Choosing a network player/streamer

If the OP really can’t perceive a difference between the Yamaha and the Bryston, imho he should sell off the Bryston and be done with it.  I get what he is saying about brand loyalty, and I held on to the BDP3 for about a year longer than I should have because I felt the same way, but ultimately it was Bryston attitude towards the problems with their controlling software, as another poster noted, that killed my loyalty.  I still use and love the DAC, which btw is the first DAC that I have encountered where the usb is not a compromise, and Bryston makes good power amps, but I will probably never buy anything from them again.  The BOT was also a POS.

  I tried a Roon trial with the BDP3, but my previous server couldn’t handle it.  If you go the Roon route make sure that you have a lot of computing firepower.  And then if you have problems down the road, I suspect you will have Roon and Bryston pointing fingers at each other

  when I bought the Melco N100 my original intent was just to use it as a server with the BDP3, but the Melco dealer talked me out of it, and I’m glad he did.  The Melco as a player equaled, if not exceeded, the BDP3 sonically .  I haven’t tried Roon with the Melco but there is a Melco fb Forum and others seem pleased.

  I used Rigelian with the BDP3.  It was an improvement over Manic Moose—that is a low bar—and it was free, but it couldn’t find about half the music on server, and was unstable, leading to a lot of deletes and rebooting.

  I added a SHM DSP to the system for Room Correction.  It basically threw in a free streamer and said streamer sounded very thin with the DAC3.  So all streamers are not created equally.  However if the OP finds the Yamaha to be a good fit…

Tried the other players but kept coming back to the terrible interface on the bdp, reason is that it's sound is usually better but the software is bullet proof but admittedly difficult as a user experience. Bryston's software allows for an unlimited number of files as well, which the others don't. 

Both Aurilic and Innuous had buggy software and to be fair although it was prettier to use, I just got frustrated with each of them.

A rumour has it that Bryston wants to keep their underlying tech in the BDP but place on a better interface on top... They should have done this a couple of years ago, but I guess they've just been a little slow during covid to transition to something new.

Mesonto, has there been any official statement from Bryston to that effect?

I have the BRYSTON BDP1-USB player and BRYSYON BDA2 dac stablemates. (not the current 3rd generation models) purchased pre-owned to experiment as I dip my toes in the enigma of servers and streamers.

GOOD NEWS:

- It sounds fine regardless, especially at its price point, especially the DAC. … But intuitively not at the DCS performance strata intuitively.

BAD NEWS:

- the digital player software setup playback software and clumsy user interface can test my patience to the max and jack up my frustration tolerance to its limits.

- At its worst: the digital player software / user interface using BRYSTON’s own free Manic Moose can just plain suck.

- At its best: RIGELIAN is still less than ideal and is still a bit buggy for my tastes but it is attractively bargain priced.

TAKEAWAY: As aptly already highlighted by prior post contributors, the entire digital playback experience, user interface utility, and satisfaction can be tested and even harmed by player OEMs remaining agnostic to addressing and improving the player software and user interface used to set it up and run it.