Bryston BDA-1 DAC, any thoughts?

Tamara -- Are you sure that the Technics has digital outputs? They made various models of 110 disk cd changers. I took a look at photos of some of them in eBay listings, and none of the ones I looked at had digital outputs.

Re your question, though, I would expect the degree of improvement you would perceive by using a Bryston DAC to be dependent on the quality of the rest of the system, particularly the speakers. It might be overkill for a secondary system.

Regards,
-- Al

Thanks AL
Yes, It is the SLP 110, and it has a toslink optical out. The reason I am asking the question is that I might consider connecting that to the main system every once in a while as I might, say, a music server of some type. I guess the jist of the inquiry is just how important is the unit that is reading the 1s and 0s. I have a feeling that doing that might be the real test of jitter correction. Surely someone has connected a not so great player. Just an interesting question to me.

I own the bryston bda-1 and i run it primarily from the aes/ebu input. I use a stello u3 as a digital transport for my computer files. It sounds fantastic, especially with classical and jazz. With rock its pretty good too. To be honest, i really feel that it sounds a touch cold and thin compared to my vinyl playback system though, even when the bryston is at its best with the stello.... Mind you, im not sure anything can sound as good as a good vinyl system. My vinyl system is a cardas rewired technics 1200 mk3d with silversonic output rcas, a fidelity research fr-1 mk3f mc cart, and a home-made diy pass labs designed pearl 2 phonostage that sounds so sexy its all i ever want to listen to since i built it.
But this is about the digital domain.

Im 30y/o.. Raised with records, then tapes, then cds which i always thought of as the ultimate and eventually into mp3 and then finally 24bit hi sample rate flac/alac files. So im fully invested into digital. so im not a stuborn old vinylhead with a closed mind... But i have to say witn complete confidence, the old vinyl junkies of yesteryears and today have it right. vinyl soud s better provided the investment has been made into it.. i have many albums in several mediums, always imprefer the sound of vinyl, despite the need to get up twice as often to flip and clean.

The bryston dac is,a fantastic digital Decoder especially when playing digital files via my stello u3 usb to aes/ebu transport.
My rotel cd player sounds better directly though when compared to using the spidif input of the bryston to play the rotel. I dont understand why, but it does. When i bought the bryston it was to play high sample rate digital flac/alac files from my computer, which is by far what it does best. But out ofmcuriosity i tesed the spdif output ofmthenrotel into the dac and the cd player sounds best without the dac.. The dac loses some much needed warmth that the cd player provides.

As for the cd outputs on cd players and the spdif input of the bryston. Well. I did an experient several times, Fully expecting and wanting the bryston to improve the sound out of an already truly wonderful sounding top rotel hdcd player. .. To my dismay, shock and surprise, i prefered the cdplayer to the brystons decoding ofmthe same cd. .. The cdpayer didm better job decoding the cds than the bryson. The rotel was more rounded and embodied. more lifelike, albeit its soundstage a tad narrower. I still i a/b it all the time thinking perhaps its my mood that has me prefer the rca audio output of the cd deck to the spdif.. . The bryston bda-1 just sounds a touch on the dry side. Occasionally a touch too forward, verrrrry wide and incredible imaging.. But i pine for a little more sweetness and warmth.

I read an article not long ago. The author argued that most disk transports have poorly desiged spdif outputs.. Perhaps thats what it is.. Maybe the rotel has a poor spdif output, becuas the aes/ebu input of the bryston is sweeter than any spdif source ive tried.

All said though... Despite the fact that the bryston ismthe best dac ive ever heard, i still wish it was on the sweeter/warmer side. Id love a mod aimed at improving the output components.. I supose its just that im spoiled by the class a circuitry of my phonostage.

The bryston demonstrates a very remarkable soundstage. Wide and deep, though sometimes a little too forward..
the bryston handles lower gain recordings better than than higher gain recordings... Which is why i feel it does so well with classical via its high sample rate file playback via the stello transport, Which rules all digital sources ive heard easily.

Formosawest:

Always wonder why folks reply to a 3 year old post, but since your comments are right in line with some current observations I have made, here goes.

I have a Bryston BDA-1 and used it for a number of years, primarily because I had some issues with the analog output stages of a Cambridge Audio CD player (840c) I was using. I love Class A SS amplification and the opamp/IC output stages on the CA just did not cut it. Female vocals and some horns sounded quite strident; micro-phonics and ambiance sounded overemphasized to me with the CA. I then tried outputting the digital output to the Bryston and things sounded much better. But I would assume it is not always the case; I ran some digital out (SPDIF) from a Sony player as an experiment and the opposite was true.

But to the point of my response, I soon substituted the CA 840c with a "memory" transport PS Audio PWT and fed that via AES/EBU to the Bryston and another level of detail and resolution opened up. Much better than any CD transport/deck I had heard up to this point (but I was not comparing Esoteric level gear). I began hearing details on my 80's version CDs that I only remember on the vinyl. All these years I blamed bad pressings and early D/A cd technology, but in reality that info was there, just not getting it via PCM transports.

One small example. On my Caravan album "New Symphonia" (have both vinyl and 80's cd, recent remaster), there is a section where the drummer drops a drumstick just behind the lead singer in a vocal. Have always heard this clearly in vinyl and never in the cd version (not clearly anyway) until I got the PWT. There it was again. And that was not the only case. Clearly the memory transports are better IMHO than all but the very expensive (ie 2-10x) PCM transports. I believe that is simply because the memory transports have time to "attempt" to make a perfect digital copy of the FILE, not just an analog playback of a bit stream with error correction. But since they are still trying to play a CD in real time, they do not have forever to rip a perfect (bit perfect) replica of the sound source.

So if this is true, what about (bit) perfect ripping of a CD music source with software like dBPoweramp and playback through a system like the Bryston BDP-1/2? Well, I just got a BDP-1 and it is even better than my PWT IMHO. Playing FLAC files ripped from a given CD, and A/B'ing with the same CD in the PWT, with both the PWT and the BDP-1 feeding the BDA-1, direct comparison strongly favors the BDP-1 with the digitally ripped files via dBpoweramp. Makes sense to me because the dbpoweramp files are the only real assurance that the digital representation of the CD is bit perfect.

While the PWT uses a CDROM drive, it has a limited period of time (and buffer space) to "rip" a perfect digital copy, whereas dbpoweramp can make as many passes as it needs to of a particular sector in your computer optical drive, comparing results with an international database of prior ripped cds. It also has the advantage of being on most users PC systems having Gigs of RAM and multi-core GHz CPUs for crunching. Not hardware that even a $4k memory player can afford onboard. Once a digital copy is obtained, the Bryston BDP-1 does an excellent job of turning that file into SPDIF bitstream for the DAC.

So although the infrastructure investment/time in ripping all my CDs so they can be played through the BDP-1 is serious, I have found the sonic results to be worth it, as I am re-discovering my music collection yet again.

I am sure many out there will counter that high end PCM transports will sound just as good. But I ask how much further can you go if you have a bit perfect representation of the music? That is the ultimate goal for which all transports ultimately aspire, no matter how beefy the transport, how true the rotation rate and speed, and how low the jitter. It all must end in a bit perfect representation of the music file.