Bryston-A Sleeping Giant

Mobiusman

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May 24, 2010
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I have been a fan of Bryston products for years, but until recently, like many people, thought of them as best suited for bass applications. I bought my first Bryston product, a 4B amplifier back in the late 70's, which I believe makes it the second generation of this longstanding product that was the cornerstone of this amazing company. It produced great bass, but was only quite good in the midrange and a bit transistor sounding in the highs.

I then went on to own many amplifiers, both Class A and AB, tube and transistor and then migrated to bi-amped systems. That brought me back to Bryston for the bass, this time a pair of 7B monoblocks, which were superb for bass, but like before only quite good in the mids and a little less good for the highs.

Then divorce hit and all of my amps went bye-bye, as did everything else in my system, save for my trusty McIntosh MR 71 tube tuner that I owned for more than 40 years. As I rebuilt my audio system, with a much keener eye for audio value for the dollar, I bought a used Bryston 4B SST from about 8 years ago and to my surprise found that the while the bass as good as ever, the midrange and highs had improved markedly to the point that I could easily be happy with the amp running full range. Granted I was feeding it with an excellent tube preamp using tweaked 6H30 tubes and HiFi Tuning Supremo fuse plus absolutely beautifully smooth and articulate Kubala Sosna interconnects. So even if the Bryston was the weakest link, it was now darned good full range.

At the last CES, I got to hear the latest iteration of the Bryston in two demo's, Bryston's and Magnepan's 3.7 demo. Granted Magnepan used the Bryston 28's (1000 watt mono blocks) versus the 4B's 300 wpc into 8 ohms, but all of Bryston's amps have similar driver sections and thus sound very similar, with slight incremental gains as one moves up the chain starting at the 4B level.

For me, the 3.7's driven by the Bryston 28's and 1.7's driven by the 4B was the best sound at the show and much better sounding than the 3.7's in the ARC room. So I took the plunge, sold the Mac MR 71 and used the money to buy a new Bryston 4B SST2 with the latest mods and their DAC so that I could build a music server. As a true test I sent the amp before I inserted it into my system to my best friend who is also a member on this site and has probably one of, if not the best sounding system I have ever heard, powered by some well regarded $50,000 tube monoblocks and a pair of Gotham subwoofers and some of the larger Pipedreams in a custom designed room. He substituted the Bryston in place of the $50,000 reference tube amps and pronounced the amp a contender and in the same class, albeit somewhat different sounding than his behemoths (he uses DSP to tune his speakers to his amps and did not change the settings for the Bryston). Not bad for an amp that cost 9% of what his cost and a link in a highly evolved system.

When I finally got a chance to insert the Bryston 4B SST2 into my system, replacing the older 4B SST, I was pleased beyond my expectations. While I use a subwoofer for the extreme lows, I allow my main speakers to roll off naturally, which is probably somewhere in the low 30's or high 20's. My mids and highs are planar magnetic ribbons and highly revealing, pronounced by my friend as better in some ways than his Pipedream highs.. Once the amp broke in to the point that I cannot hear any more changes (50-60 hours of active signal), I must say that like Harry Pearson said about its big brother the 28, in its latest iteration the Bryston products are not only probably either the best transistor amps on the market at any price, but at least the equal of any amp. Simply put, the 4B SST2 is amazing. At the price, it is a no brainer.

You simply cannot hear the amp because it is so cohesive and the highs are completely without any electronic sound, yet razor sharp in their speed and images. In my opinion, the midbass is the best I have ever heard, bar none. The bass is so tight and forceful, that things are now moving inside my kitchen cupboards. and I have to turn my subwoofer down to compensate for the extra bass out of my full range speakers.

Hear is my biggest complaint, if you can call it that--there is no fuse, but instead a circuit breaker so I cannot insert a HiFi Tuning Supremo fuse that made such a profound change in my BAT VK 32 SE preamp.

I am still working with the Bryston DAC so I do not feel I can truly comment at this point, but initial tests suggest that its sound is essentially the same as amp, not surprising since they both use similar driver stages for their outputs.
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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I have always had a soft spot for Bryston. It was the first audiophile amp I heard in ~1982-1983, at my "crazy audiophile" :) friend's house driving Maggies. They have an excellent warranty and stand firmly behind their product.

Bryston is also one of the amps which in a special blind testing done in Europe passed the test of being transparent to its source.

