BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)

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KeithA

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #240 on: 22 Jun 2010, 09:31 pm »
Yes but you are comparing Logitech vs Bryston in the field of audio playback.... The Bryston will have its signature sound. Logitech hasnt done anything in the field of audio thats really noteworthy other than these recent computer adapters. We will have to see but i bet the Bryston will beat hands down sonically.

It doesn't matter who you are comparing. It doesn't matter what Logitech/Slim Devices did over the last, say 30 years. If a new product comes out that competes with the long time stalwarts of the industry, it deserves attention. I've been a Bryston 'flag waver' for a long time and always will be. I own a Transporter and use it to feed my BDA-1 as a transport. In combination with the Duet controller, it a marvellous piece of equipment.

I'm sure the BDP-1 will sound terrific. I will likely buy one. I'd love to put it head to head with the Transporter fed via wifi just to see what the differences really are. I suspect they are minimal if non-existent. I have compared the BDA-1 DAC to the internal DAC of the Transporter and yes...I prefer the BDA-1. However, for me, they are so close that I could live with both. However, choose the live with the BDA-1. It's a great piece of gear.

Sure, the Transporter or similar gear may not be for everyone, but it's ceratinly for a lot of people. I'll never go back to a CD player in my system now that I have the Transporter (and likely a BDP-1). However, there are features on the Transporter that the BDP-1 will not replace as my main player. I also have a living room system that I feed via a Logitech Duet. So, the wifi works great for me and even if there is a small amount of 'performance' given up....I'll wave goodbye for the convenience  :wink:

Keith

mcullinan

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #241 on: 22 Jun 2010, 10:21 pm »
I own a BDA-1 and a SB Touch. Personally I dont think Slim devices was around 30 years ago but it is a great product feeding the BDA-1. The interface is pretty good and things like interfaces take time to hone and improve. I dont think a year would cut it. The Bryston front end sans DAc seems like a steep price for entry and will be more of a hobbyist tool than a fully functional piece of audio equip. Time will tell of course.

KeithA

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #242 on: 22 Jun 2010, 10:55 pm »
Personally I dont think Slim devices was around 30 years ago but it is a great product feeding the BDA-1.

Of course not..I was merely making a point that it was a 'new' product :wink: It wouldn't matter if it was around that long or not...if something is new and credible, it can't be fully discounted becuase it has no history :wink:

Keith

ricko01

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #243 on: 22 Jun 2010, 11:31 pm »
Yes but you are comparing Logitech vs Bryston in the field of audio playback.... The Bryston will have its signature sound. Logitech hasnt done anything in the field of audio thats really noteworthy other than these recent computer adapters. We will have to see but i bet the Bryston will beat hands down sonically.

firstly it was Slimdevices that released the Transporter.

secondly, although measurements arent the be all and end all... the Transporter measures very well as per Stereophile and other magazines that do provide measurements. And of course in the real world of listening it has been well received by reviewers and end users alike.

Fundamentally (if we assume that both will buffer the data they receive via their respective ethernet/usb connections), we have zero jitter at the point of data stream reception... but the internals are different from then on (custom board design/software in the Trannsporter verses customized "off the shelf" with the Bryston).

I am not short changing the BDP-1 here with the term "off the shelf"... but it just reflects the different skills each company brought to the table. Slimdevices was from the computer hitech side and Bryston from the high end.

So yes... a comparison will be very interesting.... but I dont think the BDP-1 will superior... different yes... but not superior.





werd

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #244 on: 22 Jun 2010, 11:36 pm »
firstly it was Slimdevices that released the Transporter.

secondly, although measurements arent the be all and end all... the Transporter measures very well as per Stereophile and other magazines that do provide measurements. And of course in the real world of listening it has been well received by reviewers and end users alike.

Fundamentally (if we assume that both will buffer the data the receive via their respective ethernet/usb connections), we have zero jitter at the point of data stream reception... but the internals are different from then on (custom board design/software in the Trannsporter verses customized "off the shelf" with the Bryston).

