December 2015
Hi Folks,
We have made a lot of improvements in the ‘WEB’ based ‘Manic Moose’ interface which comes pre-installed on the Bryston BDP Digital Players.
Please see the attached – my thanks to Gary for putting this together.
James Tanner
Rarely do all people agree on the quality of a particular user interface. Reference the great Windows vs. Macintosh debate for an excellent example.
Of the many features that set audiophile music players apart are the equal number of unique user interfaces that are designed for each player. Most players require a proprietary interface designed along with the hardware. Regardless of the merits the hardware brings, many players live or die by how well you relate to their user interface.
Though there are certainly some universally accepted standards included in everyone's definition of a quality UI (such as stability and speed), most people judge UI quality in terms of intuitiveness, attractiveness, and feature access. Each of these criteria can only be judged by an individual.
When Bryston designed Manic Moose, we knew we wanted to stick with a web-based UI.
Everybody who's a potential BDP owner has devices with web browsers ranging from desktops computers, laptops, iOS, Windows, and Android portables. By having a web based UI, we avoided a serious pitfall—
requiring a user to purchase a device to control the BDP. Furthermore, we avoided the ever changing whim of operating system programmers which often requires re-writes of programs with every major OS revision.
Bryston's BDP lets you use whatever device you're already comfortable with to control it.
We spent over a year developing the new UI for Manic Moose before we ever released beta versions into the wild, and have been making continuous improvements since it's introduction in 2014 based not only on our own usage patterns but the copious detailed feedback obtained from our customers on forums, phone calls, e-mails and customer support sessions. At this point, we are very proud of Manic Moose and its ease of use, feature set, stability, and more.
Yet, some people never warmed up to it just like others haven't warmed up to the software provided by any number of other audiophile companies. A huge advantage of Bryston BDP players which may well be unique to us is that you can use a vast array of other third party software to control your BDP by selectively enabling options in the Services menu. Many of these options may already be familiar to you.
In the BDP's default configuration of using MPD as the audio engine, you can use the excellent mPaD and mPoD apps for iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch respectively. Many BDP users have been using these since the early days of the BDP-1 at the end of the last decade and have enjoyed their units immensely.
Android offers many different MPD clients as well. Perhaps the best of them is MPDroid. A new player for Windows computers and handhelds is called Chimney. It is a beautiful player with superb usability. You can also configure the BDP to be used with the DLNA standard. The UPnP and DLNA universe is full of great control options. The BDP can independently act as a DLNA client, server and renderer meaning that whether you host your music library on a DLNA enabled NAS or even via locally connected hard drive, you can use software such as BubbleUPnP available on Android to play back your music. This app for Android is particuarly excellent in that it is intuitive, stable, and is feature rich.
Those of us who began our digital audio involvement with the early days of Squeezebox will be glad to see that the BDP can be configured as a Squeezebox emulator meaning that if you run Logitech Media Server (a free software) on your computer, you can use a variety of available Squeezebox control apps available on nearly all common operating systems.
If you remain steeped in the Apple Macintosh universe, you can even setup the BDP as an Airplay target using the "Shairplay" service. Doing so allows you to use the Apple Remote app, or even to stream audio directly from iOS devices to the BDP.
DLNA and Squeezebox can both play bit perfect high resolution audio, and Shairplay through a BDP still sounds better than an Apple TV or Airport Express.
As digital audio playback matures, we are all learning that music downloads are so much more than CD replacements. As our virtual libraries expand, we require user interfaces that match our individual ideals of easy and enjoyable. Though the BDP's built in Manic Moose UI has proven popular in the nearly 2 years since release, those who find it less than appealing should enjoy the excellent variety of other control options available.
Gary Dayton
Product Specialist
Bryston Ltd.
