Ok, I think I’ve taken all this in, now if Bryston had announced a Digital Player (I believe it was announced as such which muddied the waters), one that is an all in one box BDA-1 DAC/BDP-1 ala BCD-1, I’m sure this would have been less confusing, sort of like when the BDA-1 DAC came out people asked if there was to be a Bryston transport, in this case it’s the other way around.
With so many out there going strictly straight to digital storage it might make a lot of sense, but there are many myself included, that are still trying to hold onto the concept of serious listening as something where we allocate time for it, (like preparing for a live performance but at home on the “Stereo”) and that mass storage is almost sacrilegious taking on air of personal “Musak”.
This is probably one of the reasons why vinyl is still held in such esteem in many circles and also why not everyone has not transferred their CDs to the PC, what’s the point, by the time you boot the system, launch the programs, scroll through menus your CD or LP would already be playing and that’s if you actual had a computer in the listening (living room).
But what I’m really getting at is that we all agree CDs were always a limited format for high-end playback and storage from the get go, we were all waiting for that hi-res, commercially accepted playback medium, but here we are 30 years down the road and still buying 16bit CDs.
Bryston’s obviously on the right track and if we can get the recording industry to unanimously start offering commercially available hi-res files the BDA-1 DAC/BDP-1 combo or all in one unit makes a lot of sense.
Robert