Do let us know about the DAC. I am pretty interested.
 

Lee

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2011
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I am also interested in the DAC performance. Read some really stellar reviews on it.
 

audioguy

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Near Atlanta, GA but not too near!
I'm a huge Bryston fan. Before I got active speakers, I had Brystons all the way around.

I first discovered how REALLY good they were by accident. I was using some mega expensive Mark Levinson Amp at the time and had a 19 year old Byston 4B driving my surrounds (for which I had paid $600). For grins, we replaced the Mark Levinson with this really beat up old Bryston and the comparison was ridiculous. Not even close. I sold the ML and bought a pair of new 7B-ST's (they were the most current incarnation at that time).

I may have an opportunity to buy back my old (passive) speakers and if I do, I will drive them with Bryston.

I love their products. They just work !!
 

Bruce B

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Apr 25, 2010
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If I didn't have a pair of Pass Labs amps in here, the only other amp I'd want are the Bryston 28's.
 

FrantzM

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Apr 20, 2010
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I have heard the 28 and they are the real deal ... All that has been written about them is true and more plus in these days of almost indecent pricing they remain relatively "sane" even before the 20 years warranty is added .. it should have been an almost no-brainer ..yet ...

OT . I would quietly add that the pairing of the Revel Ultima Salon 2 and Bryston 28 is as close to the SOTA as reasonably feasible... My only quibble with the Salon 2 is the very low sensitivity ... it remains a superlative speaker which seems to be lost in the conversation about great speakers ... Clean and pure throughout the Audio band .. Bass is startling and phenomenal, very few of the top of the line speakers approach that bass .. that includes any of the usual suspects their top of the line included ... End of OT
 
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amirm

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Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
OT . I would quietly add that the pairing of the Revel Ultima Salon 2 and Bryston 28 is as close to the SOTA as reasonably feasible... My only quibble with the Salon 2 is the very low sensitivity ... it remains a superlative speaker which seems to be lost in the conversation about great speakers ... Clean and pure throughout the Audio band .. Bass is startling and phenomenal, very few of the top of the line speakers approach that bass .. that includes any of the usual suspects their top of the line included ... End of OT
The Salon's do devour power. We went from 250 watts to 400 and the increase in bass punch is noticeable.
 

Mobiusman

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May 24, 2010
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It is very important to make sure that the Bryston's one auditions are the most recent, which include the latest changes in the power supplies and driver circuits. I do not know at what serial number the last changes were made, but there have been some unadvertised improvements without model changes that have significantly improved the imaging and the smoothness of the highs. Since Bryston played an instrumental role in the design of the Torus power supplies, they have free access to their technology to incorporate into their gear. While some of the filtration circuitry is present in all of their amp s from the 4B SST2 on up in the latest versions, the greatest changes are in the 28's which draw heavily on the large torus massive transformers and their filtration circuitry.

One of thing that I did not comment on in my original comment is a strong Bryston characteristic of just getting louder as the power output increases. I cannot hear any qualitative changes. I suspect that this aspect is due in part to the incredibly low noise floor and their amazingly fast decay without sounding overly damped. Short of the midbass, which is amazing at any price, I do not think that one can find a better value proposition for moderate to high power amps in today's market. Besides a 20 year transferable warranty is great at resale time helping to keep value up. BTW, I have never heard of an amp failure, although I am sure they have occurred.
 

Ron Party

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Apr 30, 2010
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Very interesting, Russ. Thanks for posting your observations. I've felt for some time now that if and when I upgrade my amps, I will go down the road toward Spectral or Bryston.
 

KeithR

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May 7, 2010
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I had a 4BSST and it was a typical Bryston sand amp. couldn't sell it fast enough

I've heard the 288SST2 and they finally added a hair of warmth to it---sounds dramatically different. i was shocked.

sounds like the 28SST2 has technology the other amps don't have---and therefore would be my only choice. Although my new McIntosh 601s I think probably outperform them for 12k if you don't need 1000 watts a channel.
 

es347

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Apr 20, 2010
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Keith, I'm interested in your comment regarding the new 601s. I own the 501s and don't understand how anyone could justify "upgrading" to the 601s. Aside from an additional 100W, what is the improvement?
 

