[spinner]

 Love my BCD1 (as you all know due to my spare parts anxiety). If I get me a BDA would there be a significant improvement overall (due to the twin Crystal dacs ).I always thought that going to the outboard dac idea was to risk greater jitter compared to keeping everything in a single chassis. Do I need to be concerned with the Bryston combo? Thanks for any opinions . :

[SHV]

I have Lead ears , so  I wouldn't hear any difference.  A real advantage of my BDA, however, is that multiple digital sources can be attached and selected using a Harmony remote.

Steve

[alexone]

Spinner,

the BDA-1 reclocks and resamples the incoming digital signal. the jitter (if any) is nothing to worry about.

is there a chance for a comparison for you?

al.

[spinner]

 I could try an A/B at my dealer.  Thanks.

[redbook]

   As I understand it by going outboard could raise a jitter issue with the choice transferring cable used. Maybe this varies whether it's coax or XLR or fiber optic. Could be wrong but that is what I was informed of .

[OgOgilby]

IMHO, to achieve significant improvement over the BCD-1 you would need to get the BDA-1 and the BDP-1.

-Greg

[Sasha]

Love my BCD1 (as you all know due to my spare parts anxiety). If I get me a BDA would there be a significant improvement overall (due to the twin Crystal dacs ).I always thought that going to the outboard dac idea was to risk greater jitter compared to keeping everything in a single chassis. Do I need to be concerned with the Bryston combo? Thanks for any opinions . :

You are correct in your thoughts about higher jitter with an outboard DAC, and there is no such thing as jitter elimination with re-sampling and re-clocking techniques, they can attenuate jitter somewhat but never remove it. Claims at jitter removal come from poor ears or marketing spin.
 Having said that, any difference you hear between BCD-1 analog output and its digital output feeding BDA-1 that in turn provides analog signal will not give you an insight into the impact of jitter because you will also hear the difference in DAC chips, filters, analog sections, etc.
I did a proper comparison a while back and it was clear that any digital transport introduced jitter that was audible, and that single box top tier CD player was better than top tier digital transport sending signal to the same CD player on its digital input.
The difference however was not significant and I did stay with digital transport and DAC (BDA-1 in my case) due to its convenience (which will be dropped soon since I will be using digital cross-over in active speakers).
If you want to leave the world of spinners behind, BDP-1 with BDA-1 would provide very good performance and you can rest assured that you would not miss BCD-1.

[spinner]

 Thanks for that great reply. The thing is I don't want to leave the idea of " putting on a record" thing. Call me old fashioned but I love having a tangible product in my hand and liner notes to read. "Redbook" has come so far in sound quality (imo) and the fact that I have some terrific recordings leaves me the need to max out the cd player idea and to keep that going as long as possible...hence my consant bugging of James Tanner for parts   LOL. Any way ,thanks for your response on this

[Sasha]

Thanks for that great reply. The thing is I don't want to leave the idea of " putting on a record" thing. Call me old fashioned but I love having a tangible product in my hand and liner notes to read. "Redbook" has come so far in sound quality (imo) and the fact that I have some terrific recordings leaves me the need to max out the cd player idea and to keep that going as long as possible...hence my consant bugging of James Tanner for parts   LOL. Any way ,thanks for your response on this

Ok, but keep in mind that you will not realize full performance potential with BCD-1 into BDA-1, the ticket here is BDP-1 and ripping all those wonderful recordings from CDs you have.
And if you want to be anal about it, CDs do go bad in time, I have seen many of my CDs develop unreadable sectors over a very short period of time what was evident no some much during playback (no such loss that would cause skipping) but during ripping. In some cases even high quality, brand new out of the sleeve CDs could not be read 100% error free in single pass, what certainly means trouble during playback in CD player when you have to rely on poor real time error correction. In many such instances these errors are more detrimental that jitter introduced by digital transport. I still think you should have a hard look at BDP-1/BDA-1, otherwise why bother with BDA-1 being fed from BCD-1, I kind of do not see how it can be beneficial unless you are satisfied with BDA-1 performance on its own no matter what is feeding it (you like its sound signature).

[robb]

Redbook

Did you find out which digital cable type was the better for sound?  Or was there any difference?

rob

[Diamond Dog]

I could try an A/B at my dealer.  Thanks.

Tremendous idea, Spinner. I'd love to hear your impressions after you do that.

D.D.

[alexone]

hi, Sasha!

jitter can have indeed an audible impact. according to the BDA-1's manual it is negligible. the brochure of the BDA-1 says that jitter is below the measurement capability of the AP 2700 analyzer...
that's why i thought that in the case of the BDA-1 jitter is something that Spinner shouldn't worry about?!?

al.

[spinner]

  Very good food for thought. So far even my oldest records show no signs of decay . My earliest is a cd from 1986(Narada label) Perhaps the way discs are stored and handled play a role as well. Remember how we need to keep LPs away from excess heat and to handle them by the edges. Well made cds should last if treated right providing there good to start with. I have had only one that skipped out of the box. Not a bad score considering the number in the collection. I will look into the ripping idea but I would miss" spinning the record "  LOL. I have to say that my first spinning experience dates back to a few 78s on a windup gramaphone (mother's circa 1958)) so you may see my point of view about having a record player. The bcd-1 is kind of my " Linn Sondeck" digitally speaking. I will seriously consider the computer options as well ...Thanks for your reply on this ..

[Sasha]

hi, Sasha!

jitter can have indeed an audible impact. according to the BDA-1's manual it is negligible. the brochure of the BDA-1 says that jitter is below the measurement capability of the AP 2700 analyzer...
that's why i thought that in the case of the BDA-1 jitter is something that Spinner shouldn't worry about?!?

al.

If it was true, why would you hear difference between different digital inputs? They all go though the same “jitter removal” stage in BDA-1, why is then AES/EBU preferred over Toslink or USB?

[redbook]

 Good question but I found that my local dealer prefers the XLR from cd to Bda. There must be something to it.

[alexone]

hi, Sasha!

please take a look at this comment from James:


Because you do not know what signal is coming in your have to re-clock and re-sample so you can deal with it in the way you wish.

james


...and i agree that jitter can't be removed.
i guess i should have said it clearer

best,

al.