I know this thread has been quiet for a long time but I wanted to share my experience. I have owned the Bidat approximatley six differnet times. Some were modified and some were stock. They all sounded wonderful and better than most digital being offered, even today. I purchased a Museatex CDD-1 matching transport about a year or so ago to go with my Bidat. The units remote control failed to function correctly and the seller, offered to appease me by giving me a Bitstream. I was ammenable to that offer. I compared the unmodified Bitstream to my unmodified Bidat and found to my surprise that is was outperforming the Bidat. I also found that I was leaving the Bitstream in the rack far more than my former reference AMR DP 777 SE. The Bitstream was fuller sounding, closer to the sound of my turntable. It did not offer the inner clarity and transparency of the AMR by any stretch of the imagination but it did do that ineffiable thing
(very few pieces of gear are capable of) that makes you relax into your chair and just enjoy MUSIC!
I spoke to John Wirght at Museatex who I have known for over 20 years and he agreed that the Bitstream does in fact sound better than the Bidat. He also admitted he basically stopped telling people becasue they would not belive him. I believe him. I sold the Bidat (my 6th :) LOL. I had John modifiy my Bitstream with the latest upgrades and now it does the duty in my second (upstairs system). I also sold the AMR DP 777 SE as the Bitstream is simply more enjoyable. The modified Bitstream wont impart that holographic clarity and lit from within sound that the AMR is capable of doing, but perhaps it is the density of the musical playback the unit is capable of that caused me to settle on the Bitstream as my reference dac.
The second system is composed of a iFi Zen Stream being powered by an iFi Elite Power supply feeding the the Bitstream via an iFi SPDIF iPurifier 2.0 which is powered by an iPower X supply. The output of the Bitstream then goes to my Wyred 4 Sound STP-SE (with Audio Magic Bees Wax fuse) and then output (balanced) to my Graaf Modena (rare edition GM20) OTL. The speakers are Axis Voice Box units.
The Zen is fed via Wifi from my Uptone LPS powered Mac Min located in another room. Roon is the software and Quobuz is the streaming service. I was using Tidal but Quobuz gave Tidal and MQA the smackdown. Everything via Tidal and especially MQA sounds tilted up spectrally (to my ears). It was NOT close at all. Quobuz sounds WAY WAY closer to my CD’s and DSD files.
Can the Bitstream compete with a big Lampizator, on transparency and openess? I doubt it, but in that hard to word area of musical magic that can make the hairs on your arm stand up, probably yes.
I will also add that the Zen Stream system is the closest I have ever been able to get streaming to match CD playback from a good transport. It is so close I can confidently say most would not be able to hear a difference. I can hear it and in the case of the Museatex CDD-1 the streamer has surpassed that transport. The CDD-1 is now in the box stored away for now.
The Bitstream has the overall character of my reference digital playback (belongs to the downstairs ref system) which is an AMR CD 77.1 with a Double Crown TDA1541, Silmic II series caps strategically replacing oscons on the digital engine, 4.7uf Jupiter Copper foil paper in wax output caps bypassed by .01uf Duelend silver foil caps. This player also has an Audio Magic beeswax fuse and Bendix 6900 output tubes. It is simply the finest I have ever heard digital sound regardless of the encoding scheme or sampling frequency. It sounds better than most of my buddies very expensive analog rigs. Not better than my analog LOL which makes use of an AMR PH 77 with Bendix tubes the same fuse, capacitor setup along with the other phono stage a Luxman EQ500 with some special attentiion applied.
The overall sound is VERY similar but the AMR plays larger, more open and simply more real sounding. The Bitstream sounds like an EXTREMELY good musical recreation (better than almost any dac I have experienced including the MSB Diamond Dac) whereas the AMR sounds like Nicole Henry is in front of me performing.
