sampling rates
• Distortion at recommended levels: all products ≤ -120dBFS
• THD+N at maximum level: < -110dBFS
• Firmware field upgradeable through signal inputs
• Enclosure dimensions: 3.5”H X 17.5” W x 12.5”D
• Weight: 30 lbs.
• Mains power: 100/120/240VAC, 50 /60Hz
• Power consumption: 25 W
“The Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC Reference Series 3 extends the Alpha DAC Reference’s status as the ne plus ultra in digital decoding, and will remain at the front end of my reference system….The Series 3’s deeper bass, wider dynamic expression, superior bottom-end articulation and textural resolution, and enhanced top-end openness are clearly major advances….With less accomplished DACs, it sounds as if a whole layer of very low-level information has gone missing.”
—Robert Harley, The Absolute Sound, October 2019
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The Alpha DAC Reference Series 3 receives 2020 SoundStage! Australia Outstanding Performance Award “The Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC Reference Series 3 takes the flag for the best DAC I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing… To the truest encapsulation of the word ‘Reference’, when it comes to the Alpha DAC Reference Series 3, I can but add one succinct word to celebrate its purest meaning: Triumph.”
—Edgar Kramer, Editor-in-Chief, Soundstage! Australia, December 2020
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