The following is extracted from http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/bryston_bcd1.htm

"The engineers at Bryston have chosen the same DAC for the BCD-1 that they already use in the company's preamps and integrated amps: the Crystal CS4398. The chip first upsamples the incoming signal from 44.1kHz to 192kHz and then oversamples it 128 times to create a new sampling frequency before running it through an interpolation filter to create a more analog-like waveform. Once the digital signal leaves the DAC it is buffered and amplified by discrete class-A op-amps. Bryston is a major proponent of using discrete devices because they allow design of a circuit that exactly meets the needs of the DAC. The signal that enters and leaves the DAC is very sensitive to noise from the digital and analog power supplies, so Bryston paid special attention to circuit-trace routing of these (both of which are closely regulated and filtered to reduce noise and distortion). By routing analog and digital traces away from each other, noise is eliminated.....The BCD-1 is just a no-nonsense CD player. If you like to look at your equipment more than you like to listen to it, don't buy the BCD-1".

Analog Outputs: RCA Single Ended, XLR Balanced

Digital Outputs: SPDIF (RCA), AES/EBU (XLR), Optical (TOSLINK)

Control: RS-232 (DB9)

Features:

• Redbook CD and CD-R playback

• Fully discrete Bryston Class-A analog output stage

• Crystal 192 kHz / 24 bit DAC

• Over-samples at 128 times

• Independent analog and digital power supplies

Digital inputs: none.

Remote 12 V power-on/off trigger included.

Maximum output level: 4.6 V balanced.

Frequency response: 20 Hz–20 kHz, ±0.2 dB.

Channel separation: 109 dB at 1 kHz.

THD+noise: 0.002%.

Output impedance: not specified.

Noise: < 100 dB, 20 Hz–20 kHz, ref. 1V.

Signal/noise ratio: 115 dB, unweighted.

Jitter: < 120 ps peak–peak.

Power consumption: 9 W.

Dimensions: 432 mm W by 79 mm H by 286 mm D.

Weight: 8.2 kg

Bryston BCD-1 CD Player

One for the Ages

by Alan Taffel, The Absolute Sound

There has been a lot of talk lately about “buying your last CD player,” and

understandably so. The format has come under assault from above and below.

At the low end, we find Millennials downloading compressed MP3s rather than

purchasing CDs. And the high-enders, largely unsatisfied with CDs from the get-go,

can barely wait to do their own downloading of files whose resolution trounces that of

the silver disc, and whose playback from magnetic drives is, by all empirical evidence,

sonically superior to CD’s optical mechanism. CD’s plight only worsens when surveying the portable music scene. The Discman is long dead, replaced by iPods and their ilk, and automakers can’t incorporate MP3-compatibility fast enough. No doubt, then, the future for music reproduction—at any resolution, whether for the home or portable—will be computer-based (with maybe a little Blu-ray thrown in), leaving CD an orphan.

And yet, having had no real alternative for the

majority of releases over the past few decades,

we audiophiles have accumulated a substantial

catalog of CDs. So the timing seems auspicious

to buy that last CD player—one built for the ages,

one that will do full musical justice to our libraries,

even as new releases inevitably slow to a trickle.

But what makes a CD player an ideal “last”

player? Upon the arrival of the equivalent

historical moment for LPs, the industry and

consumers agreed that “last turntable” really

meant “expensive turntable.” This widely

accepted premise was not mere marketing

hype; it was grounded in the reality of turntable

production. Turntables (and tonearms, for that

matter) are, first and foremost, exercises in

mechanical engineering. In this field, principles

do not change over time; mass and materials are

paramount considerations; and R&D is costly

because the industry at large applies so little

intellectual capital (relatively speaking) to the

field. Meanwhile, manufacturing output is low,

so production costs are inevitably high. For all

these reasons, building a truly great turntable has

always been a pricey proposition. And buying the

most expensive one you could afford as your last

made sense.

However, CD players are entirely different.

True, these components, like turntables, must

employ solid mechanical engineering. But once

the bits are off the disc, the bulk of what CD

players do is digital. Clocking, jitter reduction,

D-to-A conversion, and filtering are the biggies

on the block diagram. And those functions, like

all silicon-based processors, are subject to

Moore’s Law, which basically states that you can

count on an exponential growth in power even as

costs plummet. The internal components of CD

players also benefit from a massive intellectual

capital investment and from economies-of-scale.

