Museatex Bitstream vs Bidat

Performance wise, I'm think there's probably very little difference. I've been wondering about John's comments myself, and can only guess that single ended vs balanced operation is accounting for the slight difference. I'll take John's word for it that the bitstream sounds more musical but less detailed. That sounds quite plausible to me. But the Bidat does offer features such as a volume control (which I care very little about but some people do) and balanced operation (which I do care about). I ended up with a Bitstream because the Bidat (at the recent going rates) is not worth that many times the money strictly in terms of performance. Balanced operation is really the only thing that I want that the Bidat would give me over the Bitstream but I'll live without it for now.

Howie, I have Jon Wright modified Bitsream in my system. So far I have only directly compared it with AckDacK- not even close ( Bitstream is better). Would be very interested in your comments on it's performance in your system. Regards.

The Bidat is substantially better. It is not a fair comparison.

I trust your ears Jonathan so I'm always interested in your observations. I don't doubt that the bidat by itself is better but if I understand things correctly, a lot of what we're hearing from these units are the mods done to it. Except for the original circuit board, pretty much everything has been changed. So I believe it's similar but nevertheless, the price difference between the two units is about as big as the difference between the Bidat and a used Dac6.

Maril, I have not made comparisions but the unit sounds good to me. But I do use Jena Labs cabling that cost more than the unit itself, which I believe help maximize the capabilities of my Bitstream. I'm maxed out in terms of my budget so I haven't looked too hard in terms of upgrades. I may look into doing some comparisons with some midrange units in the future, but I dream of the Meitner gear and this setup may be good enough until I can afford what I really want, which may be never. I don't know how good the bitstream is compared to others, but it's enjoyable to listen to and I feel the bitstream is good enough that I can concentrate on improving other parts of my system. For the price I paid for it, if I find an upgrade, I'll just keep it for some future use in another system anyways so I'm not worried. I simply didn't want to spend several thousand dollars on a CDP that may be a bit better than the Bitstream but not really up to the standards of what I really want, especially since I want SACD capabilities as well.

John just emailed me, he said he's working on a brand new DAC, totally designed by himself from the ground up. No idea when he's releasing it, but he did suggest any bitstream user should wait if they are considering an upgrade to a modded Bidat.