Mobiusman

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May 24, 2010
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Bryston DAC UPDATE

I have been one who for years looked a bit down a lower priced products that rivaled the big guns, probably because I had to justify, on some level, my big gun purchases. Oh what divorce can do to your sense of honesty, that is once the bitterness has passed. Since my divorce is now 7 1/2 years old, the bitterness is gone and audio prices are up considerably just in that short period of time. While CES is not necessarily the best place to audition a specific product, there is no place like it for rapid-fire comparisons among the cost no object products.

As I have written elsewhere on this site, much at CES this year sounded the same and were not a good price/value proposition in my mind. Also the arrogance was oozing from many pores, typically in direct relationship to the price of the gear being offered. Just so you know my biases and can thus sort through the following DAC comments, I thought the Magnepan 3.7 Bryston setup was the best sound of the show, or at least as good as the best I heard. I thought that KEF T series the best value for its sound for HT at an amazing $2000. I was also taken by the Diavelet Pre/dac/Amp which I played with for an hour. And then there was the back room Bryston setup demoing their DAC and music server using a pair of 7B SST2's which are actually 4B SST2's with a single transformer and identical driver and I was drop jawed by what I DID NOT hear. There was air and blackness that burned a hole in my mind.

So while I am still playing with the music server system, I have now used the Brsyton DAC and my MacBookPro via miniToslink playing Pandora and iTunes although not using a separate HD, which is allegedly very important, and once again I was thrilled by what I did not hear and had not heard to date with any digital in any of my sytems--no background or noise floor and AMAZING depth of image. Esperanza's bass took on a major sonic improvement with resonances previously unknown to me even after hearing a second generation test pressing from a recent recording session. The amazing thing is what I listened to the CD's on was intentionally a very subpar transport so that I could get a sense of the role of the DAC, a Sony BDP S360 Bluray player that sells for about $250, using the Toslink to the Bryston DAC through a $3 toslink cable from Monoprice.com (recommended by the Meitner engineers as the one's they use in their labs with their $20,000 unit). As you can imagine, the blu-ray side was even more impressive. While somewhat hard to compare because of other variable, my sense is that this el cheapo Sony and the Bryston DAC sounded substantially better than my ARC CD 3 MK2, feed into a much more impressive ($150k) system.

My next experiment when I return from some travel next week, will be to finally give the music server a good run for the money with a dedicated external hard drive and dedicated Mac Mini. I also plan to buy an Oppo BDP 93, since their head engineer in LA told me that it is identical to the SE except for the analog section, which I will not be using because that will be handled by the Brystron DAC. BTW, I think that probably the Weiss $8k dac is better than the Bryston, but if it is, not by much.
 

RBFC

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Apr 20, 2010
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Bryston DAC UPDATE

My next experiment when I return from some travel next week, will be to finally give the music server a good run for the money with a dedicated external hard drive and dedicated Mac Mini. I also plan to buy an Oppo BDP 93, since their head engineer in LA told me that it is identical to the SE except for the analog section, which I will not be using because that will be handled by the Brystron DAC. BTW, I think that probably the Weiss $8k dac is better than the Bryston, but if it is, not by much.

I'm finishing up the setup of my music server with a Mach2Music MacMini, a 2TB external hard drive, Amarra software, and a Calyx USB DAC. I'll have a complete comment up on the forum in a week or two.

Lee
 

KeithR

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May 7, 2010
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Keith, I'm interested in your comment regarding the new 601s. I own the 501s and don't understand how anyone could justify "upgrading" to the 601s. Aside from an additional 100W, what is the improvement?

Much bigger chassis--believe its 4" deeper, 15 lbs heavier (must have larger transformer), has the new transistors that I believe the 1.2kws have (which apparently are smoother sounding), and the most massive binding posts I've ever seen. Of course the meters are bigger due to the lack of 3D faceplate, but that's minor to me.

I did not own 501s before, so it made sense to me. Although for 6000-6500 used, 501s are probably the bargain in audio---and a much easier form factor. The new monoblocks come in boxes that are strap wired like the bigger monoblocks---total PITA to use and ship if I ever sell them.

my dealer is now offering me his demo C2300 to match....considering it.
 

es347

VIP/Donor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Handles and larger meters...whoopee. For new buyers, the 601s are the way to go since they are only about $1K more than the 501s. But for current 501 owners just sit back and enjoy what ya got.
 

caesar

Well-Known Member
May 30, 2010
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Wow, a predominantly positive Bryston thread on an audiophile site! Although it is a very successful company, I have always found more haters than lovers of this brand in the audiophile world.
 

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