I've not heard the Berkeley but the I have replaced the Bryston dac with the perfect wave 2 and its quite a nice improvement. The direct to the amp feature works great and in my system sounds a little better than my preamp unfortunately I need a preamp for vinyl duties. There are a few direct comparisons to the Berkeley vs PW DAC2 I've read and it seems that most marginally prefer the Berkeley DAC.
Berkeley dac2/Alpha USB vs ps audio perfect wave ?
I want to try going without a preamp but want to have very good quality dac sound to make it a fair right (I will demo vs the existing preamp before I pull it out ). I've kinda narrowed this down to these two set ups based on reviews , features, and ease of resale if I change my mind. Perfect wave is about half the total cost if you pick it up on Audiogon. Both Computeraudiohile and absolute sound raved about Berkeley, and both gave very good reviews to the perfect wave 2 but without comparing it directly to Berkeley .
(I already have the Berkeley USB but I know I could resell easily so im not locked into that choice ).