So the best, last CD player may not be the most

expensive one at all—it’s more likely to be the

most recent.

Enter the new Bryston BCD-1, the venerable

Canadian firm’s first CD player. Why introduce

such a unit now, when its competitors have had

comparable models in their stables for years?

Simply put, the company decided to wait out the

SACD/DVD-A format war. The fact that there was

essentially no winner allowed Bryston to do what

it really wanted to do all along: eschew DVDbased

drive mechanisms—which are compulsory

on universal players but which compromise CD

sound because the clock speed is not an even

multiple of CD’s 44.1kHz sampling rate—in favor

of a purpose-built, CD-only drive.

To this it has added a DAC that employs an

advanced, hybrid multibit/Delta-Sigma, 24-

bit/192kHz, 128x over-sampling Crystal chip,

and rigidly synchronized both the DAC and the

transport to a master clock. This arrangement

essentially abolishes the jitter inherent in S/PDIF

connections. The final block in the diagram is the

analog output stage. Here, rather than pulling a

chip-based op-amp off the shelf, as most CD player

manufacturers do, Bryston pressed into

service its own highly refined, fully discrete, true

Class A circuit.

All these premium parts nestle within a

handsome, rigid chassis that exemplifies

Bryston’s legendary reputation for build-quality.

Ditto the solid aluminum remote, which offers

satisfying heft, positive tactile feedback, and

backlighting. The chassis also houses both

balanced and unbalanced outputs, S/PDIF, AES/

EBU, and TosLink digital outputs (though I can’t

imagine why you’d want to bypass the internal

DAC), a 12-volt trigger, and an RS232 jack for

software upgrades.

Still, features, internal goodies, and brawny

construction, while necessary, are insufficient to

qualify a CD player for the ages. Performance,

too, must be extraordinary. And here is where

the full scope of Bryston’s achievement

becomes apparent. CD sound simply doesn’t

get much better than this. Is the BCD-1, even

at its relatively modest price, of reference

caliber? Unquestionably. But the Bryston gives no ground

in musically critical areas such as dynamics,

where it delivers the full measure of dramas large

and small, and detail resolution.

The latter capability is closely related to—but

not the same as—the ability to separate and allow

the listener to follow multiple musical lines. This is

where the BCD-1 really rises above competitively

priced units. The Resolution Audio Opus One CD,

for example, is only slightly more expensive than

the Bryston, and boasts many of its own charms.

But the BCD-1 is simply in a different league, with

the greatest disparity being what Linnies would

call the ability to “follow the music.” A fine example

is the addictive Radiohead track, “Everything in

its Right Place” from Kid A [Capitol]. The song

sounds great through the Resolution, but the

Bryston allows me to hear everything going

on within the deeply textured mix. Of course,

this feat requires excellent resolution, but both

players have that. Only the BCD-1 brings out

these hidden musical layers, and effortlessly

integrates them within the musical whole. This

is something reference-level players do, while

lesser units do not.

Admittedly, the Bryston and my own reference

player are not always equal—in some areas, the Bryston

is better. Its timing, for example, is quicker; not

only are attacks sharper, but rhythms in general

are tighter. And while both the reference and the

Bryston deliver wonderfully realistic timbres,

the BCD-1 is ever-so-slightly better at capturing

an instrument’s unique essence. Listen, for

instance, to the opening of Prokofiev’s Romeo

and Juliet as captured on the excellent Mercury

CD. The composer allows each section of the

orchestra its moment in the spotlight, and the

Bryston shines a light on each with brighter

illumination and, thereby, reproduces them with

more recognizable sonic truth.

The reader might now have the impression that,

aside from these minor distinctions, the Bryston

and my reference player sound remarkably similar.

Well, they don’t. With the Prokofiev the reference

has a richer, more voluptuous sound; the Bryston

is lighter and cleaner. Note my deliberate use of

the word “light” rather than “lean.” I do not care for

components that are tonally lean, that is, those that

rob music of warmth and natural opulence. Never

once did the BCD-1 strike me as lean or analytical

(leanness’ kissing cousin). So what is going on

here? The answer is that the Bryston exposes

my reference player as being darker than neutral, with

a false richness caused by a mild boost in the

midbass. The effect is not unpleasant (and is, in

fact, rampant in high-end components), but can

cause trouble with certain source material. One

example is the ultra-pure Nils Lofgren Acoustic

Live CD [Vision]. Through the reference player, Nils’

guitar sounds mildly but inescapably bloated.

