BDP-1

kwadzilla · « **on:** 9 Feb 2024, 09:14 pm »

Hi y’all.

I had signed up to audio circle primarily for this forum, as I have been experienced difficulties with the BDP-1. It would often freeze - where neither the faceplate controls nor remote control from iPad or computer would work. If it was playing it continued to play. This would occur after about 30-45 minutes of good behaviour.

More often than not, it would not play after it froze.

I had been in contact with Adam Tanner who was very patient and thorough, and he had helped remotely to help troubleshoot. It would work for a bit, then freeze. Last communication with him was to suggest trying a new flash card, but at that point I’d just given up.

The player remained on a shelf in the basement for over a year until I saw an instagram post by “j audio” featuring a BDP-1 in his system, and I was inspired to have a go. Upon getting it all connected and powering up I first tried playing files from a USB stick. It worked! But was glitchy, playing for five or six seconds, then silence, playing again, silence. At least the faceplate controls were working. After about 10 minutes it settled down and start to play without problems.

Then I connected the player to the network to see if I could get my Tidal subscription to play, but the my.Bryston.com remote wasn’t connecting to the the player. While scrolling through the menu it showed Ethernet “offline”, and the lights on the modem and player input weren’t lit. Strange. So I played around and in the settings menu found a control to “reset network”, hit enter and hoped for the best. Hit the refresh button and I couldn’t believe we connected!!!

Wouldn’t you know, the BDP-1 has been playing almost flawlessly since yesterday evening. Today, we’ve been streaming the In The Loop playlist since 10AM. At one point the player wouldn’t respond to stop/start, but just let it play on and when I returned to the room a short while later it was fine.

I am thrilled it’s working again. I re-listened to a lot of my favourite music after first procuring it. I was astonished how much life, richness, energy, and scale it brought by inserting it between the computer and DAC.

Cheers,

Steve

artur9 · « **Reply #1 on:** 10 Feb 2024, 03:20 am »

I had one of these. I would definitely put a new flash card in it as they do wear out and things get flaky.

Does Bryston still send out new cards or did they ask you to make your own?

kwadzilla · « **Reply #2 on:** 10 Feb 2024, 11:15 am »

Hi Arthur,

It was suggested to purchase the flash card, have it sent to Bryston for a process, and they’d send back ready to go.

What would be the symptoms of a dodgy flash card?

Last night while listening there were moments the controls weren’t responding - couldn’t add to the playlist, couldn’t pause, couldn’t skip to the next track. Then after five minutes it was fine.

Steve

James Tanner · « **Reply #3 on:** 10 Feb 2024, 11:23 am »

Folks - the BDP-1 is not a very fast computer so if processes are going on in the background it will stall - especially with larger music libraries.

james

kwadzilla · « **Reply #4 on:** 10 Feb 2024, 01:53 pm »

Thanks for tuning in early on a Saturday morning, James!

This is the info, you can see how hard or not the machine is running. When the unit was really misbehaving the CPU was near max, now it’s much lower.

Adam had mentioned a way to take a big workload off the player but can’t remember the set-up for that.

In the current and temporary usage, I’m streaming Tidal within the Manic Moose, and again it’s generally working great. Previously, I was running Audirvana within the iMac and though my memory is a bit fuzzy about the finer details I think I had the AV player output setting as “Ethernet”?

Anyhow, just looking on Amazon for Flash Cards in the event it comes to replacing the stock card. Lexar Pro 64GB 1066x with 160mb/s… I’m assuming this would be sufficient, if not overkill?

artur9 · « **Reply #5 on:** 10 Feb 2024, 08:31 pm »

Quote from: kwadzilla on 10 Feb 2024, 11:15 am

...
What would be the symptoms of a dodgy flash card?...

That's the thing about bad cards/memory/disks. The symptoms are completely unpredictable and seemingly unrelated.

