That could be taken as a very back-handed compliment, if read in the sense that rough edges have been polished out or otherwise sweetened, but that's certainly not the case here – the recordings in question, being orchestral, have plenty of natural instrumental tone including the bite of bow on string and the rasp of loud brass instruments.

But somehow there seems to be a burnished quality to the sound, which we aren't accustomed to hearing often from recordings, though a good performance in a fine hall can certainly possess it. Details positively shone through, like a landscape in bright sunlight.

Restoring excellence

Curious as to how much of this (very welcome) finding was due to the DAC and how much to the recording, we resorted to a familiar mid-range CD player. Now the recording simply sounds good – it would probably be mean not to say very good, but it was not outstanding in the way we had first heard.

Reverting to the BDA-1 restores the original excellence, so it was no trick of a first impression. Still, this comparison was across nearly a four-to-one price differential, so could an alternative near-£2,000 DAC manage the same result? Not quite, turned out to be the answer. A DCS Elgar did, admittedly and, perhaps, manages a shade tighter bass too, but in this case the four-to-one ratio was the other way and, well, one would hope so!

This turned out to be probably the most marked example of what the Bryston BDA-1 can do, but across a wide range of recordings, both familiar and unfamiliar, it maintains a consistently high standard of resolution and realism, making the music practically leap out of the loudspeakers.

It has admirably even-handed tonal characteristics with particularly fine rendition of voices, maintaining the delicate balance between vowels and consonants without sibilance, chestiness or any of the other all-too-common misdemeanours and it extends effortlessly to the frequency extremes.

Bass has a lovely sense of weight but is still plenty lively, while high treble is open and spacious. Incidentally, it's good to report that these results hold via any of the digital input options, including USB when it is sourced in such a way as to be bit-perfect. Bryston seems to have nailed the problem of jitter very effectively in this unit.

Pricey DAC

There is a legitimate question over the value of any expensive DAC (or CD player, really) when devices such as the Cambridge DacMagic at one-tenth the price can achieve remarkably good results.

It would be ridiculous to claim that the Bryston BDA-1 is ten times as good, but if you are not afraid of the good old Law of Diminishing Returns there is certainly a rewarding step-up in quality from even the best budget units in a fine component like this.

As with so many things in life, the finest and rarest come at a price, but we think the arguments the Bryston BDA-1 makes for itself are exceptionally convincing.