The Bryston, with its greater neutrality, depicts

the guitar far more naturally. Further, the BCD-1’s

superior timing renders the entire album much

more lively and buoyant. Light, but not lean.

To fully experience what the Bryston is capable

of requires a few set-up considerations. First, do

not skimp on interconnects; this player deserves

good ones. Second—and this almost goes

without saying—replace the stock power cord

with an audiophile-grade unit. Finally, although

Bryston did put some effort into vibration

isolation, the job is not complete until the BCD-1

is perched atop a good set of cones. Have you read elsewhere that the

BCD-1 can sound “dry,” or that its soundstage is

a mite squished? Those potential detriments are

real, but they fall by the wayside if you use good

cones and ancillary equipment. The biggest

effect of the cones is in the bass, which becomes

much clearer. But the cones also reduced glare

and increased spatiality. Obviously, these are

benefits you wouldn’t want to miss.

In sum, I am as surprised as anyone to discover

that the best “last” CD player might well be an

unprepossessing, modestly priced machine.

But the Bryston BCD-1 has all the chops to

qualify for the honor, from state-of-the-art digital

components, to an audiophile-grade analog

output section, to the feature flexibility and

durability that will allow it to serve its role over

the long run. Most importantly, it gets the music

just right. This player is like a friend who takes a

book from the shelf and opens it to a particularly

enticing passage for your reading pleasure. That

is what the BCD-1 will do for your CD library:

Open it, and present it to you in all its glory.

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Bryston BCD-1 CD Player

by Philip Beaudette, Soundstage

It's the first CD player Bryston has ever made, even though the company has been in business since the 1960s. Over the course of its existence, this company from Peterborough, Ontario, has established a name for itself by constructing nearly indestructible amplifiers and preamps that are all backed by an industry-leading 20-year warranty.

To upsample or not to upsample?

The BCD-1 is a Red Book-only player. It can read your CD-Rs, but don't put your hybrid SACDs into the BCD-1 and expect to hear anything more than the PCM stereo layer. I contacted James Tanner, vice president at Bryston, and asked him about his company's decision to build a CD player with no provisions for high-resolution formats. He explained that when Bryston started offering onboard digital-to-analog conversion, the company was waiting to see what would happen in the high-rez format war. In time it became clear that neither SACD nor DVD-A was gaining widespread acceptance and therefore neither would replace Red Book CD as the digital storage medium of choice.

In developing the BCD-1 Bryston tried experimenting with SACD playback but found that the drives offering SACD capability were DVD drives that don't use multiples of CD's 44.1kHz sampling frequency. This posed a problem because the DAC Bryston planned to use both upsamples and oversamples the incoming signal. After testing various DVD drives, Bryston's engineers found they couldn't match the sound quality of a dedicated CD drive. As a result the company decided to forego high-resolution playback altogether and focus on the CDs most of us already own. In doing so, Bryston selected a Philips L1210 CD drive for a transport. Bryston modifies it for use in the BCD-1, replacing the clock with their own hand-selected clock, which it synchronizes to the DAC.

Speaking of which, the engineers at Bryston have chosen the same DAC for the BCD-1 that they already use in the company's preamps and integrated amps: the Crystal CS4398. The chip first upsamples the incoming signal from 44.1kHz to 192kHz and then oversamples it 128 times to create a new sampling frequency before running it through an interpolation filter to create a more analog-like waveform. Once the digital signal leaves the DAC it is buffered and amplified by discrete class-A op-amps. Bryston is a major proponent of using discrete devices because they allow design of a circuit that exactly meets the needs of the DAC. The signal that enters and leaves the DAC is very sensitive to noise from the digital and analog power supplies, so Bryston paid special attention to circuit-trace routing of these (both of which are closely regulated and filtered to reduce noise and distortion). By routing analog and digital traces away from each other, noise is eliminated.