Most people think those things just lead to a slow computer. In reality, it could be things like crashing software that automatically get restarted so it looks like it's working but it's not - just trying as hard as it can to keep the owner happy.

kwadzilla · « **Reply #6 on:** 13 Feb 2024, 01:05 am »

Hmmmm k. I’ll inquire with Adam to have a new flash card formatted. For the cost of the card it seems a low risk sum to spend, relative to procuring another player.

artur9 · « **Reply #7 on:** 14 Feb 2024, 02:18 am »

Quote from: kwadzilla on 13 Feb 2024, 01:05 am

Hmmmm k. I’ll inquire with Adam to have a new flash card formatted. For the cost of the card it seems a low risk sum to spend, relative to procuring another player.

If it helps any, I kind of regret selling mine. Nothing comparable is any sort of remotely reasonable price.

kwadzilla · « **Reply #8 on:** 14 Feb 2024, 09:36 pm »

At the moment I’m happy I kept it. Not sure the value of a not-functional BDP-1… but the fella who sold it to me was original owner and had it in storage for a few years. He was gonna give to his daughter for university but passed. He mentioned an error when I spoke to him - error 09(?) - and offered for me to try it for a few weeks. I corrected that error, but it was still glitchy.

After speaking to a computer friend, and a trial period with a Digital converter, I decided to punt on the BDP-1.

I did get an email communication with Adam going. He suggested a Verbatim 4GB flash card, and sent a PDF with instructions on how to set the new card up. The new card and reader should arrive on Saturday, and will be certain to update the thread here with the result.

zoom25 · « **Reply #9 on:** 15 Feb 2024, 01:58 am »

I've had the BDP-1 since 2013/14 ish? It worked perfectly with Manic Moose and multiple drives when I got it.

It's been sitting in the drawer for the past 7 months because it got so slow due to these newer firmware updates. Even though my library size and drives hasn't changed all that. So I recently connected it to internet to make sure the firmware was up to date (it already was) and reset the BDP-1 to factory settings or something like that. Database has always been turned off since I wanted the BDP-1 to run quick. I just needed folder view. I put it away initially because it would always freeze up within an hour or so after booting up. Back when I bought it in 2013, it would run for weeks or months without any freeze up.

So this time I turn it on with no pre-existing library and only plug in a thumb drive (which I've used many, many times in the past) with only a few GBs on it (less than 10GB). A couple of FLAC albums. Everything works fine and music plays and even radio stations work....I unplug it and move it offline without network connection and bring it to another offline setup, and figured I'd just use the front panel to navigate since it's only like 10 albums or so. GUESS WHAT!? The front panel and everything else refuses to work. So I reboot it and still nothing works. I do this 3-4 more times and still the same response ----non responsive. So I take it back and decide to boot it again, but this time with the ethernet cable plugged in and connected to the internet. GUESS WHAT!!!! Everything starts working again. Manic Moose page loads fine, front panel button works and I can navigate tracks and folders, music plays without any issue. So I think ahh finally its back to normal. So I turn it off, and bring it back to load it offline without ethernet cable and internet.....IT"S NOT WORKING AGAIN. I rebooted a few more times and buttons are non-responsive. It simply doesn't respond...so I take it back to the location with ethernet and internet and the front panel and BDP-1 starts working again!!!! I repeated this at least 20 times on and off just to believe what I was thinking.

My BDP-1 simply does not work anymore unless it's connected to the network, which also must be connected to the internet. I specify the last part of this because in the past I had an offline/non-internet network setup for the BDP-1 which worked perfectly with NAS hard drives, even Roon. The BPD-1 was connected to the network, but that network was not connected to the internet, yet everything worked perfectly (as it should). Now on the other hand, even a single basic USB thumb drive won't work with BDP-1 unless it's connected to the internet.

I was planning on using the BDP-1 for one of my offline rigs just to listen to my local music. I already have Amazon Music and Spotify for streaming, so the goal was to use the BDP-1 in a strictly offline local music mode with a few albums at a time.....this simply isn't possible as of now. I tried it a few dozen times and I'm not being hyperbolic.

