From High Fidelity website:
Published: 2. March 2013, No. 106
Peterborough, Ontario, November 14th, 2012 – Bryston LTD (Bryston Limited: Music for a Generation), builders of the world’s finest audio electronics and celebrating 50 years in 2012, has announced the introduction of the BDA-2 outboard digital to analog converter (DAC).
Bold words, indeed. But then, they come from no less an authority than Canadian Bryston, one of the better-known audio brands both in the world of consumer as well as professional audio. Similarly to such British manufacturers as ATC, Harbeth, Tannoy, PMC, dCS, or Dynaudio from Denmark, Bryston Limited is a company equally at home on both sides of the “glass”. It is also one of the few successful manufacturers of electronics; almost all the others, apart from dCS, mainly offer speakers.
Recording studio provenance of audio equipment usually guarantees one thing, in addition to its user friendliness: high manufacturing quality and thus long equipment life. Satisfied owners of twenty years old or older Bryston amplifiers will be happy to confirm that. But what about Bryston DAC owners? Well – they have not yet had enough time to find it out as the BDA-2 predecessor, the BDA-1, was actually the first DAC offered by the manufacturer since 2010.
The new BDA-2 is not meant to be its direct replacement but rather a product line supplement. The immediate reason for its launch was the need to upgrade the USB interface, previously limited to 16-bit, 48 kHz signal. With the new model we get an advanced, modern solution based on an XMOS chip, offering asynchronous transmission of signal up to 24-bit, 192 kHz resolution. USB is the domain of computers and thus difficult to manage. The BDA-2 arrives with its own driver on a flash drive in the shape of a key. During the review, however, it did not yet support Windows 8 that I use. Usually, Windows based computers limit playback to signals to 24/96 without a dedicated driver. Here it is different – the input is completely inactive until we install an appropriate driver from Bryston. Thus, I had no means to test the DAC's USB interface.