Weighing a touch over 18 pounds, the BCD-1 measures 17" or 19" wide (depending on the faceplate you choose), 11 1/4" deep and 3 1/8" high. The faceplate can be ordered in silver or black. The review sample was the 19' silver version, and although I really liked how the thick silver faceplate looked, I would choose the 17" version if I were buying a BCD-1, simply because it fits better in my equipment rack and matches the size of my other components. The BCD-1 looks sharp, but it didn't command the same attention as the Simaudio Moon CD5.3 I reviewed several months ago. The BCD-1 is just a no-nonsense CD player. If you like to look at your equipment more than you like to listen to it, don't buy the BCD-1.

My biggest criticism in the actual use of the BCD-1 is the display. It's tiny. Unless I was sitting close to the player -- closer than my usual eight-foot listening distance -- I couldn't read the track number or the elapsed time, which made backtracking to hear something again more difficult.

Sound

The BCD-1 is pure Bryston, which is to say that it sounds transparent, neutral and highly revealing. It would be impossible for me to pinpoint any characteristic in its sound that I heard across a range of discs. What you hear will depend less on the BCD-1 and more on the other components in your system and the CDs you own. Paired with the B100DA SST integrated amplifier, the BCD-1 made it easy to determine the sound quality (or lack thereof) of any recording I own. It didn't homogenize my music collection the way equipment with a strong sonic signature can. The absence of any discernible "sound" in the BCD-1 was akin to looking at the world through reading glasses rather than sunglasses. Sure, sunglasses will keep you protected if it starts to get bright, but you can't see things as they are when you see them through colored glass. The BCD-1 offers a clear view of the music.

That's not to say that the BCD-1 doesn't have any sonic attributes. In keeping with the Bryston house sound, it was strong in the bass, open and clear in the treble, and transparent to the point of eerie realism.

Bryston has always been synonymous with good bass reproduction. This likely has something to do with the company's reputation for building powerful amplifiers that can function handily with difficult speakers. This aspect of the Bryston sound is fully present in the BCD-1 as well; it reproduced bass with solid impact, depth and lots of speed. If you listen to a bass-heavy track you'll be able to follow the notes as they plummet deeper, hearing and feeling them move through the room. "Angel," the opening track on Massive Attack's Mezzanine [Virgin Records 45599], is just one example of this. The bass line that opens the track gives the song a dark, brooding feel -- a sharp contrast to the subject presented in the title. What impressed me most was the sure-handed control the BCD-1 had over the low end, making it easier to hear what was happening further up the frequency range. The bass went deep (within the limitations of my speakers), but it wasn't exaggerated the way it can be when there is too much roundness or bloom.

Using a pair of bookshelf speakers with limited bass extension had a major part to play in the control I heard, but I've noticed that even small speakers can produce large-as-life images if they're on the recording. One example of this can be found in Elliott Smith's "Going Nowhere" from New Moon [Kill Rock Stars KRS455]. The warmth of Smith's acoustic guitar blends beautifully with the sweet sound of his voice, but the size of his guitar seems cavernous, as the resonance of the wood gives it extraordinary fullness in the room. It meshes perfectly with his sound, and through the BCD-1 it was there in abundance. It's the proverbial chameleon in the way it relays just the information on the disc, adding little or nothing of its own. My guess is that the BCD-1 will find a long-term home in many systems precisely because it's nearly impossible to point the finger at anything it does wrong.

When I reviewed the B100 SST integrated, I was amazed by how transparent and clean it sounded. Ditto for the BCD-1. Its noise floor is so low you might be surprised by what's happening in the quietest passages of music you thought you knew well. The other day I was listening to the Jackie Brown Soundtrack [Maverick/A Band Apart CDW 46841] and Johnny Cash singing "Tennessee Stud." I usually zone in on Cash's voice as he tells the story of the horse that's "long and lean," but this time I found myself more intrigued by the people in the bar where the tune was recorded. You can hear the call-outs and hollers from the crowd on most systems, but with the BCD-1 the location of those voices and even the clinking of beer glasses (which I'd never noticed before) were impressively clear. This wasn't a case of too much detail, but rather an instance where I closed my eyes so I could absorb everything that was taking place in front of me.

