[pardales]

One cool thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post: since I have a wireless network that my Mac laptop is on and I use iTunes, I can use an iPod Touch as a remote control for my iTunes. This is especially convenient for me since my laptop is in a different room than my speakers. If you want to read more about this there is a discussion about it in the Apple Core forum.

[vegasdave]

James, I'd say that you're offering 2 important options here...the cd player for those who want the best in cd playback, and the dac for those who've abandoned cd and want the best in digital to analog conversion.

Of course there a 3 rd option, and that is to use a cd transport with the dac.

[denjo]

James

I heard the Bryston BCD-1 side-by-side with a top-of-the-line Oracle (costing 8 times more) and was very impressed with how the BCD-1 acquitted itself and sounded very musical. I think the BCD-1 has certainly brought high end redbook playback at a much more affordable price.

My view is that redbook CDP will soon be a dinosaur while wireless streaming devices soon dominate. But, your latest BCD-1 certainly forces me to rethink my earlier view. I can see that some will opt for a Bryston CDP but Bryston has made a brilliant move the come out with a separate DAC for those who have existing wireless devices.

As for me, the B100-SST (with DAC and phono) is like a dream come true to my wish list. With 4 digital inputs, an analog phono, Bryston's impressive 20-year warranty, a superb pre and power and remote, it is an audiophile's delight! Save on space, save on $$$, save on messy interconnects, save on power cords!! But no compromise of musicality!

[James Tanner]

James

I heard the Bryston BCD-1 side-by-side with a top-of-the-line Oracle (costing 8 times more) and was very impressed with how the BCD-1 acquitted itself and sounded very musical. I think the BCD-1 has certainly brought high end redbook playback at a much more affordable price.

My view is that redbook CDP will soon be a dinosaur while wireless streaming devices soon dominate. But, your latest BCD-1 certainly forces me to rethink my earlier view. I can see that some will opt for a Bryston CDP but Bryston has made a brilliant move the come out with a separate DAC for those who have existing wireless devices.

As for me, the B100-SST (with DAC and phono) is like a dream come true to my wish list. With 4 digital inputs, an analog phono, Bryston's impressive 20-year warranty, a superb pre and power and remote, it is an audiophile's delight! Save on space, save on $$$, save on messy interconnects, save on power cords!! But no compromise of musicality!

Hi Denjo,

Thank you for you kind comments on the Bryston CD Player vs other much higher priced players.  In the upcoming review on the BCD-1 (August issue of Absolute Sound Magazine) the comparison is between the BCD1 and the reviewers $20,000 dollar plus reference player and the review concludes in favor of our BCD-1.

james

[Panelman]

James,

I agree with those on this thread who advocate for an external DAC with multiple digital inputs that accept multiple formats ie USB, Toslink, SPDIF AES/EBU. I currently feed my DAC/preamp(Benchmark DAC1 Pre) from my Squeezebox, MacBook Pro and my old CD player. The flexibility this affords far out weighs the occasional wireless hiccups.  Also while I understand the concerns about external hard drive noise and sound card issues I think these problems are easily solvable. I often download music from HD Tracks, Linn Records or AIX and stream it from the digital outport on the MacBook and hear no noise from the MacBook on my lap.  I do think that 24/96 allows a higher level of fidelity and while iTunes won't play these tracks free software such as Tool Player or Cog does play hi rez tracks

Sean       

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Sean - iTunes plays 24/96 content bit perfect on a Mac.

[denjo]

I forgot to mention that the uber expensive Oracle I mentioned in my post above was a 3-unit combo (transport, DAC and PSU).

[KeithA]

I have had a computer-based digital front-end in my system for three years now. Because of it I listen deeper into my collection than I ever did using CD's. There is just no comparison to having your entire collection at your fingertips organized in multiple ways all accessible at at the scroll and click of a mouse. This is not to mention the quality that can be achieved using hard-drives and USB interface DAC's -- I have not gone the wireless route for music streaming yet, accept to play the occasional internet radio station. I can't imagine ever using a CD player again.

