Hi Guys,
I’ve had a little while to play with the BDP-1 now, much to my wifes annoyance as she wanted to crack out the Christmas CD’s
Well, I really didn’t want to get into the whole ‘This is a game changer’ excitement, but this really is going to change how I listen to music, and tbh almost make the BCD-1 reduntant.
I’ve only had a chance at the moment to listen to some Beatles, Bowie, Carpenters and NIN 24bit files so far, but they really do sound amazing, I thought I’d mainly use the BDP to play back ripped to Flac CD’s and not really ever getting into paying for downloadable music, but 24bit files sound so much better than CD I can see myself now purposefully hunting down 24bit downloads to listen too.
I’ve got several of the albums in 24bit and also in 16bit CD form to do a direct comparison and the difference really is night and day, the soundstage is far fuller, the bass punchier and the so much more detail, for me this is where downloading music makes sense rather than the MP3’s on Itunes.
Initial impressions on the BDP-1 are that it’s far heavier than I thought it would be and has the excellent build quality that you’d expect from Bryston. On the negative side it’s a real shame that Bryston can’t still source the same buttons as the BDA-1 and also the green lights on the BDP are a different colour green to the rest of my system, which when you’ve got a 100% Bryston system is a bit of a shame but only a slight annoyance and nothing more.
Controlling it from its front panel buttons is extremely easy but once it’s connected to the network it really comes into its own, controlling through my Iphone and Ipod Touch is extremely easy and very satisfying, I’ve now got a reason to get an Ipad though, as the Bryston Max interface is definitely the one to use as you get all the song bitrate information and for me is the interface I want to use, but is desighned to be used on a bigger screen, I haven’t had time yet to look at the Mpod app or Minion for Firefox.
Tonight I’ve got some friends coming round so I want to compare playing the same files from the Flash drive and on a usb conventional Hard Disk to see if having no moving part of the Flash drive will realy make any difference, I’m hoping not as sticking loads of music on a 500GB disk will definantly make life easier.
As for the overall sound, it’s still got that ‘Bryston’ sound, ie, loads of detail and very revealing, nothing is hidden, but listening to the 24bit files so far, there are no hard edges, none of the Brittleness you sometimes get with CD, it just sounds right, and extremely listenable.
I’m looking forward to ripping some of my favourite cd’s to flac + some problem ones that just didn’t sound good on the BCD to see how they sound.
Here’s some pics of my Finished Bryston Rack
Have a great Christmas all