Such a quiet backdrop against which music emerged helped to establish a greater emotional connection. On Gary Jules' cover of the Tears for Fears song "Mad World" off the Donnie Darko Soundtrack [Sanctuary SANDD320], the detail in the voice made it sound even more fragile, its vulnerability a perfect complement to the theme explored in the lyrics. Small nuances such as subtle tonal inflections that are glossed over on less-transparent CD players were clearly revealed on the BCD-1. I found myself grabbing CDs I hadn't listened to in a while just to hear how they sounded through the Bryston BCD-1.

Conclusion

With the BCD-1, Bryston has succeeded in building a CD player worthy of the company name. I haven't heard flagship players from other companies, but the BCD-1 is the best digital component I have heard. There may be better disc spinners out there, but I guarantee that many that are competitive with the BCD-1 cost multiples of its price and more than likely offer a different sound rather than one that's obviously better.

As we all know, CD sales continue to decline, and that means music downloads may soon spell the death of the format altogether. It might therefore seem strange to an audio outsider -- the average iPod owner -- that anyone would want to spend money to play a format that might be going the way of the dodo. I don't see a problem. Although music downloads will inevitably continue to cut into CD sales, I'd be surprised if CD production stopped anytime soon. The majority of the music most of us own is stored on CDs, so it makes good sense to have something that can take full advantage of the medium.

Therefore, the simple, no-nonsense Bryston BCD-1 could be the last CD player you will ever buy. As for me, there's only one thing I want to know: When can I expect the first Bryston turntable?

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Bryston BCD-1 CD player

By Larry Greenhill, Stereophile

The BCD-1 reproduced my CDs' bloom, body, and warmth, with none of the edgy, irritating quality heard from the early-generation D/A processors I had around for comparison purposes.

The BCD-1's imaging was simply sensational. The orchestral beginning of the excerpt Christopher Brown and the Huntingdonshire Philharmonic's performance of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, on Stereophile's Test CD 2 (Stereophile STPH004-2), transformed my listening room into a semblance of the acoustic of Ely Cathedral, the choir set far back from the solo singers in the tremendous space. The solo bass was to the far left, the tenor to the right. Through the Burmester B25 loudspeakers, the pipe organ's deep, solid chords were clearly evident under the choir and orchestra. I also heard a large cathedral ambience in Gnomus, from Jean Guillou's performance of his own transcription for organ of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (CD, Dorian DOR-90117). The BCD-1 could also convincingly reproduce the sounds of recordings made in more intimate settings, such as of tenor Gary Ruschman on Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque, from male choir Cantus's While You Are Alive (CD, Cantus CTS-1208).

The BCD-1's highs were clean, open, effortless, grain-free, and extended. In Henryk Górecki and the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra's recording of Górecki's Symphony 3, Zofia Kilanowicz's lucid soprano was entrancing and crystal-clear (SACD, Polskie Radio PRSACD2). Paul Simon's sibilants at the beginning of "Trailways Bus," from Songs from the Capeman (CD, Warner Bros. 46814-2), were natural, not irritating. The ride cymbal played with wire brushes by Billy Drummond at the beginning of "The Mooche," from the Jerome Harris Quintet's Rendezvous (CD, Stereophile STPH013-2), had a realistically shimmering metallic quality.

The BCD-1's midrange reproduction was smooth and effortless. Played through my Quad ESL-989 speakers, Jane Monheit's rendition of "Besame Mucho," from The Frank and Joe Show's 331/3 (CD, Hyena SD9320), had the "seductive timbral voluptuousness" John Marks reported on in his column in the April 2006 issue (Vol.29 No.4). Marc Anthony's tenor voice remained warm and crystal-clear, without any tubbiness, during his work on Paul Simon's Songs from the Capeman.

The BCD-1's bass response was particularly involving when it was teamed up with the pair of Burmester B25 speakers I reviewed in December. Although the B25s rolled off quickly below 40Hz, as heard on the low frequency warble tones, on Editor's Choice (Stereophile STPH016-2), I still found myself enveloped by the sustained pedal chords of the Lay Family Concert Organ during Timothy Seelig and the Turtle Creek Chorale's performance of John Rutter's The Lord Is My Light and My Salvation, from Requiem (CD, Reference RR-57CD), and by the staccato synthesizer notes in "Something's Wrong," from Randy Edelman's score for the movie My Cousin Vinny (CD, Varèse Sarabande VSD-5364). Subtle changes in pitch could be easily discerned in the synthesizer notes in the "Behind the Veil," from Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop (CD, Epic EK 44313), and in the timpani notes in Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Symphony's recording of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (CD, Reference RR-70CD).