I'm not sure if this is intentional or not on the part of Chris/Bryston, or if they are aware of such a problem existing, but it exists. And now you guys know. If this is normal and expected behaviour with the newer firmware, please do let me know. If it's not expected behaviour, please do let me know and I can put my BDP-1 in service mode.

artur9 · « **Reply #10 on:** 15 Feb 2024, 02:23 am »

Quote from: kwadzilla on 14 Feb 2024, 09:36 pm

At the moment I’m happy I kept it. Not sure the value of a not-functional BDP-1… .... He mentioned an error when I spoke to him - error 09(?) - ...

I had that error on mine for a while. Made me so angry! Turns out the card was not pushed onto the connectors fully.

When I had mine, I didn't keep music on it. I was using minimserver for that on a linux box. I ran it in MPD mode and sent music to it from something-I-can't-remember.

These days it'd be easier since I have roon. Just start the BDP in "roon mode" (whatever that actually means) and tell roon to send music to it.

Jozsef · « **Reply #11 on:** 15 Feb 2024, 03:56 am »

@kwadzilla I'd be reluctant to buy any kind of flash storage from Amazon because of the possibility of getting a counterfeit. It's been reported that the workers will sometimes dump these in the bin that's supposed to be for genuine ones because they look the same, so you could be paying for quality and still getting rubbish. It's another variable you don't need when trying to solve a problem.

kwadzilla · « **Reply #12 on:** 20 Feb 2024, 06:38 pm »

Hi Jozsef, I hope this won’t be the case. Ended up with a Verbatim brand of card, which arrived on Friday. Will format the card and see how things go.

There are three possibilities.

1. The player works flawlessly, indicating a fault with the old card was slowing things down.

2. The periodic glitches of the player remain, indicating the fault is elsewhere.

3. Things get worse, the player is less reliable, indicating?

BTW, has anyone bypassed the sound card and used the USB at an output? I remember trying this previously and it sound “different”. This was for too short a period and too long ago to qualify the differences, but wonder if this would help with stability since, I would think, there would be less processing/circuit board for the signal to go through.

artur9 · « **Reply #13 on:** 21 Feb 2024, 02:46 am »

I thought you had the OG BDP-1 without USB output and with a BNC connection instead? Not the BDP-USB?

I seem to recall they did enable the USB for audio at some point on the OG BDP-1...
Never used them as the point of the BDP-1 for my use case was to not use USB.

kwadzilla · « **Reply #14 on:** 21 Feb 2024, 12:02 pm »

You are correct, Artur, that this is a unit with no proper usb out, only AES and BNC. I read that disabling the sound card in the settings would allow the user to use one of the rear USB ports as an output.

I didn’t get long enough time with this configuration as this was during the very unstable functioning. Couldn’t get the player toggle the sound card on again, and it wasn’t long after this that the unit was iced.

R. Daneel · « **Reply #15 on:** 24 Feb 2024, 03:30 pm »

Fellas, BDP-1 and BDP-1USB are identical machines. The former with additional AES and BNC outputs. Both can be connected to an external DAC using USB connection.

There seems to be some confusion regarding this so I just wanted to clarify. To be fair, the BDP-1USB came out later in the product's life and Bryston didn't do a particularly good job at documenting the differences so I don't blame you.

kwadzilla · « **Reply #16 on:** 23 Jan 2025, 12:21 am »

Hi! I wanted to update this topic.

Yesterday I got around to work and fixing my buggy BDP-1. I wrote the MM file onto a new CF card, and upon setting and firing up the machine, it seems to be working much better.

There was an issue where playing tracks from Tidal wouldn’t work, but going into the MPD settings and changing the quality to “Lossless” seemed to do the trick.

It’s been playing non stop for over 24 hours now, but do get the ‘lost connection’ notice on occasion.