So do most people agree that hard-drives provide better audio quality that CD Drives?
Reasons?

james

James

That one i'm not sure of as I haven't tried it extensively. I know of a few people who firmly believe that the CD is still better. I don't know. I do know that at home  I have an issue of Absolute Sound where Robert Harley addresses that vey issue and if I recall correctly, his conclusion was that hard drives sound better than CDs, for what it's worth.

If I can put my hands on it tonight, I can scan it tomorrow and send it to you as a pdf, if you wish?

Keith

Yes I would love to see that.

james

This article and other related reviews, articles and interviews from the same magazine issue have been sent to your Bryston email in PDF.

Keith

[splittailz]

after reading this complete thread, hard disc, terrabyte, streaming, wow do I feel old. 20 years ago I felt I stayed up with technology, but now I feel I am being passed by. Just last week I told james Tanner I was digital "dumb" when we were talking about the DAC hookup.
I guess I should change from splittailz to anaolg splittailz. but I am not into vinyl.
The new things I can see I will be learning here. Wife is just gonna love this.

[KeithA]

after reading this complete thread, hard disc, terrabyte, streaming, wow do I feel old. 20 years ago I felt I stayed up with technology, but now I feel I am being passed by. Just last week I told james Tanner I was digital "dumb" when we were talking about the DAC hookup.
I guess I should change from splittailz to anaolg splittailz. but I am not into vinyl.
The new things I can see I will be learning here. Wife is just gonna love this.

The good news is that you don't need to be a 'expert' to get up and running with this stuff. Just a little learning curve. You just need to know enough to get yourself in trouble ..especially with the 'Better Half'

If something goes wrong from a technical perspective, I'm sure a bunch of people here can chip in and help out. However, when it comes to our wives...we're on our own

Keith

[James Tanner]

after reading this complete thread, hard disc, terrabyte, streaming, wow do I feel old. 20 years ago I felt I stayed up with technology, but now I feel I am being passed by. Just last week I told james Tanner I was digital "dumb" when we were talking about the DAC hookup.
I guess I should change from splittailz to anaolg splittailz. but I am not into vinyl.
The new things I can see I will be learning here. Wife is just gonna love this.

The good news is that you don't need to be a 'expert' to get up and running with this stuff. Just a little learning curve. You just need to know enough to get yourself in trouble ..especially with the 'Better Half'

If something goes wrong from a technical perspective, I'm sure a bunch of people here can chip in and help out. However, when it comes to our wives...we're on our own

Keith

I have a funny story for you regarding the better half.

Our distributor in the Far East sells very EXOTIC and EXPENSIVE power cords for plugging in amplifiers, preamps etc. He sells them like donuts and one day I asked him why they were such a popular product in his market given their serious cost?

He say's (and I still laugh thinking about it) ---- "Power cables can be smuggled into the house and used without anyone being the wiser".

james

[splittailz]

its amazing what a nice shiny, sparkly little rock or two will do for WAF. Last weekend, wife goes, honey are you finally done now. My reply was no, just a couple more things,( 2 28B's).
she says, I dont even know what those will cost. my reply was, honey, but what about the 2 carat rock, diamond braclet, diamond rolex, and mercedes cls you got last year. so who got the better deal, her, or me with a 5 28B surround system?

[brucek]

I just read through this thread and found it very interesting.

There's no question that the industry is in such a state of flux, it's hard to predict where it's going and what it will evolve into. I'm sure James obtains a wealth of brain picking information from this sort of thread. I sympathize with Bryston. They need a crystal ball to gauge where the rather narrow high end audiophile market will end up.

It is an eye opener reading all the different methods and devices that people are using today to deliver their music.

Myself, I use four sources for music (outlined below). Each one offers a different level of convenience versus quality. It seems obvious that a lot of todays market prefers convenience.

