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Review and Measurements of Bryston BDA-2 DAC

Sal1950

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I have a DAC2.
It works, obsolete as it is.

I bet it works. :)
My Emotiva DC-1 works too, and damn well according to Amir's measurements. Even with the construction issues revealed, I'm keepin it.
Still curious on the DAC3, inquiring minds want to KNOW. LOL
 
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amirm

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I too am anxious to test the DAC3. The only offer to loan it will be available in June. Until then, look for the other one that is supposed to be "up there" which is the RME ADI-2 Pro. I just bought this so should be here soon. Boy will I be grumpy if it does not do well.
 

Sal1950

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the RME ADI-2 Pro. I just bought this so should be here soon. Boy will I be grumpy if it does not do well.
Yep, they get pretty hard to sell if you have to give it a trashing review. LOL
 

mindbomb

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I did not think there are any purely one-bit DS DACs these days? Have not really looked, but the oversampling rate has to be much higher, and digital compensation of the multibit stages has come a long way, so I thought essentially all audio DS DACs included multibit stages. I may be thinking more of ADCs. It could be that, at very low levels, the discontinuities show up more with multibit approaches (and R2R designs).
According to Benchmark, the ESS dacs are 64 1 bit dacs in parallel and have no binary weighted elements. I think Chord Hugo 2 is 10 1 bit PWM dacs in the same way. I'm not sure how much they oversample, but they have 100MHz clocks on them.
 
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Sal1950

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I'll give you 100 to 1 odds Sal, that the RME isn't Schiit!
Time will tell. ;)
They do a lot of braggin on their headphone amp too
"0.1 Ohm output impedance, a maximum output level of +22 dBu, and a maximum output power of 1.5 Watts - per channel!"
We shall see what we shall see. LOL
 

Occamsrazor

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I too am anxious to test the DAC3. The only offer to loan it will be available in June. Until then, look for the other one that is supposed to be "up there" which is the RME ADI-2 Pro. I just bought this so should be here soon. Boy will I be grumpy if it does not do well.

Yes! Please post your impressions quickly!! I'm about to pull the trigger on the ADI-2 DAC version any moment..... :)
 

Jimster480

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lol. It definitely is bigger and heavier. The BDA-2 also lacks DSD support so the DX7s has a feature advantage over the Bryston.

Bryston is an interesting company. I purchased Bryston stuff in the past and have nothing but good things to say about my purchasing experiences. When I ordered the BHA-1, I had various options to customize the product. I was able to specify if I wanted to customize the gain voltage, output connector types, pre-amp output impedance and various other things. After the build was completed, they put my amp on the audio analyzer and printed off a few of the measurements to be included. Never had this type of service from any audio company before.
My DX7 came in a box with measurements of the actual device.
I will look for the box and upload them for you :)
 

SpeedyRodent

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My DX7 came in a box with measurements of the actual device.
I will look for the box and upload them for you :)

I read your other post mentioning that. It is pretty impressive for a company like Topping especially considering they sell lower priced products. I wonder if they still measure every device given their sales volume must have increased.
 

Jimster480

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I read your other post mentioning that. It is pretty impressive for a company like Topping especially considering they sell lower priced products. I wonder if they still measure every device given their sales volume must have increased.
Well the DX7's I'm sure the measure.
I wonder if @amirm gear came with measurements like mine did:

dx7-measurements-combined.png
 

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DonH56

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INteresting, but shouldn't they be in the Topping thread instead of the Bryston thread?
 

Alcophone

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From a quick comparison of the measurements it seems the Topping DX7S is a superior DAC at a fraction of the price, @amirm is there anything about this DAC that would make you recommend it over the Topping?
Probably not relevant to most, but there's a difference in how the coax out works.
The coax out of the DX7s is always derived from the USB input, even when the main power switch is off or a different input is selected. So you can actually connect its coax out to its coax in, and listen to the same signal from either the USB input or the coax input ^^
The Bryston on the other hand is more versatile, according to page 3 of the manual: "SPDIF OUTPUT: The signal present at the SPDIF output connector is the same signal that is selected as an input source. This signal is unaltered except for USB input signals."
 
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