I own both the PS Direct Stream Dac & the Bryston BDP-2 USB player. I can play 24-192hz files fine via usb but when I try to use the Balanced (AES) connection there is no signal. Only happens with the Balanced connection and 24/192hz. files.
Now I swear PS Audio was aware of this incompatibility issue, but, today PS Customer service says they have never heard of this as a issue. I guess I was hoping for a future firmware upgrade where as I would not have to settle for usb and all the extra do-dads that entails.
I remember reading about it a long time ago in a DS thread within the forum. The last time I tried, I would get signal down the AES line but it was very distorted or had a strange noise with it. Forgive my memory, it has been a while since I tried it. I’m curious if the BDP-3 has the same connectivity issue with the DS?
Thanks for the reply. Bryston seemed to indicate that the problem was there with either the BDP-2 or BDP-3.
What bothers me is that PS Audio is not aware of it.
I found the thread where it was discussed, posted below.
The last time I tried to copy and paste a thread title it didn’t work. So just in case the searchable title of the thread is: PS Audio Direct Stream with the Bryston BDP-2.
PS Audio was aware of it. But the people you are talking to now were not necessarily there (or working in those capacities) when the problem first went around. Unfortunately we never got a reasonable resolution to the problem, engineering couldn’t get a unit to test with, Bryston insisted it was PS Audio’s problem (even tho their older hardware worked fine with the DS and PWD.) We couldn’t figure out if the bit timing was just a little off, the bandwidth of the DS hardware was a little too low, whether the input signal was too high (out of spec), etc. There were plenty of hypotheses, but we couldn’t get actual scope measurements. I could easily be mistaken but I think Bryston finally figured out what the problem was, but couldn’t fix it in the new hardware so they handled the cases one by one. From my perspective it could be a problem in the FPGA, but without a reproducible test case in front of me I can’t really check for sure.
Ozzy,
Please forgive me if I misunderstand you but our BDP-2 (original, not the new “card”) came from Bryston with a hi-res demo “stick” and it (and other hi-res recordings) has always made superb music through our DS…mind you, the original BDP-2, which I believe ELK also has or had and he has never mentioned a problem (ELK??).
The Bryston unit I am using does have the newer IAD board installed.
Bryston claims the problem is in the PS Dac with the FPGA not being to spec. But it sounds like PS thinks the problem lies with the Bryston.
At lease someone should advise PS Customer support that this is a KNOWN compatibility problem. They insisted (Kevin and his manager) that this was a defect in the unit and should be sent back for repairs.
that sucks Ozzy. sorry you’re having issues man.
i just bought a PerfectWave DAC and using it with my Bryston BDP-1 AES digital output. PS Audio DAC is singing wonderfully. Bummer the BDP2 doesn’t work!
TJ
I’ve suggested to them in the past that they use a support ticketing system like Zendesk, then stuff doesn’t get forgotten about. You raise a ticket via a support portal, get given a ticket number, it gets assigned to somebody to deal with, and there is automatic prompting until the ticket is closed. With the volume of support issues we see coming through the forum, having a more formalized support system would be beneficial.
I was testing a version of firmware that Ted sent me and found that he had overcome the issue with Bryston BDP-3 and the DS when playing 192kHz files using AES/EBU The Sunlight release works fine in this situation as well. Well done Ted Smith!
Thanks @socal77 and @tedsmith
I probably would have never checked if you hadn’t posted. Truly great news. Now I gotta figure out what to do with a spare: Matrix, power supply, USB and HDMI!