I am not short changing the BDP-1 here with the term "off the shelf"... but it just reflects the different skills each company brought to the table. Slimdevices was from the computer hitech side and Bryston from the high end.

So yes... a comparison will be very interesting.... but I dont think the BDP-1 will superior... different yes... but not superior.

Its hard to say, the whole thing is very confusing. There are so many products out there now, including the logitech. Its makes hard to wait on the bdp1 then take the plunge and get something else.

ricko01

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #245 on: 22 Jun 2010, 11:49 pm »
Its hard to say, the whole thing is very confusing. There are so many products out there now, including the logitech. Its makes hard to wait on the bdp1 then take the plunge and get something else.

From my perspective, both the Transporter and the BDP-1 take the correct approach... which is no frickn hard drive in the component. Any device that purports to provide the highest fidelity cannot contain a hard drive.

Secondly they also take the same approach in not providing a user inteface device or hard drive pack that you MUST purchase as part of the overall product and then charge $15K for it all.

What they provide is a building block.... add in your own hard drive/PC/control device/DAC ... that way you can change/replace these peripherals easily... and you are not trapped into say expensive disk drive upgrades from the devices vendor.

The road Bryston has taken with this is fairly unique... the only hiend vendor that provides a similar type of platform is Linn and they are very expensive.

So a Transporter/Linn/BDP-1 bakeoff would be very insightful



srb

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #246 on: 23 Jun 2010, 01:05 am »
From my perspective, both the Transporter and the BDP-1 take the correct approach... which is no frickn hard drive in the component. Any device that purports to provide the highest fidelity cannot contain a hard drive.

How did you come to this conclusion?
 
Steve

sfraser

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #247 on: 23 Jun 2010, 02:36 am »
I had a couple of hours to listen to music this past fathers day, (little feat, neil young BTW). While listening I spent a lot of time thinking about my squeezeboxes and how they would fair out in back to back tests with the BDP when connected  to the same high quality DAC and playing the same source material. I just can't imagine there being that much of a difference. And while I wish James and Bryston the best of luck with the BDP-1, "if" the music does not sound a lot better with the BDP-1, I would we be hard pressed to  trade in all the convienence of the squeezeboxes, the graphic Remotes and having all my music in one central location in my house (computer in the basement) and being able to access it in seconds anywhere else in the house. I came to the conclusion that perhaps the perfect product would be for  Bryston To offer as an option, a squeezebox client software package for the BDP-1. What do think James? I have heard rumors that Logitech might discontinue the transporter at some point in the future, To me the BDP would be a shoe-in as a replacement .

Food for thought.....in the mean time I can't weight till we can get some comparison testing done!

Cheers guys/gals

Napalm

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #248 on: 23 Jun 2010, 02:45 am »
Interesting. The folks in the Logitech forums have discovered the BDP-1 lol.

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=79732

Nap.  :wink:


Napalm

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #249 on: 23 Jun 2010, 02:51 am »
Even more interesting:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=79742

We're endlessly talking here about details, but in the grand scheme of things, to whom would you want to talk if you have issues, to James or to Logitech call centre?

Nap.

ricko01

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #250 on: 23 Jun 2010, 03:37 am »

How did you come to this conclusion?
 
Steve

Emphasis on "no disk drive"

1- disk drives are physically noisey because they are mechanical...so you will hear that in your room

2- they produce electrical noise pollution within the component

3- disk drives typically require the component to have some kind of fan for cooling... so  increased noise (sure you can go fanless but that means  much larger components)

4- you potentially need at least two drives in the component for redundancy (unless the component software can allow easy to execute backup to/restore from a remote drive....many dont)

5- disk upgrades become harder/more expensive with "in component" hard drives... some vendors will even lock you into having to buy upgrades from them

6- many vendors will "boot" the OS off the harddrive rather than from flash memory so when the drive goes... you are really dead in the water


So having the disk drives elsewhere... controlled by another device (PC or NAS) and connected to the component via some kind of cable that allows long cable runs (ethernet/USB/firewire)... means you can use an "out of room" robust NAS with built in redundancy/resilency and easier management and upgrade of the disks with the music




werd

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #251 on: 23 Jun 2010, 03:43 am »
^^^^

nice post

Ryanz

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #252 on: 23 Jun 2010, 04:49 am »
Even more interesting:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=79742

We're endlessly talking here about details, but in the grand scheme of things, to whom would you want to talk if you have issues, to James or to Logitech call centre?

