Beresford Bushmaster DAC Reviews

[MartinT]

I have even higher respect for the Bushmaster after tonight, when I played some FLAC files from a needle drop of a deck I know very well, one not a million miles different from mine, via my modified Logitech Touch into the BM. I compared it with the SACD played through my kilobuck Ayre player.

The news is that the FLAC and SACD were so very close to each other in sound and in tonality that I enjoyed them both equally. Now the Ayre is the best damned disc player I know and the only one to receive a Stereophile A+ rating. So what does that say for a £200 DAC? It says that it's almost at the pinnacle of accomplishment and simply outstanding at any price.

[rxjr]

I have been reading, with a lot of amusement, the back and forth, rantings and ravings about the Bushmaster. How the led lights are too bright, how they bother some people, how to change their programming, and or mods to be made to the Bushmaster, etc...

Let's get something straight here folks:

1. When one buys an audio product or any other item, the buyer essentially purchases the designer's VISION of what that product should look and sound like. The fact alone that StanB takes the time to reply to customer queries in a personal manner, is way beyond and above what a product designer does for his customers; some of whom have even purchased the Bushmaster used or second hand. Now try calling Krell or wilson audio and/or any other high end audio gear manufacturer and tell them how their led lights irritate you or that they should mod the programming of their units to please you, and I bet you, with almost certainty that you get the phone slammed in your ear and the line cut off. And by the way, they don't care whether you buy or not.

2. To those who are unsure about purchasing the Bushmaster: There are currently 128 pages on this forum, lots of them describing the great sound and dynamics of this unit. One thing is undeniable even from its detractors - The Bushmaster is an excellent sounding piece of gear , and when coupled with its extremely affordable price, makes it an even greater bargain. I am from the USA and I bought the Bushmaster sight unseen and unheard and when I got this DAC, was thoroughly impressed by its sound and performance. I am highly satisfied with this unit and am looking forward to the next generation DAC from StanB.

3. To StanB - my suggestion to you is as follows: continue your design work as is and free your mind from those detractors and naysayers who will try to swing you, one way or another, until they drive you crazy. Remember - it is your design, your vision that you are promoting, not theirs. If they don't like your vision and or design, they can take their business elsewhere. The bottom line - they weren't gonna buy it anyway. Spend your time and energies on your design work; keep moving forward and if your product is good, the rewards will follow.

This whole episode reminds me of one of my wife's business customers, who in previous years, due to this customers financial difficulties in 2008, my wife gave her free eye exams, a free pair of eyeglasses and free contact lenses (a charity case). In 2010, this same customer, claiming continuing financial hardship, was again given all the above items for free (approx $500.00). In 2013, this same customer again, went to my wife's office, demanding the same items for free, and when she was charged just the cost of these services. became mad and said she would take her business elsewhere. Lesson learned here is one may think they are helping people out, but in reality, this person was just a taker, an abuser, who when charged a minimum fee, got mad and took her business elsewhere. Again, those who complain too much, those who demand too much, were never really your customers and you should be glad, you got rid of them.

4. To StanB - don't let this people twist you into a pretzel. They were never your customers to begin with.

5. We have a great saying here in the good old USA - Opinions are like A**holes. Everybody's got one. Bye.

Rex

[Alex_UK]

That is a great post, Rex. I'm trying to stay impartial in all of this, but you speak a lot of truth.

[icehockeyboy]

I have been reading, with a lot of amusement, the back and forth, rantings and ravings about the Bushmaster. How the led lights are too bright, how they bother some people, how to change their programming, and or mods to be made to the Bushmaster, etc...

Let's get something straight here folks:

1. When one buys an audio product or any other item, the buyer essentially purchases the designer's VISION of what that product should look and sound like. The fact alone that StanB takes the time to reply to customer queries in a personal manner, is way beyond and above what a product designer does for his customers; some of whom have even purchased the Bushmaster used or second hand. Now try calling Krell or wilson audio and/or any other high end audio gear manufacturer and tell them how their led lights irritate you or that they should mod the programming of their units to please you, and I bet you, with almost certainty that you get the phone slammed in your ear and the line cut off. And by the way, they don't care whether you buy or not.