1. At the top of the food chain is my Arcam Alpha 9 CD player, where I will play new CD's for a short critical listening time after purchase. The output of the player is analog to a Bryston SP2 in bypass mode feeding a Bryston amp and ProAc 3.8 loudspeakers. I consider the quality quite good.

2. Once I've listened for a while, the CD gets ripped and stored on my main PC, and then physically goes to my Sony DVP-CX777ES jukebox player. This is quite a good player from Sony with its ES moniker. It handles SACD/CD/DVD/MP3 etc, and I usually play this storehouse of music with the digital coax output using the Bryston SP2 DAC's. I would consider this only slightly down in quality from the Alpha 9 player in analog mode through the SP2. The jukebox has the downside of being physically slow and cumbersome and not quite as convenient as I might like it.

3. Next down from that in quality (although only slightly) and way up in convenience factor, would be my ExpressVu satellite streaming PCM 48K pay music channels fed from my DSS receiver to the SP2 digital optical input. James alluded to this form of music earlier and it is indeed incredibly convenient and of surprisingly good quality. It simply streams all the time without commercials and is themed. I really give Galaxie music a thumbs up on this stuff. I have heard nothing but negative remarks about the compression on XM and Sirius type music, but the music channels on satellite TV services are very good.

4. Next, I have a new laptop with an external USB soundcard using a digital optical connection to my SP2. This laptop is wireless connected to my main PC in the house and accesses all my digital music stored on that computer. On it, I have a mix of formats from the older 128K MP3 stuff, all the way up to newer lossless formats that  play through the external soundcard. I never get any dropouts (I have a newer wireless 802.11n technology router and laptop). There are many external USB soundcards that are quite good in that regard. The convenience of a laptop to access music is topnotch.

Anyway, that's the way I access my music. It's all a tradeoff between convenience and quality.

I have been interested in the Squeezebox devices, but the specs never impressed me, until the Transporter came out. It appears to be a really nice device. It has great specs, with separate supplies for analog and digital and if you want to use it in analog mode, it has a decent AKM AK4396 multibit/Sigma-Delta DAC. I'd love to test one of these out.

I wonder if James or anyone at Bryston has ever tried a device like the Transporter. It has a $2K pricetag, that says it may indeed be an audiophile worthy device. Would Bryston ever consider producing something like this? I had read the review that someone posted earlier and wondered as the reviewer had, "Is a high-end music server the audio equivalent of polishing a turd?. I suspect not. The Transporter seems like something really worth exploring - especially for Bryston. Is this not the future (as opposed to CD players)?

brucek

[alexone]

 
 hi, brucek!

i think that the logitech's transporter is something Bryston should put an eye on. high quality ins and outs and a wordclock input...everything in one package. i was thinking about buying a bda-1 but i want to wait until the new sp3 hits the shelves. so in my case the bcd-1 as the source, the sp3 as a preamp/processor and a logitech transporter would be a dreamteam. the bda-1 is a great product and Bryston made a significant and important step towards this (digital) direction. but the sp3 will have enough digital inputs so that there will be no need for me to get a bda-1. if Bryston would develop something compareable like the transporter i would have to think it over to 'switch' to another company.
we will see what is going to happen...

 alex.

[brucek]

if Bryston would develop something compareable like the transporter i would have to think it over

Yeah James, we want to see something like this in the products pull down on the Bryston site by perhaps next month at the latest.

We'll call it the Bryston-SAD for bryston streaming audio device. We expect only the finest of specifications......

brucek

[James Tanner]

if Bryston would develop something compareable like the transporter i would have to think it over

Yeah James, we want to see something like this in the products pull down on the Bryston site by perhaps next month at the latest.

