[drummermitchell]

Can't seem to find it here,
would like to know about if you take a redbook cd and download it into your computer,
and say put it on a thumb drive and then thru the BDP-1,will the sound be way more superior musically or
will it sound the same as the original cd.I do use my BCD-1 which I like alot,thanks.

[headshrinker2]

drummermitchell
At least in my mind, this is one of the basic questions that I think tons of folks will be wondering as they contemplate a new source purchase. 

I would imagine the answer would depend highly on the quality of one's CDP and/or DAC.  If one were to isolate the BDP-1 as "transport" and keep the DAC the same, then I suppose the question might be:

BCD-1/BDA-1 vs
BDP-1/BDA-1

As folks know from my recent posts, I feel specific questions and comparisons like these would both help the potential customer.. and potentially lead to more sales of the BDP-1!  Reviewer comments that it "sounds really great" don't really get us where we need to be.  Hopefully a customer won't have to "buy and try" a 2K item to get the answer.   

Can't seem to find it here,
would like to know about if you take a redbook cd and download it into your computer,
and say put it on a thumb drive and then thru the BDP-1,will the sound be way more superior musically or
will it sound the same as the original cd.I do use my BCD-1 which I like alot,thanks.

[drummermitchell]

I do have the BDA-1(future proofing early),
now I'm trying to find out if a downloaded cd on a thumbdrive sounds far better on  the BDP-1 than the cd thru my BCD-1.

[DaveNote]

Hi drummermitchell: I can't compare the performance of the BDP playing red book files versus a CD played on a BCD. I have a good CD transport (it has no DAC - I have a BDA) and I believe the sound of the BDP playing red book files is much better than listening to CDs directly. In fact, one of my pet peeves is that the BDP has been promoted primarily as a player for hi rez files. It certainly can do that, but since the market for hi rez is not even close to prime time (too few titles, etc.), one of the greatest features of the BDP1 has been overlooked or understated. It is a great red book file player. In fact, that should be the prime reason for buying one, IMO, with its hi rez capabilities being frosting on the cake.

Dave

[drummermitchell]

Sounds like it's gonna be an early Christmas again and again.
Besides the mega convenience and everything else I read,even if she opens the door partway to halfway(musically),
more than the cd,then it should be a no brainer,think I'll buy the wifey something too , ,
                                                    She's way overdue .

[DaveNote]

Sounds like it's gonna be an early Christmas again and again.
Besides the mega convenience and everything else I read,even if she opens the door partway to halfway(musically),
more than the cd,then it should be a no brainer,think I'll buy the wifey something too , ,
                                                    She's way overdue .

If wifey likes CDs, give her your BCD. Once you have the BDP, you may never use it again. Haven't used my CD gear since buying the BDP and can't think of why I would.

[Sasha]

Can't seem to find it here,
would like to know about if you take a redbook cd and download it into your computer,
and say put it on a thumb drive and then thru the BDP-1,will the sound be way more superior musically or
will it sound the same as the original cd.I do use my BCD-1 which I like alot,thanks.

