Bryston BDA-1 DAC, any thoughts?


Curious about the Bryston BDA-1 stand alone DAC. Anyone own one of these or auditioned one?
How does the remote volume control work?
Using it with or without preamp?
Thanks!
rja

Showing 2 responses by drubin

I have one. It doesn't have a remote volume control, you must use it with a preamp.

I prefer it to several DACs I owned previously, including the Benchmark, Lavry and Bel Canto. The USB input is not good, however. I use an external USB -> SPDIF converter to feed computer audio into the Bryston.
I use the Empirical Audio Offramp to convert USB to SPDIF.

Cerrot, I think it's a meaningful upgrade from the Benchmark. It's not as good as the Berkeley (which I have only auditioned in other systems) but I don't have an opinion on whether the Berkeley is worth the price difference. However, if you are mainly doing computer audio and you are planning to do USB or Firewire, I would probably skip both of these DACs and go with something that is optimized for those interfaces, such as the Ayre ,Weiss, Wavelength, Sonic Studio or Metric Halo products.