We'll call it the Bryston-SAD for bryston streaming audio device. We expect only the finest of specifications......

brucek

I love you guys.

james

[Jabroni]

Hi all,

Some things to be aware of when using your computer as your music source:

1. The PCI add-in audio card.  They utilize the power supply of the PCI bus of the computer.
This power supply is typically quite noisy, so it is difficult to get high-quality output from these cards. They are also limited in form-factor and cooling capacity.

2. There are severe interconnect length limitations when either S/PDIF or analog outputs are used, so this places the computer very close to the audio system and the rotation noise can be a concern.

3. AC power of the computer can also easily cause hum in the system.


Wireless converters typically use Ethernet wireless protocol. This has some issues as well.

1.The wireless network can be shared by other devices, such as printers and other computers on the network. Since the Ethernet protocol allows ANY device to demand service and bandwidth, other devices can "hog" the network and cause drop-outs in the audio stream.

2. The current wireless devices I believe are limited to 44.1kHz sampling rate?


james

James,

All of your observations are correct. It's definitely not a 'plug-n-play' technology if you're looking for good sound. To comment on your points:

1. IMO, soundcards are not the way to go for the reasons you cite.
2. Lengths are an issue. My main system is fed via USB with the computer (iMac, silent) connected using a 6' cable. The actual files are stored on NAS drives (loud fan noise) in a different room.
3. AC noise! That took some messing around with, but I finally got it right with a combination of power conditioners and circuit separation.

WRT wifi transport, yes it is currently limited to 16/44.1. OTOH, I've run tests trying to overload my network and never came close to producing playback hiccups. I'd say home networks don't have enough traffic for it to be a concern, especially considering that most consumer-grade network equipment now runs 1000Base-T or 802.11g/n.

I guess it doesn't hurt to make people aware of the points you both brought up but for the following reasons they have all been non issues for me in the 10 years that I've been listening to music from hard drives:

1. Use a quiet computer and a reliable, low noise hard drive. For example, Seagate had a well deserved reputation for reliability although judging from recent user reviews on Amazon.com things seem to have changed in just the last year. Never-the-less, the Seagate Barracuda ST3160023AS hard drive in my Dell has been reliable going on 3 years and it's as quiet as a church mouse. Before that, the Seagate in my old Dell was a reliable and quiet work horse for 7 years and it still works today.

Having said that, no matter how reliable the hard drive is that one buys, only a fool doesn't back up important files. Last week, Best Buy in Canada was selling 500 GB Hewlett Packard external hard drives for $111 each (I checked today and they're back at $199). Whether it's $100 or $200, if you can afford any Bryston you can afford 2 500 gig HD. The first external I use to quickly back up and transport between my other computers. The second external I update once or twice a month and keep it hidden in a place where no robber would ever think of looking for it.

Last, last resort are music files along with everything else backed up on DVDs and stored in a safety deposit box in case of catastrophic flooding or fire or a robber who gets very lucky.

2. From the hard drive, use the digital coax or optical output from a hi quality aftermarket sound card designed specifically for audio (M-Audio, RME, Lynx Studio etc). Why anyone would use the analogue outputs of even a hi end sound card and subject their audio to the hell that is going on inside a computer case is beyond me.

3. As for cable lengths being an issue, here is a link to one well respected audio engineer who maintains that when it comes to digital cables, longer is better:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue14/spdif.htm

I have used both 12 foot opticals and 12 foot coax with no problems. I, along with friends, have extensively - albeit non scientifically - compared coax and optical cables and we are satisfied that there is absolutely no material difference between well designed examples of each. While coax is generally regarded as superior, there are many who believe that for longer runs, optical is better than coaxial. I think it has to do with refraction.

From there, the 12 ft coax goes into a hi quality digital switcher with selectable input and output word lengths. From the coax out of the switcher it's right into the DAC section of the B60.

4. As for hum, if I press play in WinAmp, then hit pause, put my ear next to the speaker and then turn the volume on my B60 to max (with mute off of course), all I hear is the sweet sound of...nothing. In fairness, as per Chris Russell in a Stereopile interview a few years back, compared to separates, integrateds are less prone to hum issues by virtue of having a single ground plane. That's just one of the many reasons I chose the B60.