2. To those who are unsure about purchasing the Bushmaster: There are currently 128 pages on this forum, lots of them describing the great sound and dynamics of this unit. One thing is undeniable even from its detractors - The Bushmaster is an excellent sounding piece of gear , and when coupled with its extremely affordable price, makes it an even greater bargain. I am from the USA and I bought the Bushmaster sight unseen and unheard and when I got this DAC, was thoroughly impressed by its sound and performance. I am highly satisfied with this unit and am looking forward to the next generation DAC from StanB.

3. To StanB - my suggestion to you is as follows: continue your design work as is and free your mind from those detractors and naysayers who will try to swing you, one way or another, until they drive you crazy. Remember - it is your design, your vision that you are promoting, not theirs. If they don't like your vision and or design, they can take their business elsewhere. The bottom line - they weren't gonna buy it anyway. Spend your time and energies on your design work; keep moving forward and if your product is good, the rewards will follow.

This whole episode reminds me of one of my wife's business customers, who in previous years, due to this customers financial difficulties in 2008, my wife gave her free eye exams, a free pair of eyeglasses and free contact lenses (a charity case). In 2010, this same customer, claiming continuing financial hardship, was again given all the above items for free (approx $500.00). In 2013, this same customer again, went to my wife's office, demanding the same items for free, and when she was charged just the cost of these services. became mad and said she would take her business elsewhere. Lesson learned here is one may think they are helping people out, but in reality, this person was just a taker, an abuser, who when charged a minimum fee, got mad and took her business elsewhere. Again, those who complain too much, those who demand too much, were never really your customers and you should be glad, you got rid of them.

4. To StanB - don't let this people twist you into a pretzel. They were never your customers to begin with.

5. We have a great saying here in the good old USA - Opinions are like A**holes. Everybody's got one. Bye.

Rex

[pete_mac]

The way I use the term 'neutral' is as follows: if I compare two audio components (say, two DACs), and I hear that one of them is apparently adding some coloration to the sound while that same coloration is absent from another DAC, I claim that this other DAC is 'neutral'.

Obviously, I'm speaking in relative terms, because I don't really have a reference point from which to claim the absolute, honest-to-god objective 'neutrality'. Yes, I am a musician and I do have musical instruments in my house, but to me it's impossible to compare the sound of the real instrument with the sound of a reproduced instrument -- I've never heard a system that could come even close to the real thing. Even the most ultimate audio system I've ever listened to is, to me, just a pale approximation of how live music played on good instruments actually sounds.

That's where things become tricky, as to my ears, the BM is quite dry in its presentation vs my preferred DACs - some of which I (and many others) consider to be quite neutral. Who is the arbiter of what is 'neutral' when you have many different DAC designers and audio enthusiasts claiming that a whole load of different-sounding DACs are 'neutral'? It's quite the conundrum!

[highstream]

Thanks, Xaval and pete_mac. While you express diametrically opposite views in the end re the BM - LOL - I appreciate that you understand where my questions and probing the meaning of "neutral" were coming from.

[synsei]

I have even higher respect for the Bushmaster after tonight, when I played some FLAC files from a needle drop of a deck I know very well, one not a million miles different from mine, via my modified Logitech Touch into the BM. I compared it with the SACD played through my kilobuck Ayre player.

The news is that the FLAC and SACD were so very close to each other in sound and in tonality that I enjoyed them both equally. Now the Ayre is the best damned disc player I know and the only one to receive a Stereophile A+ rating. So what does that say for a £200 DAC? It says that it's almost at the pinnacle of accomplishment and simply outstanding at any price.

That's fantastic news Martin and I am sure Stan will be very happy to read your results

Rex, let me explain my position to you regarding the BM. Basically I found the unit to be very frustrating. On the one hand I found myself enjoying one of the best sounding DAC's I've ever heard, on the other I was continually fighting a flawed unit. This wasn't just down to semantics my friend. Due perhaps to the peculiarities of my set up the BM I owned would constantly freeze when changing inputs, regardless of whether it was set to Auto or Manual. I should explain that all the issues arose due to my having multiple active digital inputs, but the main catalyst seemingly was my self built music server.

