"Digital Separates Product of the Year Award" 2009 - The Absolute Sound Magazine
"Golden Ear Award" 2009 - The Absolute Sound Magazine
"Five Stars" - What Hi-Fi? Magazine
The Bryston BDA-1 is a State-of-the-Art external Stereo D to A converter using fully discrete analog Class-A proprietary Bryston analog circuits, two independent analog and digital linear power supplies and dual Crystal CS-4398 DACs.
A very unique feature of the Bryston BDA-1 External DAC is the ability to disengage the upsampling feature. You can compare an upsampled signal with a non-upsampled signal simply by engaging a switch on the front panel. This feature is available on 44.1K, 88.2K, 48K, and 96K.
"Bryston is on a Roll"
"Bryston clearly is on a roll," notes Alan Taffel in the June/July 2009 issue of The Absolute Sound magazine, which honored the BDA-1 with its coveted Golden Ear Award for superior performance. "The BDA-1... represents yet another great audio value from Canada. More importantly, this DAC epitomizes Bryston's commitment to getting the music right."
The BDA-1 also won the "Digital Separates Product of the Year Award" for 2009 in the The Absolute Sound. According to the magazine, "This new DAC, based on Bryston's highly successful BCD-1 CD player, breaks new ground in its price range. It does this with a remarkable ability to resolve information in a musically coherent way, rather than by raw sonic analysis."
"Best-Sounding Digital Playback I've Ever Heard"
"The Bryston BDA-1 let me enjoy the best-sounding digital playback I've ever heard in my listening room," raves Larry Greenhill in Stereophile magazine, February 2010. "At the end of my listening sessions for the BDA-1, I put down my notebook and picked up my checkbook. I give the BDA-1 my heartfelt recommendation for the highest rating in Stereophile's 'Recommended Components.'"
"Tonal Purity, Detail, and 'Polish'"
"One tends to approach a piece of kit like this with high expectations, and we were encouraged to find them almost immediately fulfilled," reports Richard Black in the February 2009 issue of England's Hi-Fi Choice magazine. "In fact, we were really most impressed, not only with the general degree of tonal purity and detail exhibited, but also with the unusual degree of what, for want of a better word, we'll call 'polish' on the sound."
"An Excellent DAC"
"The BDA-1 is an excellent DAC and will produce great results provided your source (and source material) is good enough," observes the February 2009 issue of England's What Hi-Fi? magazine, which awards the Bryston its top rating of Five Stars. "What you get is a tonally neutral presentation of considerable insight and strong dynamics."
"Particularly Fine Rendition of Voices"
"It has admirably even-handed tonal characteristics with particularly fine rendition of voices, maintaining the delicate balance between vowels and consonants without sibilance, chestiness or any of the other all-too-common misdemeanours and it extends effortlessly to the frequency extremes," notes TechRadar.com.
"Solid Mastery of Digital Processing Procedures "
"With their BDA-1, the folks at Bryston have demonstrated their solid mastery of digital processing procedures," notes Cyr-Marc Debien in the February 2009 issue of Quebec's Sound and Image magazine. Before you purchase your next DAC, make sure that you think hard about what may possibly become the heart of your audio system. Then go and take a serious look at the Bryston BDA-1."
Debien admired the BDA-1 so much, Bryston reports that he bought the review unit to keep.
"Vast, Clean, Transparent and Harmonic"
"The Bryston is well worth the money," says the February 2009 issue of Germany's Hi-Fi & Record magazine. "This inconspicuous converter delivers from up to eight digital sources vast, clean, transparent and harmonic results which are even more stunning if the sources are of high resolution material."
"Be prepared to be startled by its dynamic prowess and bass power," notes Edgar Kramer in the June 2009 issue of Australian Hi-Fi magazine. "If you're in the market for a DAC, it's time to open your wallet!"
"So what do you get for your $1995?" asks Ken Wong in his June 2009 review for StereoMojo. "Clear pure tonal accuracy. Highly detailed treble. A large recessed soundstage which fills the rear corners. Eight digital inputs. Upsampling on the fly. Exceptional jitter reduction. And a touch of warmth… "
Inputs Galore, All Types
The BDA-1 provides inputs for SPDIF coaxial, optical, or AES EBU, plus a USB interface input. The 6 digital inputs, which are selected by a front panel switch. This digital signal contains data at over 1 million bits per second that requires a bandwidth of 5 to 10 million hertz (cycles per second). At these high frequencies it is very important to maintain the quality of the signal by having the correct termination at the digital inputs. The BDA-1 provides for this termination in the best possible manner using high quality devices call impedance matching transformers.
Impedance matching transformers provide the optimal interface to the incoming source under all sorts of signal conditions. Lesser quality terminations will degrade the signal, which will cause increased jitter.
Two Independent DACs
The two independent DAC chip's used in the BDA-1 are the Crystal CS-4398, which operates in one of three oversampling modes based on the input sample rate. Single-speed mode supports input sample rates up to 50 kHz and uses a 128x oversampling ratio. Double-speed mode supports input sample rates up to 100 kHz and uses an oversampling ratio of 64x. Quad-speed mode supports input sample rates up to 200 kHz and uses an oversampling ratio of 32x. This allows for filters, which are out of the audible range.
Audiophile Power Supply
The quality of power in an audiophile class piece of equipment is imperative to superb performance. The BDA-1 uses two independent power transformers for the initial stages of filtering and regulation. Each stage in the digital chain (s also independently regulated to prevent any interactions and to provide rock solid power supplies for any up-sampling/ over-sampling process. The DAC chip also requires a very clean digital power supply if it is to function at its optimum.
The DAC requires a high quality analog power source, too. The analog signal is at its lowest magnitude in and coming out of the DAC so any added noise or distortion will be greatly amplified by later stages. Again a separate, heavily regulated and filtered power supply with carefully routed grounds is provided. This sort of care with the power supplies is one of the reasons for the superior sound of BDA-1.
The most critical part of the circuit in the Bryston BCD-1 DAC is that the output from the D to A is directly connected to a pair of Bryston proprietary Class A Discrete Operational Amplifiers rather than the typical IC chips employed in most other products. This makes a huge difference in transparence, resolution and dynamic performance.
Discrete Class-A Analog Stage
Getting the Digital side of the equation correct is only the start. Once the signal leaves the DAC it is buffered and increased in strength by operational amplifiers. In the Bryston BCD-1 these are constructed from discrete devices (individual transistors, resistors, and capacitors) instead of the commonly used integrated circuits. The use of discrete devices allows the design of a circuit that exactly matches the needs of the DAC. They also allow for more powerful outputs from operational amplifiers since the heat from the output driver transistors is separated from other devices.
Hand-Assembled With Care
Bryston hand assembles and individually tests each and every product we manufacture. Its traditional adherence to the use of proprietary parts, sophisticated construction, and refined testing techniques, guarantees that your Bryston BCD-1 DAC will perform superbly, without any problems, for many, many years.
The final arbiter of this exercise is to provide products that are as transparent and accurate a window on the performance as the current technology allows. The BDA-1 DAC captures this transparency without compromise. |