The double edged sword of any hi resolution system is that you quickly find out how rare genuinely great or even good recordings are. That said, when the software is well recorded - which is the gorilla in the room that no one seems to have mentioned in this thread which dwarfs any and all differences between HDD vs CDP, MP3 vs lossless, $100 DAC vs $2000 DAC, Coax vs Toslink, (pre)amp A vs (pre)amp B and even active vs passive amplification - the music sounds simply marvelous. 

As for the difference in sound quality between CD/DVD transport into DAC vs Hard Drive into the same DAC (which has changed over the years)? All other things being equal - I've given up trying to tell the difference and no one who's been over in the past 10 years has been able to tell the difference either.

Even if hard disk drives offered only 80% of the sound quality of CDP or Transport plus DAC, IMO they would still stomp all over the latter options because they put the listener in total control of the music. As picky as I am about sound quality, I'm even more picky when it comes to music and of the hundreds of CDs I own less than 10 have more good / great songs on them than bad / crappy songs.

Most of the CDs I have I bought I bought for one or two great songs and who in their right mind wants to be getting up every 7 minutes to change discs when you can have thousands of great songs at your finger tips? For example, with the current playlist I have on, I could listen to 2469 songs or 173 hours, 28 minutes and 2 seconds without repeating the same song. Theoretically, that's 7.2 days straight without a repeat (in practice, it's actually quite difficult to design a shuffle algorithm that is truly random) and an average of less than 3 songs ripped per CD owned.

For me, the flexibility, convenience and control afforded by hard drive based sound systems are the main reasons why there was - and will be - no going back to CD players - even ones as great as the BCD-1.

[James Tanner]

Hi Jabroni,

Thanks for the input. 

One question - I have always been told that Optical conversion -- Toslink is the worst of the interfaces because the electrical to optical and optical to electrical conversion adds to the jitter. Toslink creates additional stages that the clock must pass through, picking up jitter due to power/ground noise and the uncertainty of when the edge (logic change) transitions get detected?

I guess what your saying is if there is a difference it is not a substantial enough difference to affect the audio quality?


james

[Jabroni]

Hi Jabroni,

Thanks for the input. 

One question - I have always been told that Optical conversion -- Toslink is the worst of the interfaces because the electrical to optical and optical to electrical conversion adds to the jitter. Toslink creates additional stages that the clock must pass through, picking up jitter due to power/ground noise and the uncertainty of when the edge (logic change) transitions get detected?

I guess what your saying is if there is a difference it is not a substantial enough difference to affect the audio quality?


james

James,

Exactly - especially when there are other parts of the audio chain which are orders of magnitude more important in terms of affecting ultimate sound quality.

I just wrote in the SP3 thread that back then I honestly thought that optical from my soundcard sounded better than coax. Since then, I have had the chance to do more extensive tests with various friends over and as mentioned above, we are satisfied that there is no material difference. 

Along the same lines, it's a bit off topic but this is probably a good time to restate my opinion on your inboard DAC that I had installed in my B60 a couple years back. Here's some of what I wrote on June 23, 2005:

"I was ready to be mightily impressed, especially after all the rave reviews but right now I'm just hoping that the majority of you DAC owners can honestly tell me that there is a SIGNIFICANT improvement over time because at the moment I'm not impressed at all.  To be perfectly honest, I feel like I've wasted $1 300 because to my ears, there is absolutely no material difference between switching from the DAC inside the B60 and the analogue output of my Sony JA20ES MD recorder / player used soley as a DAC.  The source is a Sony RDR 900 DVD recorder / player with the Bryston DAC getting the coaxial feed and the JA20 the optical feed. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it sounds bad - the well built, 20lb, 6 year old JA20ES uses the same DAC and output stage that was in the $3000 Sony XA7ES CD player which was rated Class A by Stereopile. I'm not a happy camper because as per James Tanner, the Bryston DAC and output stage are supposed to be the current state of the art; the XA7ES was more or less state of the art 6+ years ago."

