BRICASTI DESIGN M5 NETWORK PLAYER

Network Player

Computer audio… but without the computer! The Bricasti M5 is the perfect solution for your high-end audio dilemma!

Picture this scenario: You’re very happy with the carefully curated hi-fi system you’ve spent years putting together. You’re in love with your loudspeakers, you’re proud of the pre/power combo that’s driving them, and you’re delighted with your DAC. But you have this problem. You’ve been inveigled by the internet, with its promise of streamed music, downloadable music, all with the cherry-topped inducement of high resolution. Have you seen the problem yet? Yes, the problem is how do you interface your beloved system with the IOT? Indeed, how do you even interface it with your computer and the music files stored there-in…or some

where thereabouts (and here I’m thinking servers and NAS drives).

The solution to this scenario is the Bricasti Design M5 Network Player… except that it’s not really a ‘player’ because it doesn’t actually ‘play’ anything at all. It just acts as an intermediary between a high-end audio system and anything at all computer-like. It keeps your computer, your home network… even the Internet, at arm’s length from your carefully curated hi-fi system. Indeed, to use Bricasti Design’s own description: ‘ it is a network interface and media renderer that connects to your server via a local area network. With wide support for DLNA and other popular network protocols, the M5 delivers pristine lossless audio from your network to your digital to analogue converter so that your music server can go anywhere you choose. The M5 connects to your LAN via Ethernet then provides SPDIF and AES outputs that support PCM with sample rates up to 192kHz, as well as DSD64 and DSD128 over USB.’

No need to worry about music file format support either, because the Bricasti Design M5 supports more than 100 different types, including AAC, AIFF, ALAC, ATRAC, Au, AVI, Dolby Digital, DSDiff, DSF, DV, DVD, FLAC, FLV, IFF, M1V, M2T, M2V, M4A, M4V, Matroska, MJPEG, Monkey’s Audio, MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, Music Tracker files, Ogg, OpenMG, Opus, Quicktime, RealMedia and RealAudio, Sidplayer files, Speex, SWF, video game media files, W64, WAV, WMV and WMA, Xvid, 3GPP and 3GPP2.

The Bricasti Design M5 is also fully DNLA, UPnP and Roon compatible, so no matter what media software you’re running, it will recognise the M5 when it’s connected to your network and play to it. The important thing to note here is that the audio is rendered in the M5 and not in the server, so the actual digital audio files can be stored anywhere at all. I’d personally recommend you use Roon. Bricasti Design also recommends Roon, but suggests that if you want a low-cost alternative, you instead use JRiver Media Centre.

Bricasti Design’s Owner’s Manual makes it quite clear as to the reason the M5 was developed. It says (and I am quoting here directly from the manual, because I don’t want to put my own slant on Bricasti Design’s design aims): ‘ The intention of the M5 is to provide state of the art playback and transfer of digital audio data from your network attached drive or anywhere on the network the audio is stored. In this scheme the audio is then “rendered” or streamed as real-time audio in the M5, then sent to the passive digital outputs, the AES or SPDIF. This approach removes the host server computer from the actual playing of the audio and eliminates typical issues found, such as noise generated from PC power supplies and switch mode voltage regulators in the computer, plus noise

from power over USB when using a computer for this purpose. The result is quiet backgrounds, clear transients, and the elimination of noise and power contamination as the M5 has a fully linear power supply. Even the USB playback from the M5 will be an improvement over a normal PC, as all the power running the USB is directly from our linear supply with no switch mode regulators to create high frequency noise.’

the equipment

As you can see for yourself, there’s not much to the front panel of the Bricasti Design M5. A single tactile pushbutton, an accompanying red LED and that’s it. The rear panel is where all the action is, with USB, S/PDIF and AES outputs (via Type-A, RCA and XLR connectors respectively) an Ethernet port, remote trigger input/outputs, a 240V IEC mains socket and a mains power switch. Apparently you can optionally have the M5 supplied with a BNC connector rather than an RCA type. BNC connectors are certainly superior to RCA connectors but personally, if I were offered the choice, I’d only order the BNC connector if it didn’t involve any additional cost.

The USB connector can function as either a USB output or as a port where you plug in a Wi-Fi dongle so you can connect the M5 to your network via Wi-Fi. This means that if you want to use USB you can’t use Wi-Fi, and if you use Wi-Fi, you can’t have the USB output. The Bricasti Design M5 does not have an optical (Toslink) digital output.

The build quality of the Bricasti Design M5 is insanely good. The bottom section of the case, to which all the printed circuit boards are fixed, is a 15mm piece of solid aluminium ingot that has been ‘routed out’ with CNC machinery to make space for the PCBs. The sides of the M5 are 8mm solid alloy, and the top plate is 4mm solid alloy. The front and rear panels are the thinnest parts, and they’re still 1.5mm thick alloy sections. The power supply is linear, using a small toroidal transformer. All components on the M1 streamer PCB are surface-mount, while the main digital PCB uses a mix of surface-mount and thruhole devices. The streamer PCB has an SD card slot into which an SD card is installed, which is an interestingly practical low-tech way of accomplishing upgradability.

in use anD Listening sessions

You may have noticed that in my description of the Bricasti Design M5 features and fittings, I only mentioned Wi-Fi in passing. That’s because Bricasti Design not only thinks that users will get the best sound quality and reliability by using a Cat-5 wired connection, but it also believes that purists won’t even want to have Wi-Fi circuitry inside the M5.