Previously I had owned a Beresford Caiman which performed flawlessly within my system, and I have nothing but praise for it. The problems began when I hooked the BM into the system. For some reason the BM's firmware was thrown completely out of whack. I am at a loss to explain exactly why as I have used various DAC's in the same set up without any issues at all, however it quickly became apparent to me that the BM's auto source select routines were struggling with the multiple digital inputs. After various email and PM exchanges with other owners and Stan himself I discovered that the auto select feature could be over-ridden and the unit could be put into manual mode. This worked in a fashion, however the unit would still hunt through the active inputs before finally settling down on the one I wanted. The unit frequently froze during such operations and for a little while it was possible to bring it back to life after a freeze by simply turning the unit off and back on again. Things came to a head however when the unit refused to power up again after a freeze, even after I had unplugged it from the mains for a while.

Stan offered to take a look at it even though I had purchased the unit secondhand for which I was very grateful because I was becoming ever more frustrated with the unit. I cannot stress this often enough, my frustration was born out of owning a DAC that sounded wonderful but refused to operate properly. I can describe the ownership experience of this particular unit thus: It was like owning a top of the range Ferrari with all the joys that brings, only to find that some bugger had randomly messed up all the controls. For example, steer left and the car goes to the right, push the accelerator and the car brakes, etc, etc.

It came to light during this period that a previous owner of this particular BM had had the same issues as me and Stan had subsequently modified the firmware. For reasons only Stan can know this modification did not solve the problem, and neither did the mod Stan carried out for me. In the end the frustrations of ownership became far to much for me. The final straw was when my partner told me she would not use the system because she was afraid the BM would break if she switched it on. Music means everything to my partner, as it does to me, so to hear her say she was afraid to touch the system because of the BM's issues put the lid on the situation for me. I returned the DAC to the person I bought it from after copping some undeserved flak from Stan and I subsequently bought a Rega DAC which continues to perform flawlessly.

And that is about it. I miss the BM's gutsy sound and excellent headphone stage, however I have ended up with a DAC that sounds a tad better although admittedly it costs more, but more importantly it is delivering superb SQ plus a stress free ownership experience and that is very important to me. I should also point out that despite all this I am still supporting a British design and manufacturing team for those who think that sort of thing is important

Hopefully the design changes Stan has in the pipeline will solve the issues I experienced during my ownership of this fabulous sounding product. To reiterate, I miss the headphone stage the most, I have not heard my headphones sound so wonderfully natural either before or since. Incidentally, I fully accept that there are those who have experienced no such issues with their BM's , in which case you lucky, lucky people have ended up with an absolute bargain

[MartinT]

I should say that I have performed the following mods, so my SQ comments should be taken with that understanding:

Touch: EDO (Enhanced Digital Output) module, all unnecessary functions shut down, screen off, Paul Hynes PR3 PSU
Bushmaster: Latest async firmware, diode removal, Paul Hynes PR3i PSU

[synsei]

I wish I had a better technical understanding of both the BM and PC's in general so I could perhaps help Stan to understand what may have been causing the BM I owned to freak out. it is an enigma for sure...

[Canetoad]

I have even higher respect for the Bushmaster after tonight, when I played some FLAC files from a needle drop of a deck I know very well, one not a million miles different from mine, via my modified Logitech Touch into the BM. I compared it with the SACD played through my kilobuck Ayre player.

The news is that the FLAC and SACD were so very close to each other in sound and in tonality that I enjoyed them both equally. Now the Ayre is the best damned disc player I know and the only one to receive a Stereophile A+ rating. So what does that say for a £200 DAC? It says that it's almost at the pinnacle of accomplishment and simply outstanding at any price.

Martin, do you know how the needle drop was produced? Hardware/software/bit rate?