That is the question that I had to answer on my own at the time I built a cost no object dedicated PC based transport (my version of BDP-1 if you will) with as low jitter as possible.
By dedicated I mean its only function was playback, not even riping was done on it but on another machine. So it was really well build unit without any playback unnecessary features, in the same manner as BDP-1 (for which reason I consider BDP-1 exceptional machine and Bryston approach to BDP-1 was absolutely correct).
And the answer was, top CD players such as for example Wadia 581SE were better performers when spinning CD as opposed to being fed digital signal on their digital inputs (I had players with digital i/o boards to make it as valid comparison as possible, so that differences could not be contributed to different DACs, PSUs, analog sections, etc.).
The same was observed when players and their i/o boards / DACs were substituted with BDA-1.
I tried to do as much objective assessments as possible, and in the process I paid attention only to clearly identifiable differences and undisputable improvements, for example when bass instrument notes had better transients and less overhang, what was clearly audible with Wadia playing given track from CD.
Of course all the riping was done appropriately, using Exact Audio Copy on separate PC, using top of the line readers.
It convinced me that the performance of such transports cannot reach the performance of top CD players, additional circuits and interfaces needed to transport digital signal from a PC transport (or any other transport, I had a number of them in this evaluation) are inherited disadvantage that will introduce jitter.
And there is no such thing as jitter free or jitter immune DAC, never will be.
All the nonsense you can see about such transports blowing away everything else is due to flawed methodology or biased assessment.
However, when you stop talking in absolute terms, and weigh the overall value of clearly audible advantages of dedicated CD players, the cost difference and convenience of PC based transports, you may come to a conclusion that the performance advantage of top CD player does not justify its place on your audio rack.
That was my conclusion, for which reason I no longer have Wadia or any other dedicated CD player, but PC based transport and BDA-1.
>12K price tag of such player was not justified despite its better performance.
In your case I highly doubt that you will see/hear any performance advantage of BCD-1 over BDP-1/BDA-1, in fact you may even come to a conclusion that BDP-1/BDA-1 performs better.
If you are willing to spend as much as necessary to achieve the absolutely best performance, top CD players remain the top performers.
If you want 95% of performance of top spinners with convenience of PC based transports for a lot less, I believe BDP-1/BDA-1 is a champion.

[James Tanner]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Hi Sasha,

You seem to have a lot of experience and knowledge with this issue and one of the questions I keep asking the experts (so far no luck) is: given that the CD Player has a rotating disk and error correction (after the fact errors) as well as an output stage (quality critical) would not the straight digital data stream outputted to a USB or Solid State Drive reap benefits sonically?

I know the jitter numbers we can achieve on the BDA/BDP are lower than on the BCD-1 CD Player but they are so low to begin with it may be a mute point. Just seems to make sense that a static non rotating, non error correction playback system would have the upper hand?

james

[Sasha]

James,

Why everyone assumes that errors are produced when information is retrieved from disk in CD player?
The error correction in audio CDs (C1, C2, sample interpolation) is there to deal with reading problems in real time, but good disk will not have problems, and you will have error free reading in real time, in other words it will be bit perfect, and then sent within the player for further processing.
So the argument of CD player being disadvantaged due to rotating disk and error correction is flawed. I know for the fact that CD disks go bad very quickly, even if not used, it is also another myth that CDs can last for a long time, but you have to do appropriate and fair comparison.
If it is all implemented exceptionally well in a CD player, it will have an inherent advantage over a scenario where you have to generate digital signal from data retrieved from USB attached device for example, to be transported to an external DAC, that is where the problem starts, not in data retrieval.
I am sure many had a chance to hear audible differences when comparing different digital interfaces between same two devices, for example from a digital source to DAC via Toslink and AES/EBU. There is no magic behind it, it is all due to jitter, which is being higher in case of Toslink. And regardless of all attempts to attenuate jitter, the two interfaces sound different.
I am not sure why you are mentioning output stage in CD player, as if it was its disadvantage?
Of course output stage is very important, much more so than the choice of DAC chip for example, but who is to say that the output stage in a top CD player is not on the same level or even better than the one in BDA-1?
So I do not see how digital data stream outputted from a USB or Solid State Drive can be beneficial sonically if we do proper and fair assessment, and do not start from a premise of scratched disk and reading errors that cannot be corrected in real time using error correction.
I did such assessment, I did not introduce into the picture different upsampler, DAC, output stage, etc., till later time for different purpose.
When you take the playback from a static non rotating source out of the context, then of source it has the advantage. And even in the context of real world, with CDs going bad very quickly, it has advantages.
But if we level the playground and start with superb disks that do not have problems, and with components that are built to the highest standards, the advantage of CD player is clear.
And of course at some point it all can become a mute point. Why ever seek THD in amplifiers to be lower than 0.01%, or even 0.1% at any frequency? Anything can be argued, but let’s argue from the equal starting point.
In the end, I am not putting BDP-1 or BDA-1 down, I clearly indicated that, I am saying that in a controlled environment top CD players have advantage over an external DAC being fed digital signal via standard digital interfaces, what is technically evident, and what was audible to me. Despite that I chose BDA-1, as I did not see $ difference justified by performance leap (not significant enough to me and my wallet) and was not willing to mess around with CDs.
Whether it is of some value to others is up to them and what they seek.