So what to do if you want to connect the M5 to your network via Wi-Fi? Bricasti Design’s Owner’s Manual says that it has this situation covered by including a ‘wireless dongle’ with the M5 that plugs into the USB input on the rear panel of the M5 to provide wireless functionality. The only problem was that the review sample loaned to me didn’t include said dongle as promised. Had some other reviewer diverted the dongle? According to local Australian distributor Studio Connection the dongle is not supplied to ‘foreign’ markets which, since Bricasti Design is a totally US-based manufacturer (in that all its products are both designed and manufactured completely in the USA) means that only buyers in the US will get the dongle.

The lack of Wi-Fi was a problem for me because various issues with the house in which I reside mean that I have not been able to wire up the house with Cat-5 to every room, so I kind of depend on Wi-Fi, not least because my server and router are on the ground floor of my home while my audio system is on the second floor. So to use the Bricasti Design M5 meant that I had to temporarily run a Cat-5 cable through a door, down the stairs and in through another door to make a wired connection. If you have a similar issue, and you don’t want to use WiFi, I would suggest that you should instead use a 240V power line Ethernet solution, such as Netgear’s PLP2000 Ethernet Powerline Kit. This just entails two ‘wall warts’ that allow you to send Ethernet signals through the standard 240V wiring in your house. This is, in fact, what I ended up doing myself, because after a few weeks of putting up with blue wire snaking down the stairs and hallways, my other half put her foot down, and said that either the cable disappeared or she would.

Connecting the M5 to your network is simple. Simply plug one end of your Cat-5 cable into the Ethernet socket on the rear panel of the M5 and the other end into the same router (to which your server must also be connected via Ethernet… not USB). Make sure your server and router are both switched on and talking to each other, after which you switch on the power to the M5 using its rear panel switch. The red LED on the front panel of the M5 will start blinking to indicate power is available, after which you press the stand-by switch on the front panel. This will take the M5 out of stand-by mode, after which the LED will blink faster to indicate the M5 is searching for a valid network connection. This takes around ten seconds, after which the LED will stop blinking and just glow red. If you now look on your media player the M5 will be showing as an available device to play to. It’s as simple as that… and in my set-up it really was that simple—and that easy.

Connecting the M5 to your DAC is obvious… yet not so obvious. You have a choice of AES, S/PDIF or USB. I am not a great fan of USB, for lots of reasons, so for me it was only a choice between AES and S/PDIF. Since my DAC has both inputs I tried both, and because I could not distinguish any difference between the two, I ended up using the AES output simply because I could. But if your DAC doesn’t have an AES input, use the S/PDIF output.

But I am not about to try to convert fans of USB, so if you are one and after trying all three outputs you think that the M5’s USB output sounds the best in your set-up, then use the USB output… as I said, I am not about to try to convert you. To each his own, as they say…

I am not a great fan of USB, for lots of reasons, so for me it was only a choice between AES and S/PDIF

However, if you do decide on USB, it will only be convenient to do so if you use USB exclusively. If you switch back and forth between USB and either AES or S/PDIF, you’ll be making work for yourself. The problem is that when you activate the M5’s USB output (by powering up the M5 while the USB output is connected to your DAC), you’ll find that not only will both the AES and the S/PDIF outputs stop working, but also in order to make them start working again you will actually have to power-down the M5, unplug the USB cable from the rear panel and then power-up the M5 again, after which the AES and S/PDIF outputs will become operational, but the USB output will not. In most situations I can’t see this being an issue, but if you regularly switch between the USB and the S/PDIF and/or AES outputs, I can see this process becoming quite tiresome.

On the plus side, the M5 will happily output data simultaneously through both its AES and S/SPIF outputs.

I was initially at a loss as to how to approach my listening sessions with the M5, but in the end, I decided the best way was to plug the digital output of my CD player into the S/PDIF input of my DAC, the M5 into the AES input, and then play music that I’d ripped from my CD player and stored on my network, so I could A–B compare the two sounds simply by switching inputs on my DAC.

This worked perfectly except… except that I could not hear any audible differences in sound between the two different connections. The sound that I heard from my DAC seemed to be identical no matter whether the input provided to its digital inputs was coming to it directly from my CD player’s digital output or from the Bricasti Design M5. And my lack of ability to discern any differences remained true irrespective of the musical genre—rock, classical, jazz, or what have you—as well as my personal headspace at any given time, because I tried this A–B test over and over again over a period of a few months. I was also not able to discern any difference in sound quality irrespective of whether I was using headphones plugged into the DAC itself, or routing the analogue output from my DAC to my loudspeakers.

Because of this, you may be surprised to hear that so far as I was concerned, my lack of ability to hear any difference was a truly wonderful result!

The big picture is that it means that if I have a Bricasti Design M5, I can be absolutely anywhere on the planet and—so long as I have a reliable internet connection—I will be able to hear music at exactly the same quality level I’d experience if I were sitting in my own home.

But it also means that I can banish all computer-related hardware from my listening room, so no hard drive noises, no fan noises, no ugly boxes and fewer cables. Joy! It also means that with a Bricasti Design M5, I am free to change my DAC, my server, my computer, my media software… pretty much whatever I like, how I like, to whatever I like, without having to worry about how I will get a signal from A to B. Digital freedom at last!

CONCLUSION

The Bricasti Design M5 Network Player does exactly what is claimed for it, and does it perfectly. You can’t ask for any more than that! Danny Coleman

The Bricasti Design M5 Network Player does exactly what is claimed for it, and does it perfectly. You can’t ask for any more than that!