Bricasti Design M5network Player ontest
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? Accord-
ing 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 manu-
factured 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 tem-
porarily 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 Wi-
Fi, I would suggest that you should instead
use a 240V power line Ethernet solution,
such as Netgear’s PLP2000 Ethernet Power-
line 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 alsoI am not a great fan
of USB, for lots of
reasons, so for me
it was only a choice
between AES and
S/PDIF
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 indi-
cate 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 obvi-
ous... 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 be-
cause 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...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 con-
nectors 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 trans-
former. All components on the M1 streamer
PCB are surface-mount, while the main digital
PCB uses a mix of surface-mount and thru-
hole 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 relia-
bility by using a Cat-5 wired connection, but
it also believes that purists won’t even want