Additionally, the BCD-1 easily captured the wide dynamic range of David Bowie's whisper-to-scream introduction to "Putting Out Fire," from the Cat People soundtrack (CD, MCA MCAD-1498); the eerie synthesizer in "Ascent," from Don Dorsey's Time Warp (CD, Telarc CD-80106); the startling piano scales that erupt from black silence during "The Handoff," from James Horner's Sneakers soundtrack (CD, Columbia CK 53146); the firecracker rim shots and drum beats mixed with calls from the audience during the drum solo in "The Maker," from Emmylou Harris's Spyboy (CD, Eminent EM-25001-2); the explosive drumwork from Mick Fleetwood that opens "Dreams," from Fleetwood Mac's The Dance (CD, Reprise 46702-2); and Mark Flynn's flash-bang kick drum and rim shots at the beginning of "Blizzard Limbs," from Attention Screen's Live at Merkin Hall (CD, Stereophile STPH018-2).

Conclusions

The only candidate I had on hand for comparison with Bryston's BCD-1 was the nearly-three-times-as-expensive Krell KPS-28c, which had been connected with Krell's proprietary CAST links to Krell's KCT preamplifier. That I much preferred the Bryston's sound is probably due to the tremendous improvements in DAC circuitry that have taken place in the past seven years.

I greatly enjoyed the Bryston BCD-1's detailed, revealing sound. I was just as pleased that its price gives you an extremely well-engineered, solidly built, compact CD player with a beautifully made, backlit remote control. Mated to my Quad ESL-989 speakers, the BCD-1 played with open highs, detailed imaging and soundstaging, well-defined and authoritative bass, and an ability to reveal the most subtle musical details. Like Bryston's B100-DA integrated amplifier, the BCD-1 CD player connects me to those crucial elements of music: pace, rhythm, and emotion. It's so good that I no longer miss the KPS-28c, and that's a strong recommendation indeed.

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Bryston BCD-1 CD Player Review

When I reviewed the Bryston BP26 preamplifier and 2BSSt power amplifier last year (link), I was impressed with overall level of performance, build quality and value. I concluded that Bryston had been in business, serving the pro audio and home audiophile markets well since the early 70′s for a very good reason. They deliver the goods. They have been, and clearly are still, an engineering driven company.

I was offered the chance to evaluate their very well received BCD-1 Redbook CD player. Even though Bryston is a relative new comer to digital playback devices, they quickly are taking the market by storm. Their BDA-1 DAC also has garnered quite a following.

The player itself is front drawer loading with a Bryston modified Philips sourced transport. There is clever engineering going on under the hood, and for some specifics, see the brief and very enlightening interview with Bryston’s James Tanner at the end of this review. The BCD-1 uses a 128x over sampling 24 bit delta-sigma DAC. The original 44.1 kHz data are up sampled to a 192 kHz sampling frequency. A high quality dedicated analog output stage completes the picture.

From the get go, the BCD-1 appeared to be a very balanced player. There was nothing that I could possibly detect in the presentation that would give away the fact that this was a sub $3000 player. As a matter of fact, if forced to guess, I would have ventured into dollar figures two or three times that amount. The review sample appeared in a time period when I had the opportunity to hear a few other players costing double, from some very well known manufacturers. The Bryston held its own and then some. It is almost as if the Bryston engineers had taken a look at some of the weaknesses of other, more expensive players, and applied what they learned in the build of the BCD-1.

To be specific, the soundstage was rock solid with excellent imaging. Bass was deep, defined and had excellent weight. On the other end of the spectrum, high frequencies were utterly devoid of glare, brightness, or any other digital nasties. On the contrary, the highs were smooth, extended, and in my opinion, superbly accurate. I don’t know if was because of the low noise signal paths or the sophisticated up sampling scheme, but there was a natural shimmer and intoxicating ambience to every disc I spun.

One thing to note is the BCD-1 was in use with a system consisting of some pretty good sounding gear from Audio Research, Naim, and Thiel, and it more than held its own. The Thiel CS2.4, which is more or less becoming my reference for speakers in the 5K price range, is in particular very revealing of sub par source components. The BCD-1 was in no way tripped up nor had any weaknesses exposed. In fact, it shone in such a system, and would be a most welcomed permanent addition.

