From: Paul
Sent: August-16-11 5:33 AM
To: Bryston - James Tanner
Subject: Bryston BDP-1, BDA-1
Hi James,
I see you facilitate the Bryston forum on AudioCircles – apologies for not posting there but I presume you can’t post without registering (I have no objection if you wish to post this there for the benefit of others).
I live in Hong Kong and have had Bryston kit (BP-26 pre, SST2-4B power amp and BDA-1 DAC) since Jan 2010 - I am very happy with it. I had a Musical Fidelity A5 CD player but opted for convenience and ripped all my CDs to a NAS. I found wireless gave me dropouts, so the NAS is now wired to my router, as is a Sonos ZP80 connected to my DAC. I am interested in the BDP1 for its quality, but until recently Bryston had no Internet radio which was a deal-breaker for me (I don’t have the room to keep a Sonos or Squeezebox as well, just for radio).
Unfortunately the info on Bryston’s web site and forum seems contradictory and most is only available *after* you own a BDP1. Could you answer a few simple questions to help me decide, please?
1) Will the BDP1 work with a NAS?
2) I have ripped my CDs in Apple Lossless format - do I have to convert them to FLAC to use the BDP1?
3) Does an external USB HDD need to be formatted in FAT32 to work with the BDP1? (you say the latest f.w. can read/write NTFS, but elsewhere you said FAT32 is required for something).
4) I plan to use my iPod (Touch, 3rd Generation) & iPad (original) as remotes – what’s the best software? A desktop solution would be useful occasionally (I have a PC with IE9 and I can’t get along with Chrome or Firefox – should I use Gnome?).
5) You say the latest f.w. includes 16 Internet radio stations (probably enough – I mostly listen to Radio Paradise lately) but on one of your posts you mentioned a guy had found a way to listen to any station – ring any bells?
Sorry if it’s a long list.
Regards and thanks in advance,
Paul
Hi Paul,
1. Currently No – we have tried the NAS route and prefer a hard connection with attached USB drives. The BDP-1 is a NAS so you can copy files to the attached drives over your network if you wish. We are looking at providing a USB docking bay that would take plug in SATA drives and cosmetically match the BDP-1 going forward.
2. No problem the BDP-1 will play Apple Lossless but we recommend FLAC because it is an open system and no one owns the rights to it. It also works great with Album art etc.
3. The BDP-1 can read FAT32 or NTSF it was just it could not write to NTSF until recently – new software
4. Yes download MPOD and MPAD from the Apple APP store – MPOD is free and works on iTouch and iPad and MPAD is $2.98 and is a superb program. There are also 2 Bryston interfaces built into the BDP-1 software called MINI and MAX that you can use on any computer that sees a web browser. GNOME is great and does not need a browser to work – it connects directly to the BDP-1 over the network.
5. Yes we have selected a variety of high quality radio stations that are preloaded – Radio Paradise is one. Yes in GNOME you can save a station using the URL to a playlist. We are also looking at expanding that feature going forward so you can connect to Shoutcast.
Hope this helps Paul.
james