[James Tanner]

James,

Why everyone assumes that errors are produced when information is retrieved from disk in CD player?
The error correction in audio CDs (C1, C2, sample interpolation) is there to deal with reading problems in real time, but good disk will not have problems, and you will have error free reading in real time, in other words it will be bit perfect, and then sent within the player for further processing.
So the argument of CD player being disadvantaged due to rotating disk and error correction is flawed. I know for the fact that CD disks go bad very quickly, even if not used, it is also another myth that CDs can last for a long time, but you have to do appropriate and fair comparison.
If it is all implemented exceptionally well in a CD player, it will have an inherent advantage over a scenario where you have to generate digital signal from data retrieved from USB attached device for example, to be transported to an external DAC, that is where the problem starts, not in data retrieval.
I am sure many had a chance to hear audible differences when comparing different digital interfaces between same two devices, for example from a digital source to DAC via Toslink and AES/EBU. There is no magic behind it, it is all due to jitter, which is being higher in case of Toslink. And regardless of all attempts to attenuate jitter, the two interfaces sound different.
I am not sure why you are mentioning output stage in CD player, as if it was its disadvantage?
Of course output stage is very important, much more so than the choice of DAC chip for example, but who is to say that the output stage in a top CD player is not on the same level or even better than the one in BDA-1?
So I do not see how digital data stream outputted from a USB or Solid State Drive can be beneficial sonically if we do proper and fair assessment, and do not start from a premise of scratched disk and reading errors that cannot be corrected in real time using error correction.
I did such assessment, I did not introduce into the picture different upsampler, DAC, output stage, etc., till later time for different purpose.
When you take the playback from a static non rotating source out of the context, then of source it has the advantage. And even in the context of real world, with CDs going bad very quickly, it has advantages.
But if we level the playground and start with superb disks that do not have problems, and with components that are built to the highest standards, the advantage of CD player is clear.
And of course at some point it all can become a mute point. Why ever seek THD in amplifiers to be lower than 0.01%, or even 0.1% at any frequency? Anything can be argued, but let’s argue from the equal starting point.
In the end, I am not putting BDP-1 or BDA-1 down, I clearly indicated that, I am saying that in a controlled environment top CD players have advantage over an external DAC being fed digital signal via standard digital interfaces, what is technically evident, and what was audible to me. Despite that I chose BDA-1, as I did not see $ difference justified by performance leap (not significant enough to me and my wallet) and was not willing to mess around with CDs.
Whether it is of some value to others is up to them and what they seek.

Hi sasha,

Interesting points.  I guess you would disagree then as some report that their CD's ripped to their computers sound better than their CD's through their CD Player? - assuming equal quality of course.

james

[Marius]

Hi,

That's exactly what I've been doing lately: comparing this setup BDP versus BCD through the BDA, and also BCD through BDA and BCD through XLR balanced on BP26.

I find it very difficult to hear a "major" difference. The BCD through the 2 different connections are almost identical, I still have a sense of better Bass using the balanced connection to the Bp26 directly, instead of using the BDA. (maybe I still have to run it in? 1month in constant use now)

The BDP gives me, in most cd-rips, a feeling of a larger soundstage and more 'Air" than the original CD through the Bcd, in either connection. But to be honest, It is not always the same advantage. Stated differently, some recordings do better than others...on some I have really astonishing Bass presence, my Genesis Seconds Out rip is a great example of that. Another showstopper is Bruckner 9 Giulini/VPO. Amazing.

Handling it with the Ipad/MPAD combo is a major step up of course, on the other hand the BDP has its quirks with multiple cd-rips. Getting them right takes a lot of manual tagging and reordering....

