Bryston Audio to Unveil USB-Based Digital Music Player
High-end audio company Bryston is using CEDIA as a launch pad for a new class of digital music player targeting the small but underserved computer audiophile population. Bryston Vice President James Tanner told Consumer Electronics Daily that a growing supply of high-quality 176/24 and 192/24 digital downloads from audiophile music labels is creating a market for playback equipment that can handle hi-res digital audio.
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In an age of networked multimedia servers, Bryston is having a hard time defining the BDP-1 player, which Tanner described as like a CD player but using a USB instead. It doesn’t serve, stream or play Internet radio, he said. Consumers can currently download high-res music from several websites, Tanner noted, but computers are the roadblock to a full audiophile listening experience. “Most people manage their music on a computer,” Tanner said. “The problem is you need to be computer savvy to figure out how to implement a quality sound card so it will do high-resolution sound files,” he said. “If you want to 96-, 176- or 192-kHz stuff, you can’t do that on a typical computer or a laptop because the sound cards haven’t reached that quality yet.”
Unlike a CD player, though, the BDP-1 doesn’t pack a digital-to-analog converter. Instead, it has two digital outputs -- S/PDIF and AES-EBU balanced -- which send the signal to a DAC like Bryston’s BD-A1. The DAC then outputs in analog to a high-end receiver or amplifier. Tanner compared the setup to a separates stack in analog audio vernacular. At $2,150 for the DAC and the player, the $4,300 system falls in mid-pack among audiophile product, Tanner said. “There’s a lot of gear out that’s a lot more expensive than our stuff,” he said.
The idea for the USB player came to Tanner out of his own attempt to play back high-quality files at home, without having to be connected to a home network. Since he couldn’t find a consumer-grade sound card that was up to his standards, the company developed its own that supports 16- and 24-bit files and sample rates of 44.1-, 48-, 88.2-, 96-, 176.4- and 192 kHz. A two-line interface enables users to access files and folders, and the player packs controls for basic features including play, pause, stop and skip. Consumers will continue to use their PCs for managing large collections, he said. “It’s designed for the person who wants to move past the run-of-the-mill digital playback units currently out there,” Tanner said, “and it’s plug and play.”
The plug-and-play idea applies mostly to user-compiled USB drives. Consumers can buy hi-res audio downloads in varying resolutions and file formats from websites including 2L Society of Sound, Linn Records, NAIM, Chesky Record’s HD Tracks and Gimell. At least one company, Cardas, sells music on USB, but its list is limited to five titles. David Chesky, musician and founder of Chesky Records, said the idea of the Bryston product “is cool,” because it eliminates problems caused by error correction and jitter that disc players introduce. “Digital audio has gotten a bad name,” Chesky said, “but it’s really about bad execution. If we get rid of the disc, we eradicate a lot of the problems.” At the same time, “the idea of a USB drive pre-loaded with music isn’t feasible,” he said. “It’s too complicated,” other than for promotional use, Chesky said, and “we'd have to ship the drive to the consumer."
Tanner’s hope is that the player becomes a way for people to listen to digital files “in a more sophisticated and performance-oriented way” than listening from a computer. In a market where consumers favor convenience and small packages, it’s not clear whether the stacked component approach will give way to a combination DAC/player or even a complete amplified system, should the concept take off. “We certainly could go there, Tanner said, but the DAC already exists and it would add more cost.” He doesn’t envision the BDP-1 evolving into a multi-source player that also streams Internet radio or digital music services because of the trade-offs in sound performance. “You can do an all-in-one box easily, but it’s like in the analog days when you could buy a receiver or buy separates,” he said. With separates, consumers could optimize every part of the system with a tuner, preamp and power amp. It’s the same with digital, he said. “If you build everything into one box you have spinning discs going on, switching power supplies that generate all kinds of RF and noise within the box and streaming, which generates its own level of noise,” he said. “We want to be fan-less, noiseless and as high a quality as possible in terms of noise and distortion. It’s a whole different approach to optimizing the digital file.”