At the moment it’s in a modest living room system. The main system is in the attic but I haven’t wired the Ethernet just yet. Soon come. At that point I’d like to toggle the renderer function on and control the music playback from the computer via Audirvāna.

Twiga · « **Reply #17 on:** 23 Jan 2025, 05:16 am »

@zoom25:

I just read (in an old posting you made) about the problems that you had with your BDP-1 buttons not working when your internet connection was disabled. I had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago and started a topic: “BDP-3 Buttons not working". When I couldn’t communicate with the unit using a phone or tablet, I knew that something was wrong with the network connection. So I went to use the buttons instead. GUESS WHAT!!!!, the buttons didn’t work. I tried many times and even had my wife try it, but to no avail. The unit didn’t respond to the Skip Forward or Skip Backward buttons. Finally, I bit the bullet and spent some time diagnosing the network problem and re-connecting the unit to the network. GUESS WHAT!!! Once the network connection was working, so were the buttons. I do not understand why/how they are “connected” so that such a situation can occur.

You can see the discussion (such as it is) under the topic: https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=190924.msg1997834#msg1997834

Stefan_DR3 · « **Reply #18 on:** 24 Jan 2025, 07:57 pm »

That's interesting. My BDP2 has just dropped off the network, won’t come back even after rebooting, and the panel buttons stop working a few seconds after booting up. It appears to be completely locking up and only responds to the power button. I think I am stuck unless I pull the CF card and rebuild it.

By the way, just a few days ago I was playing with DLNA render mode (it always reverts to MPD mode on startup so it's not that) and it worked fine until I shut it down.

zoom25 · « **Reply #19 on:** 25 Jan 2025, 03:42 am »

Quote from: Twiga on 23 Jan 2025, 05:16 am

@zoom25:

I just read (in an old posting you made) about the problems that you had with your BDP-1 buttons not working when your internet connection was disabled. I had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago and started a topic: “BDP-3 Buttons not working". When I couldn’t communicate with the unit using a phone or tablet, I knew that something was wrong with the network connection. So I went to use the buttons instead. GUESS WHAT!!!!, the buttons didn’t work. I tried many times and even had my wife try it, but to no avail. The unit didn’t respond to the Skip Forward or Skip Backward buttons. Finally, I bit the bullet and spent some time diagnosing the network problem and re-connecting the unit to the network. GUESS WHAT!!! Once the network connection was working, so were the buttons. I do not understand why/how they are “connected” so that such a situation can occur.

You can see the discussion (such as it is) under the topic: https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=190924.msg1997834#msg1997834

Hi Twiga,

YES, this is an issue that started as of late. It was DEFINITELY not the case with BDP-1 and its earlier Manic Moose firmwares. When I had gotten the unit around 2014 (+/-), I had gotten it specifically so I could use it offline on my desk with a hard drive attached to it in the back and just use the buttons to navigate the music. It worked perfectly offline and would not crash for weeks or months. I later even got a NAS for music storage and a separate local router which were on a separate OFFLINE network not connected to the internet or my main home network with internet...even then it worked perfectly and very stable. I could even use Roon with my BDP-1 through this configuration, despite the BDP-1 and the router not having access to the internet.

I think both Roon and Manic Moose along with its buttons worked great for me until 2018/2019. Somewhere in 2020 and onwards, the newer Manic Moose versions just made things so much worse for my BDP-1. Everything was sluggish and I'm not sure what functionality was added, but it broke all the things that worked well and stable for months.

That's why I put the unit away for a year or two because it would not work offline anymore. Once I had network cables run in my new basement construction, I moved the BDP-1 there for that audio rig. It's just a Roon endpoint nowadays. I get triggered looking at that Manic Moose page. Can't do it. If the buttons worked and/or the web interface worked in offline mode as it previously did, I'd 100% keep it for my desktop rig in its previous location that still doesn't have ethernet.

I also have the USB wireless dongle, which does make the BDP-1 wireless and connected to internet, but hate it for the SQ.