Nap.

Solid point Nap.

sfraser

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #253 on: 23 Jun 2010, 02:05 pm »
Yes, support good be an issue, but think of the possibilities? From what James has said, the BDP will have a Linux O/S, and the squeeze server code is opensource as well. As an option the customer could install the squeezebox player software, and connect to there existing squeezeserver. The BDP would appear as another player on the network (a steel cased Duet). There are commercially available NAS/ripperdevices on the market which come pre-installed with squeezeserver software. This optional software for the BDP would also leapfrog the product into the mainstream, while still allowing Bryston to concentrate on the product original goal... Decode files and stream/output them   To a DAC.

Sorry James, that's what happens when you put an IP addressable interface on a entertainment product ; )

konut

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Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #254 on: 23 Jun 2010, 02:44 pm »
  As an option the customer could install the squeezebox player software, and connect to there existing squeezeserver.

This would be a welcome addition as there is an Ethernet port. The problem would be with support for all the plug-ins available. For example there is a convolver, the Ingus plug-in, but it requires a fair amount of computing power that the processor probably cannot handle, especially with higher bit rate and sampled files. I don't think the current software supports 192KHz/24Bit files.

Edit: This is whats in the SB Touch
Freescale i.MX35 533 MHz ARM11 / 128MB 32-bit bus DDR2 /28MB NAND flash, running SqueezeOS 7.5.0. which is the embedded Linux distribution.
« Last Edit: 23 Jun 2010, 04:51 pm by konut »

skunark

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Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #255 on: 23 Jun 2010, 04:58 pm »
Emphasis on "no disk drive"

1- disk drives are physically noisey because they are mechanical...so you will hear that in your room
You still need a USB drive and if planned to use it with a 1TB of music, then your only viable option currently is a hard disk drive, perhaps larger SSDs will be out.    So the BDP-1 doesn't solve this issue in all situations, perhaps when they implement the NAS feature then it might.

Quote
2- they produce electrical noise pollution within the component
Since USB, IDE, SATA, Ethernet and even PCIe can all share the same analog phy design you will have the same electrical noise pollution whether the HDD was internal using SATA/IDE/USB or external using USB.  The BDP-1 doesn't solve this issue.

Quote
3- disk drives typically require the component to have some kind of fan for cooling... so  increased noise (sure you can go fanless but that means  much larger components)
Select a mobile drive and you can go fanless pretty easily otherwise it just takes a bit of design skill to properly design a case for ambient cooling.

Quote
4- you potentially need at least two drives in the component for redundancy (unless the component software can allow easy to execute backup to/restore from a remote drive....many dont)
Redundancy isn't a form of backup in my book, but a form of reliability. If a HDD was included internally there should be a mechanism to backup the drive to either a file share or to an external drive. Since the BDP-1 doesn't provide that ripping mechanism, this isn't required, even if it had an internal HDD.

Quote
5- disk upgrades become harder/more expensive with "in component" hard drives... some vendors will even lock you into having to buy upgrades from them
Design the box so the HDD is user serviceable.  Perhaps use enterprise standard for hot-swappable drive bays where they slide in and out.


srb

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #256 on: 23 Jun 2010, 05:14 pm »
Design the box so the HDD is user serviceable.  Perhaps use enterprise standard for hot-swappable drive bays where they slide in and out.

Yes.  I don't think a user will need to be swapping drives in and out regularly, so it doesn't necessarily have to be hot-swappable.
 
I envision a cutout in the front panel, similar to a CD drive drawer cutout, with the aluminum insert simply secured by two countersunk allen screws.  The bay could accept either 2.5" hard drives or SSD drives directly mating to SATA data and power connectors.
 
