description

Very good condition.  Includes power cord and original printed owners manual.  Will ship in original factory packaging

Design Principles

It should come as no surprise that Bryston's BDP-1 digital file player resembles the basic Auraliti L-1000 in that it has a soundcard, motherboard, USB port, and power supply. Though there is a display, there are no fans, no CD drives, no keyboards, no DAC circuitry, and no built-in routers to produce noise, RF interference, or heat, or to tax the player's central processing unit with multitasking demands. Like a CD transport, the BDP-1's only job is to output a digital stream from its S/PDIF BNC or AES/EBU XLR outputs. The open-source Linux software was selected to ensure the BDP-1's long-term viability. The BDP-1 differs from the Auraliti L-1000 in two ways: it has AES/EBU output in addition to S/PDIF, and a front-panel display and keypad to control playback, the latter freeing the BDP-1 from the L-1000's dependence on a network.

The BDP-1 accepts uncompressed AIFF and WAV music files, lossless FLAC files, and lossy-compressed formats such as MP3, stored on Windows-formatted USB drives. However, it will not work with Apple Macintosh-formatted disks. (This limitation may be fixed in future iterations of the player's operating system.)

Like the L-1000, the BDP-1 plays digital files from external flash drives or portable hard drives that can be plugged into one of its four USB 2.0 ports. When a file is selected for play, the BDP-1 first copies the file from the external drive to an internal buffer, thus avoiding the usual jitter problems when data are streamed directly from a USB port. The BDP-1's soundcard outputs the stream via the player's S/PDIF and AES/EBU ports to feed an external D/A processor. Bryston didn't include a TosLink output because its restricted bandwidth limited the player's output quality.

The Bryston BDP-1 is simple in function and purist in design, a combination that worked well in playing high-resolution music files. Its slim chassis and case of silvery brushed aluminum, simple controls, and outstanding sound make it a prime example of classic Bryston value.