Bryston's hand-assembled BCD-1 CD player

You read that headline right, CD player. No SACD, DVD, and certainly no format war-bickering HD DVD or Blu-ray. Just the most "perfect sound forever" Redbook audio bits the Canadians at Bryston can deliver. This player has high-end pedigree: premium DAC's, separate analog and digital power supplies, discrete op-amp Class A analog stage, and the usual output jacks + XLR and AES/EBU. If all the nuts and bolts in the kit aren't enough to let you know you've got a high-end piece of gear, then the 18 pounds of heft will. A cool $2395 puts the last CD player you'll ever need to buy in your rig.

[Railwhore @ Sep 6th 2007 2:07PM]

Can't wait for their 8-track

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Sep 6th 2007 4:28PM]

Gotta wait a while longer, they're still perfecting their Microdisk and have a Cassette Tape next in line.

[bob @ Sep 6th 2007 2:07PM]

I was going to buy some food to feed my children, but this might be a more practical purchase. I'll have to discuss it with my wife this evening.

[August @ Sep 6th 2007 2:13PM]

Not funny :/

[Simon P @ Sep 6th 2007 2:39PM]

quite funny actually bob, pay no notice

[matthewfkennedy @ Sep 6th 2007 2:12PM]

So should I buy this and use the earbuds that come with the ipod?

[Albert @ Sep 6th 2007 2:15PM]

I can't made comments :((

[ET @ Sep 6th 2007 2:31PM]

What is this company thinking?

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Sep 6th 2007 4:00PM]

It's not thinking anymore than the audiophools who fork over the cash for this product.

[ryantrevisol @ Sep 6th 2007 2:32PM]

Let's see, the "last CD player I'll ever need" was bought in 1996, a 5-disc changer. It was succeeded in 2000 by a 5-disc DVD changer, and then again in 2004 by a SACD/DVD/DVD-A changer. And supplemented in 2006 by an HD-Upconverting DVD player.

All my CD Player purchases since the dawn of CD's don't amount to $2400. Not even close.

[bjrcboy @ Sep 6th 2007 2:34PM]

I would kill for that.. I love brystons gear. Currently have their BP26 preamp and 4B SST amp. This cd player would completely round off my system. If only I had a disposable income! haha

[ryantrevisol @ Sep 6th 2007 2:42PM]

Would you actually? Because $2395 is actually pretty cheap for a hit. I have a couple problems I need "taken care of". . . . ;-)

[Larry @ Mar 27th 2008 7:22PM]

I have the Brytson's 4BSST amp,there BP 26 preamp plus there BCD-1 CD Player. The cd player sounds fantastic, the bass is tight and you hear all the detail in the voice. This CD player is worth the money just like the other Byrtson eqp. I also have B/W 703 speakers and I am thinking of buying a power conditioner like the Torus

[lloyd warren @ Sep 6th 2007 2:34PM]

Makes me proud to be a Canadian. We may not be the most advanced technologically, but we are the best at perfecting older technology. I think I may get one.

[Alexander @ Sep 6th 2007 4:29PM]

Yea... Keep working on our Fords. Maybe you get them right someday. XD

[akijikan @ Sep 6th 2007 3:01PM]

The people who don't get this are the ones that will never understand the difference between okay sound and excellent sound

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Sep 6th 2007 4:02PM]

And the people who keep insisting that this is worth it, don't know the difference between what the ear is capable of, and what the brochure tells you you should hear.

[akijikan @ Sep 6th 2007 4:08PM]

There's more to it then that

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Sep 6th 2007 4:27PM]

There isn't that much more to that. Friends of mine work at a high-end audio store with a $250,000 "listening room". They frequently pitched $100-$200 consumer components against $2K-$15K hi-end components, and the customer response was statistically random.

[Bad Beaver @ Sep 6th 2007 3:06PM]

Pretty reasonable & looking good. Although I can't help it - if a transport is not required (as for SACD), I would rather put the $2K towards a decent DAC these days, and throw in Airport Express + a display remote of some sort.

And please, spare us from the starving children comments. Of course 2K is a lot of money, and your $20 DVD player from Walmart will also play CDs, yet for a well made music component, this is about the price level up to which you get true performance gains. For an "audiophile" product it is rather low priced.

[CapWKidd @ Sep 6th 2007 3:06PM]

Not many audiophiles in the house, eh? Just think, I have seen $12,000 D/A converters, with more $ for the transport... high end gets crazy expensive, some worth it (Sound Lab A1's for example, are worth the $27,000 for the pair of speakers), some are not.... but I live in the no more than $4k per component world, so I guess I am mid-fi ;)

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Sep 6th 2007 4:32PM]

Yep, and we remember the $1K power cables. People will buy anything expensive, given they're gullible enough.

[jon @ Sep 6th 2007 3:57PM]

can someone explain to me why this makes sense? the CD reading part of a CD player is already handled 100% perfectly by 20 dollar CD-ROM drives. the money is in the DAC. i understand the idea of having a high-end DAC unit, but if you're going to blow the big bucks on something like that, why would you want it to live *inside your CD player*? shouldn't it be a separate unit that lives at the end of the all-digital path, e.g. in your receiver or in a standalone box?

dear bryston: why don't you sell a matching $100 cd player and $2295 DAC unit instead of bundling the two together in one only-marginally-useful package?