On June 28th, 2005 I followed up with:

"I just want to be clear - I'm not trying to trash the Bryston dac - it sounds very, very good but no better than what I already owned so this rant is basically because I'm pissed at myself for assuming it would be better.  After reading dozens and dozens of reviews of hi end dacs, I've come to the conclusion that if you read between the lines they basically all sound the same - the differences are microscopic with words like "slightly" and "a bit" used over and over in almost all reviews of dacs from 1000$ to 10 000$ plus - so (potential) buyer beware."

After many months of listening I realized that there is a small but material difference between the Bryston DAC and the DAC in my Sony JA20ES. I would bet $1000 that I could tell the difference between the two level matched in a manner that statistically exceeds chance. For comparison, I wouldn't bet 10 cents that I could consistently differentiate between analogue cables not designed as tone controls, digital Coax vs Toslink or a HDD vs CDP to give but a few examples.

To be more precise about the differences between the two, the Bryston DAC sounds more spacious and detailed than the Sony. It also had slightly more bass which is in itself surprising because the Sony had significantly more bass than a very well regarded surround processor that I was (considering) using as a switcher at the time. Finally, the Brystan DAC was smoother and more forgiving in that it could be played longer and louder before listener fatigue set in. In my mind, it is this smoothness which, for whatever reason, only became apparent after extended listening that ended up making a small but material improvement over the Sony.

Chris Russel and Paul Barton, two engineers that I have immense respect for, both maintain that audio equipment sounds out of the box as good as it's ever going to sound and for the most part I agree. That said, I also think that there is something to be said for extended listening - maybe we don't know everything that we don't know.

While I'm at it, I have to say that there is also something to be said for having women listen to and evaluate your system. I love testing friends who come over and I have found that for whatever reason, women tend to be more consistent in discerning subtle but material differences in my system or between recordings. You'd be surprised how many men - many of whom claim that there are massive differences between well ripped and converted MP3s and uncompressed CDs yet they can't even tell the difference between a straight digital copy of a CD using a component CD recorder and a copy using the deck's 20 bit A/D converters! By contrast, women tend to get this relatively easy test right about 75% of the time. Things that make you go, 'hmmm'.

As ever, IMO - and I think it's something that can't be repeated enough - unless you're talking about differences between average recordings vs great recordings, active, boxless speakers vs passive, boxed speakers or audio friendly rooms vs audio unfriendly rooms, all of which can be huge - to the point that they are instantly recognisable even to children - the differences between well designed audio gear is in general, comparatively subtle.

Never-the-less, as some wise person once observed, the difference between ordinairy and extra-ordinairy is that little extra and while it did take a while, I can now say with absolutely no reservations that the Bryston DAC upgrade has that little extra that IMO, makes a small but material improvement over an already very well regarded DAC.

Let me get back on the topic of this thread for a second before I end: here's a list of the songs that were playing in the last 30 minutes while I wrote this post - something that wouldn't be possible with even CDRs (cuzz no one would be crazy enough to make such an eclectic but great mix):

Loreena McKennitt - The Lady Of Shallott
Coolio - Rollin' With My Homies
Shawn Colvin - Sonny Came Home
Eva Cassidy - Say Goodbye
Seal - Kiss From A Rose
Steve Miller - Jet Airliner (with the extended intro)
Foxy Brown - Oh Yeah
Bon Jovi - Bad Medecine
Bruce Hornsby - Walkin' In Memphis

So yes, the future belongs to the hard disk drive - and the future is now!

God Bless

[James Tanner]

Hi Jabroni,

Boy I'm glad we came through in the end!
Can I ask what the rest of your system is - I know you have the B60 Dac of course.

james