The BDP shines in native Hires downloads ofcourse, and does better than the BCD....But I wouldn't mind to end my life with the BCD alone. Although I'd like it to last a very long time with the BDP

I bet this doesn't help, sorry for that.

just note that cabling differences are ruled out, I use the same hi quality cables between bp26 and sources, and use the AES/EBU connecting to the BDA.

Greetings,
Marius

I would imagine the answer would depend highly on the quality of one's CDP and/or DAC.  If one were to isolate the BDP-1 as "transport" and keep the DAC the same, then I suppose the question might be:

BCD-1/BDA-1 vs
BDP-1/BDA-1

[Sasha]

Hi sasha,

Interesting points.  I guess you would disagree then as some report that their CD's ripped to their computers sound better than their CD's through their CD Player? - assuming equal quality of course.

james

Hi James,

That is a question out of context.
What CD player, what PC and what DAC are we talking about here, and how was that equal quality established?
If you take an average CD player and compare its performance to properly ripped tracks played from properly built PC based transport into properly built DAC, of course CD player will be the looser. I do not disagree with that.
My argument is that the top, cream of the crop CD players, outperform PC based transports with external DACs solutions, for reasons explained.
I have seen hundreds of assessments that would say something along these lines: “I had player X, got DAC Y, connected PC Z to DAC Y (or even player X to DAC Y) and it sounded better.”.
It is completely meaningless, because that was an observation made with too many changes introduced at the same time, what completely eliminated any possibility for the assessment of the subject at hand, and that is CD player versa PC based transport + DAC.
That was an assessment of player X versa another digital receiver + another (up)sampler + another DAC + another output stage, and that is flawed.
So what is it that improved performance, was it the new DAC, its output stage, its upsampling technology, its receiver, or the ripped track played from a PC?

Let’s take OP’s dilemma for example, he has BCD-1 and wonders if BDP-1+BDA-1 will sound better.
Let’s say it does sound better. Tell me why? Is it because of different DAC in BDA-1? Or BDA-1’s superior PSU, its output stage? Maybe BDA-1 synchronous upsampling? Or it is because of ripped tracks played from non rotating source?
No way to draw any conclusions from that.
My assessment eliminated introduction of so many variables at the same time, and is the least flawed of all I was able to find, so I have every reason to be convinced that my conclusions were not skewed and were focused to the most possible extent on the subject of best performance one could squeeze from PC+DAC versa spinner.

[James Tanner]

Hi James,

That is a question out of context.
What CD player, what PC and what DAC are we talking about here, and how was that equal quality established?
If you take an average CD player and compare its performance to properly ripped tracks played from properly built PC based transport into properly built DAC, of course CD player will be the looser. I do not disagree with that.
My argument is that the top, cream of the crop CD players, outperform PC based transports with external DACs solutions, for reasons explained.
I have seen hundreds of assessments that would say something along these lines: “I had player X, got DAC Y, connected PC Z to DAC Y (or even player X to DAC Y) and it sounded better.”.
It is completely meaningless, because that was an observation made with too many changes introduced at the same time, what completely eliminated any possibility for the assessment of the subject at hand, and that is CD player versa PC based transport + DAC.
That was an assessment of player X versa another digital receiver + another (up)sampler + another DAC + another output stage, and that is flawed.
So what is it that improved performance, was it the new DAC, its output stage, its upsampling technology, its receiver, or the ripped track played from a PC?

Let’s take OP’s dilemma for example, he has BCD-1 and wonders if BDP-1+BDA-1 will sound better.
Let’s say it does sound better. Tell me why? Is it because of different DAC in BDA-1? Or BDA-1’s superior PSU, its output stage? Maybe BDA-1 synchronous upsampling? Or it is because of ripped tracks played from non rotating source?
No way to draw any conclusions from that.
My assessment eliminated introduction of so many variables at the same time, and is the least flawed of all I was able to find, so I have every reason to be convinced that my conclusions were not skewed and were focused to the most possible extent on the subject of best performance one could squeeze from PC+DAC versa spinner.