I had an assortment of different discs out of the drawers during the review period and got into some marathon listening sessions. I am really enjoying Jeff Beck’s latest, Emotion & Commotion. It features some very interesting song choices, such as interpretations of the late Jeff Buckley’s versions of “Lilac Wine” and “Corpus Christi Carol” from his masterpiece, Grace. Beck’s huge Fender Stratocaster tone is wrapped in tasteful orchestral arrangements. There are also a few slamming cuts featuring vocalists, including Joss Stone, a recent favorite. The BCD-1 made this disc sound huge, expansive, and very natural, despite it probably being a cross continental studio patchwork.

I also was enamored with the new offering from Herbie Hancock, The Imagine Project. It features a stellar and very interesting cast of support musicians including Wayne Shorter, Seal, Pink, Dave Matthews, Tinariwen, James Morrison, Juanes, John Legend and more. It is a cross cultural stew featuring a dizzying blend of jazz, pop, African, Indian and Latin sounds. The vocals are especially very well recorded and, through the Bryston, it sounded like the voices were right in the middle of the room. Wayne Shorter’s sax was reproduced with tremendous realism and clarity.

I also stumbled upon a new disc by Irish singer and songwriter Luka Bloom called Dreams in America. The album features re-recordings of tunes from his earlier, excellent back catalog, but featuring just his voice and guitar, minimally miked; a true test for any system, especially a digital source component. The Bryston passed with flying colors. Bloom’s voice was rich, dark and passionate. His very underrated guitar playing was also rendered beautifully, with a bell like clarity to the strummed chords and picked notes. It was a real breath of fresh air in today’s world of overly compressed, artificial sounding pop recordings.

Conclusion:

In high end audio, we often hear the term “giant killer.” In my opinion, it is very much over used and sets up consumers for disappointment. However, I don’t believe I would be going out on a limb in labeling the Bryston BCD-1 CD player as a giant killer after spending a significant amount of time with it and comparing it to other, more expensive units. It is built beautifully, highly engineered, sounds terrific and is made in North America. The hefty, superb backlit remote control is a very nice bonus indeed.

In addition, I really like the fact that there is a total lack of audiophile marketing nonsense from Bryston concerning the design. There is no talk about exotic chassis materials, fancy digital filters that can “make 80′s CD’s sound like audiophile masterings”, or other questionable claims. What Bryston has done is take the essential elements of a one box CD player, such as clean signal paths, high quality power supplies, discrete analog output stages, and jitter reduction, etc, and they have optimized them. The proof is in the listening. The player is a very clean window into compact disc playback. It has a presentation that is very well balanced and could be inserted into mega buck systems without a single eyebrow being raised. It’s a job very well done by Bryston and at an extremely attractive price.

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From http://www.stereophile.com/content/bryston-bcd-1-cd-player-measurements :

The BCD-1's error correction was excellent; the player suffered no dropouts until the gaps in the data spiral on the Pierre Verany Test CD reached 1.5mm in length. When I test a CD player's error correction, I monitor the data output words using RME's DIGICheck utility program, and thus was able to notice that bit 18 in the BCD-1's digital output was permanently set to "1." I doubt this would have any audible consequences if the BCD-1 were to be used only as a transport, but it is somewhat peculiar behavior.

The Bryston's maximum output level at 1kHz from the unbalanced RCA jacks was 2.38V, or 1.5dB above the CD standard's 2V. The maximum balanced output level from the XLR jacks was exactly twice this value, and both sets of outputs preserved absolute polarity; ie, were non-inverting. (The XLRs are wired with pin 2 hot.) The unbalanced output impedance was low at high and middle frequencies, at 74 ohms, rising to a still low 106.5 ohms at 20Hz. The balanced output impedance was exactly twice these figures, as expected.

The BCD-1's frequency response is shown as the top pair of traces in fig.1: perfectly flat from 10Hz to 10kHz, with a negligible 0.1dB droop at 20kHz. The bottom pair of traces in this graph is the response with preemphasized data. Like players from Simaudio and Naim, the BCD-1 shows a fairly large suckout in the mid-treble, meaning that preemphasized CDs will sound a bit distant and lacking in dynamics. Fortunately, such discs are rare these days, though I believe the BIS catalog was all mastered using preemphasis. Channel separation (not shown) was superb from both sets of outputs, at 130dB in the midrange, and still better than 115dB in the top octave.

