Nothing special here, very cold sounding CD player, that is why you see many of them coming up for sale. The sound which initially feels musical becomes very tired and causes fatigue for long listening sessions. I sold mine after three months of use.

Sorry Bryston, your first CD player did not do it for me.

A stunning unit and - regardless of some troll's self-absorbed, pseudo technical rubbish (an audiopile??) - the BCD-1 will beat any CD player near its price like a rented mule. I know a bit about this as I've bought and sold more supposed 'high-end' hyper-CD players than I care to remember. Whats truly wonderful about the BCD-1 are three things:
1) Its sound has already been mentioned but I must chime in about its sonic honesty. If your CD has a 20Hz organ blast the BCD-1 it will deliver it perfectly - providing your other gear can cope with such a signal. Also, highs are light and true to the CD material regardless of genre. So if you have a CD that;s been brick-walled by engineers who also used a 'smiley-face' EQ setting on their board, you will get all the high and low horrors in color. However, if you have masterfully recorded JVC XRCDs or others then the BCD-1 will take you there in person and your ears will be smiling along with your face.
2) Weight and Warranty. Its embarrassing to see CD Players 5x the price of a Bryston sporting a 1 year warranty full of pitiful escape clauses and weasel-words when Bryston gives you 5 solid years. The BCD-1 is truly a heavy weight CD lifter and its actual weight in pounds tells the story of 'why' that is. Power supply. Like Bryston's amplifiers and preamps, the BCD-1 delivers the goods because it starts out with lots of pure power right off the bat. Bryston did not skimp on power supply like so many others have.
3) Diversity in digital outputs means a BCD-1 is and can be used as a first-rate CD transport. Little has changed lately in CD spinning technology but as digital signal conversion is still immature, to own a BCD-1 is to be able to buy any DAC you want and feed it from a high quality transport as conversion technology changes and real audible improvements are made.

You can spend a lot more money for a CD player than the cost of a Bryston BCD-1. I have. But I also found out I couldn't spend it any better.

Sounded good but less dynamic than my very old wadia 64-4 digimaster...treble not really analytic..so i decided to buy a weiss dac2 to be connected to my tascam cdrw2000 recorder..i had to "fight" a lot with the choice of digital cabling as well as the addition of a mutec word clock and a digital distributor aiming at reducing jitter.
Finally,when listening with my friends to the sound of my CD's,if quoted on 20 which should be the supposed sound of master tapes whithout any digital hardness and fluid treble....:
- the bryston bcd1 with silver interconnects quotes 13.5 to 14
- the weiss-tascam whitout jitter correction system quotes 14.5
- the weiss- tascam when the word sync input of the tascam is connected to the clock,quotes 15
-same but with digital distributor also connected to clock,+ optimizing dig.cables,quotes 17.5 to 18
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Amazingly detailed without sounding overly analytical or harsh. Reproduces accurately the source material with almost zero coloration. Nothing sticks out from deepest bass to etherial highs. If the CD was poorly engineered, you'll definitely hear it. If it was done well, then you will find yourself smiling. The last CD player you will ever need if you want to hear the music exactly as it was recorded.