OK - thanks for that - I will try to run similar tests at home.

james

[konut]

There was a long thread over at the Hoffman forum entitled "Debunking the "It's the error correction kicking in" CD fallacy"
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=255665
discussing these issues. It was pointed out that Reed-Solomon error correction is utilized by BOTH hard drive and disc players. What I took away from the discussion was that both methods of digital playback can sound excellent depending on IMPLEMENTATION. I do agree with Sasha though that output stage quality is much more important than choice of DAC chip. This is where the BDA-1 really shines through. On those few reviews where the BDA-1 was not praised I noted that the preamp used was of questionable synergy. To truly appreciate the BDA-1 try using a passive pre(attenuator).
    As far as the BDP is concerned, I have no doubt that the same care and execution of design was implemented that typifies all Bryston gear and that it surpasses any similar attempt utilizing "off the shelf" computer parts. I just wish I could afford one at this time.

[Sasha]

One more thing related to the subject.
In terms of absolute performance I am convinced top CD players are better, for reasons previously explained.
But one must consider the media. On many occasions I found errors on brand new disks, very expensive and quality ones. I would take brand new disks, never played, straight into PC for ripping, and I would find errors in the process.
The amount of errors would increase over time, regardless of disk usage.
In some instances those were correctable errors that would be taken care of properly by error correction in CD player, but in some instances were not (by taken care of properly I mean bit perfect read, not seemingly error free).
So if you are a stickler this may also drive you away from CD player because you may not be able to maintain its superiority easily.

[Sasha]

There was a long thread over at the Hoffman forum entitled "Debunking the "It's the error correction kicking in" CD fallacy"
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=255665
discussing these issues. It was pointed out that Reed-Solomon error correction is utilized by BOTH hard drive and disc players. What I took away from the discussion was that both methods of digital playback can sound excellent depending on IMPLEMENTATION. I do agree with Sasha though that output stage quality is much more important than choice of DAC chip. This is where the BDA-1 really shines through. On those few reviews where the BDA-1 was not praised I noted that the preamp used was of questionable synergy. To truly appreciate the BDA-1 try using a passive pre(attenuator).
    As far as the BDP is concerned, I have no doubt that the same care and execution of design was implemented that typifies all Bryston gear and that it surpasses any similar attempt utilizing "off the shelf" computer parts. I just wish I could afford one at this time.

Speaking of passive preamp, I think Bryston should develop a pre-amp with attenuation based on high quality and precise resistors network (balanced of course), and an active output stage without gain, just for the purpose of maintaining impedance, so that it stays as transparent as possible.
BDA-1 + such pre-amp would provide stellar performance.

[konut]

Speaking of passive preamp, I think Bryston should develop a pre-amp with attenuation based on high quality and precise resistors network (balanced of course), and an active output stage without gain, just for the purpose of maintaining impedance, so that it stays as transparent as possible.
BDA-1 + such pre-amp would provide stellar performance.

+1!!  Please add remote.

[drummermitchell]

I have to say that if the BDP-1's sound(redbook downloads)is as good as my BCD-1,then I'm good.
Besides,I really like the idea of specialized playlist on a few T-drives.
CD's like LP's there's usually only a few songs we really like on each disc.
I'm sure the wife will love it as I'll make her a dedicated playlist,jeez,I'm just too nice .

[Marius]

Hi Drummer,

It is! Have no fear.

rereading this topic, I realize I did not test my "bass-difference" between the BCD and BDP yet by testing the difference between BDP/BDA connection through AES/EBU and BNC. We all read the reviews quoted on this forum that said the BDP through BNC cabling was preferred. Any thoughts not that before ordering another custom-made digicoupler? following this thread for that conclusion: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=97649.0

Marius

I have to say that if the BDP-1's sound(redbook downloads)is as good as my BCD-1,then I'm good.