[jon @ Sep 6th 2007 4:56PM]

i have read up and now i'm answering my own question. from bryston's site:

"The advantage of an all in one box solution for a CD Player (as opposed to a separate outboard DAC and Drive) is the elimination of jitter. For optimum performance the Drive and DAC must use the same MASTER CLOCK. If the clock signal of the drive is not synchronized with the clock signal from the DAC then jitter develops. In external DACs the digital input must be re-clocked in order to reduce the jitter."

okay, so they don't have to re-clock the digital signal to eliminate jitter.

wait, what? "re-clocking" is not rocket science. re-clocking is the opposite of rocket science; it's a FIFO and an oscillator. if i'm paying upwards of $2k for a DAC, i would sure as heck hope that the designers have mastered the extremely complicated and nuanced black art of clocking a digital signal.

what exactly is going on inside this monolithic CD player that avoids a re-clocking stage anyway? are they deriving the clock from the actual spin rate of the CD spindle? if so, how barbaric; if not, why not move the re-clocking stage into its own box?

[SuperQ @ Sep 6th 2007 4:26PM]

For that price, you could get a SlimDevices Transporter, and have a few hundred left over to spend on CDs.

http://slimdevices.com/pi_transporter.html

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Sep 6th 2007 4:34PM]

ROFL. Until I saw that, I thought $2,500 for a CD player was dumb. $2,000 for an mp3 player? Let's hope it at least supports FLAC and other lossless formats, or this is the biggest sucker purchase of the decade, right behind the iPod/Phone for $600.

[SuperQ @ Sep 6th 2007 4:39PM]

LikesGadgetsWillTravel: yea, of course it does FLAC. They have the same thing called the SqueezeBox for $300. The Transporter uses the same streaming engine (backend is open source), but has a fancy high-end balanced output DAC.

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Sep 6th 2007 4:44PM]

SuperQ: I still don't think it's worth it. XLR or not. But then, I also think the regular squeezebox is overpriced at $300. There's no more than $100 in parts in there, and from my attempts with slimserver and the java-version of the squeezebox, the whole setup is atrocious. I doubt it'll get any better, now that logitech bought slimdevices.

[SuperQ @ Sep 6th 2007 4:53PM]

LikesGadgetsWillTravel: Parts cost is only part of the cost of the system.. and the parts used in the SB are much higher quality than any of the $100 media players out there. VFD is more expensive than LCD, but provides a better screen. Even the SB has a good DAC, much better than you would get from a sound card. We have yet to see if it will get better or worse, but the next version of Slimserver is looking fairly good. They're in the process of re-designing the default skin, and of course are getting a lot of feedback from the community.. you won't get that kind of thing from most companies.

Personally, I have 3 of them (SB) and love them. One of them is at work which allows anyone to adjust the music.

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Sep 6th 2007 5:13PM]

Oh my, a new skin. I can't wait. ;-)

But with OLEDs dropping in price, it's just a matter of time until someone produces a networked media player for half the price of a SB. Of course, their choice of a custom VF display proved to be expensive in the long run. But let's look at projected parts cost based on existing technology:

- Network interface/controller: Compare to a wifi router, it has CPU, RAM, Flash, Wired and Wireless Ethernet and all the stacks. Retails at $50, costs ~$20-$25.
- Remote control: Retails for $30, costs $10
- OLED or VF display: Retails $80, costs $40
- Audio: good-quality Chipsets run less than $10 in quantity. Retail around $40 for the whole thing with pre-amp.

So for less than $200, you should be able to retail better networked audio player and still have $100 to repay R&D.

Or, if you want to better understand that price discrepancy here, compare the $300 Squeezebox to a $350 Nokia N800. Hi-Res touch-screen, web-cam, Bluetooth, Wifi, USB. Or better yet, the close-out Nokia N770, which I just bought five of for $150 each. Those will go in kitchen, living room, home-office, garage to not only stream audio (stereo with jack), but also do some home-automation and allow quick web-browsing.

[ET @ Sep 6th 2007 4:34PM]

All it need is to sell 1 to cover all the R&D cost.

[Alex @ Sep 6th 2007 4:43PM]

Ooo nice CD player! But you'd definitely need a decent audio cable to link it to your speakers.

Like this $30,000 6' speaker cable:
https://www.virtualdynamics.ca/content.php?id=126&secondary_id=45

I'm sure this cable's "Level 4 Speed of Light Circuit", "Cryogenic Treatment", "Hot Fusion Terminations", "6 Gauge Linipur Conductor" and "Six Dielectric Layers" would complement this CD player nicely.


... I wish I had a piece of the "naive and wealthy old audiophile" niche market too. I'm in the wrong business

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Sep 6th 2007 4:49PM]

Man, I gotta keep reading this thread. Notice how "Virtual Dynamics" also sell a $2 power-receptacle for $92? Not a bad markup. One of those sold pays for webhosting for the entire year. And one of the $600 power-cords should cover what little cost they had designing the site. One of the $30,000 audio cables will probably double the income of the 14-yr old con-man who's behind that site.

[Mercy Blumberg @ Sep 6th 2007 6:11PM]

Placing bets how many will buy this expensive brick? 50 in Canadian money that 3 people will buy this.

[tekdroid @ Sep 6th 2007 9:58PM]

ewwwwww. hand-assembled.

[Remora9595 @ Sep 7th 2007 8:18AM]

If you have any amp that's worth its mustard, shouldn't it have digital inputs? Since the point of a cd player is to deliver the digital stream to your amp, does it even make sense to put in high end DACs that'll never be used, unless this doubles as an amp

[tim @ Sep 25th 2007 6:28PM]

i agree with lloyd-from-canada. bryston ROCKS!