Right now I think the largest 2.5" drive is currently 640GB 750GB which will probably be 1GB in another year.  One could start out with a hard drive now and replace it a few years when the cost of SSD is more reasonable.
 
Of course network access will need to allow for backup to a network drive as well as allow copying of ripped files to the internal drive.  Network shares should be accessible as data sources if the user doesn't want to use an internal drive.
 
Steve
« Last Edit: 25 Jun 2010, 11:14 am by srb »

werd

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #257 on: 23 Jun 2010, 06:40 pm »
I can understand if somebody isnt comfortable around computers,etc, why they  would want an internal HD. But what bewilders me is why so many people who are clearly comfortable/knowledgable in computers. Why they want to up the cost on this unit heavily when it can be done better on your own  much cheaper, and more customized to one's preferences?

ricko01

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #258 on: 23 Jun 2010, 08:21 pm »
You still need a USB drive and if planned to use it with a 1TB of music, then your only viable option currently is a hard disk drive, perhaps larger SSDs will be out.    So the BDP-1 doesn't solve this issue in all situations, perhaps when they implement the NAS feature then it might.
Since USB, IDE, SATA, Ethernet and even PCIe can all share the same analog phy design you will have the same electrical noise pollution whether the HDD was internal using SATA/IDE/USB or external using USB.  The BDP-1 doesn't solve this issue.
Select a mobile drive and you can go fanless pretty easily otherwise it just takes a bit of design skill to properly design a case for ambient cooling.
Redundancy isn't a form of backup in my book, but a form of reliability. If a HDD was included internally there should be a mechanism to backup the drive to either a file share or to an external drive. Since the BDP-1 doesn't provide that ripping mechanism, this isn't required, even if it had an internal HDD.
Design the box so the HDD is user serviceable.  Perhaps use enterprise standard for hot-swappable drive bays where they slide in and out.

Technically a "USB drive" can be a "thumb drive" or a "RAID" unit with 4 or more drives. The BDP-1 OS doesnt care or understand what its talking to as long the device presents itself to the BDP-1 as a USB drive.

So the best "pure" solution  for the BDP-1 is:

1- Purchase a 2 drive RAID 0 solution (ie one drive mirrors the other) or if you need lots of space a 4 drive RAID-5 solution from someone like LaCie

2- connect this to your PC and burn baby burn

3- get a super long USB cable (with built in extender)... say 15-25 feet long

4- stick the RAID unit in one room and run the cable to the BDP-1

5- make sure you connect the RAID unit to a UPS power unit


note: You do not need to be a computer wizz to configure the RAID unit... they come pre-configured and if the setting isnt what you want it is easily changed. You also cant screw it up as they are an "appliance" with a very limited choice of options.

This solves all the issues. You get a robust disk drive platform with automatic disk redundancy. The drives are hot-swappable.

I aggree that if you are smart enough then backing this RAID unit up makes sense but I disagree about the noise.  It doesnt matter how noisey (mechanical/electrical) it is... the BDP-1 wont see this from another room over USB.

If you have more money, you can buy commerically available units that provide not only the RAID stuff but also have an inbuilt CD drive. These are basically customised PC's

And of course for the computer geeks, just build your own PC with a RAID card and drives.

So thats three levels of "NAS"  for varying levels of computer skills.

While in the pure technical sense a RAID enabled USB connectible disk unit isnt NAS, in the broader sense it is a NAS. NAS typically implies connection over Ethernet but in the more broader sense, a RAID enabled USB drive unit connected to the BDP-1 is a "network" (although its point to point).

srb

Re: BRYSTON DIGITAL PLAYER (BDP-1)
« Reply #259 on: 23 Jun 2010, 08:37 pm »
Why are you so hung up on RAID?  I run RAID 5 at work, but only because I can't afford even one hour of downtime.
 
RAID isn't a backup.  At home, I run nightly scheduled incremental backups to a single NAS drive, and should my music drive fail, I might be down an hour or two.  No big deal.  Much simpler and less energy.
 
Steve