Fig.1 Bryston BCD-1, frequency response at –12dBFS into 100k ohms with normal data (top) and preemphasized data (bottom). (Right channel dashed; 0.5dB/vertical div.)

Fig.2 was plotted using a 1/3-octave-wide bandpass filter with a center frequency swept down from 20kHz to 20Hz while the BCD-1 played dithered data representing a 1kHz tone at –90dBFS. The traces peak at exactly –90dBFS, suggesting very low linearity error, and are free from harmonic spuriae. A peak in both channels at 120Hz suggests some power-supply noise, but as this noise is better than 116dB down from peak level, I can safely predict that it will be inaudible. Repeating the test but using FFT spectral analysis gave the traces shown in fig.3. Again, no harmonic components are visible, and again, the power-supply component at 120Hz can be seen. However, a couple of very-low-level spurious tones are evident in the mid-treble. Performing 1/3-octave analysis with digital data representing a –1LSB DC offset gave the traces shown in fig.4. As well as the 120Hz component, power-supply–related spuriae can be seen at 240 and 360Hz, and spectral peaks are visible in the treble, before the noise floor rises at ultrasonic frequencies due to the noiseshaping used by the BCD-1's sigma-delta DAC chip.

Fig.2 Bryston BCD-1, 1/3-octave spectrum with noise and spuriae of dithered 1kHz tone at –90dBFS with 16-bit CD data (right channel dashed).

Fig.3 Bryston BCD-1, FFT-derived spectrum of 1kHz sinewave at –90dBFS into 200k ohms (blue left, red right; linear frequency scale).

Fig.4 Bryston BCD-1, 1/3-octave spectrum with noise and spuriae of –1LSB (right channel dashed).

Even so, the BCD-1's plot of linearity error was dominated by the recorded dither noise (fig.5), and the player accurately reproduced the trilayered waveform on an undithered sinewave at exactly –90.31dBFS (fig.6).

Fig.5 Bryston BCD-1, linearity error.

Fig.6 Bryston BCD-1, waveform of undithered 1kHz sinewave at –90.31dBFS, 16-bit data (blue left, red right).

The Bryston's harmonic distortion was very low in level, even into the punishing 600 ohm load, and was dominated by the subjectively innocuous second and third harmonics (fig.7), but a regular series of higher harmonics can be seen. Tested for intermodulation distortion with an equal mix of 19 and 20kHz tones, each at –6dBFS, the BCD-1 gave the result plotted in fig.8. Actual intermodulation products are very low in level, but the noise floor has a peculiar granular appearance.

Fig.7 Bryston BCD-1, spectrum of 50Hz sinewave at 0dBFS into 600 ohms (blue left, red right; linear frequency scale).

Fig.8 Bryston BCD-1, HF intermodulation spectrum, 19+20kHz at 0dBFS peak into 200k ohms (blue left, red right; linear frequency scale).

Finally, tested for its rejection of jitter using a test CD on which had been burned one tone at exactly one-quarter the sample rate at –6dBFS, and a squarewave at the LSB level at 1/192 the sample rate, the Bryston player performed very well, with around 150 picoseconds peak–peak of jitter—which is basically at the resolution limit of the Miller analyzer. Graphing the BCD-1's analog output with this signal gave the spectrum shown in fig.9. The central peak, representing the 11.025kHz tone, is narrow and spectrally pure, while the evenly spaced low-level spikes are almost all the residual harmonics of the 229Hz squarewave (note jitter-induced sidebands). However, the spuriae immediately to the left of the central tone are all a little higher in level than they should be, while those immediately to the right are all a little lower in level.

Fig.9 Bryston BCD-1, high-resolution jitter spectrum of analog output signal, 11.025kHz at –6dBFS, sampled at 44.1kHz with LSB toggled at 229Hz, 16-bit data. Center frequency of trace, 11.025kHz; frequency range, ±3.5kHz (blue left, red right).

Other than that, which is probably irrelevant to sound quality, the Bryston BCD-1 measures close to the state of the art for a CD player.—John Atkinson

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