MEMO: To all Bryston Customers
SUBJECT: Absolute Sound High-End Audio Buyers Guide
Absolute Sound Magazine?s Spring High-End Audios Buyers Guide is out and Bryston is recommended in 3 main categories. Here's what they had to say:
Bryston 28B Monoblock
Out of the box and with no warm-up at all, this pair of 1000W (!) monoblocks greatly impressed HP. (A solid-state first, said he.) The two top octaves were sweet (unusual for solid-state). Tubed gear can achieve such naturalness on top, but not usually this cleanly and purely. Given the amp?s thousand?watt rating (into eight ohms), slam-bang bass was predictable, but not bass as extended and articulated as those highs without any special ?character? for the ear to hang onto,
The noise floor was lower than any other amplifier in HP?s experience, to boot. Which meant an increased sense of dynamic range, revealing gradations at the soft end of the dynamic spectrum, such as the differences between pianos and pianissimos. Because of the 28B?s refusal to clip and thus distort the gradations between levels of loudness, the same was true at the other end of the spectrum. You might analogize the amp?s power to a huge engine in a sports car: There was greater ease at every output level, and especially those where both car and amp might normally be coasting.
When you come across a component that is better in some significant ways than what you?ve heard before, the experience tends to derail criticism. For the moment the 28B is such a product- and an incredibly good buy.
Bryston BCD-1 CD Player
A CD player for the ages, this new Bryston is truly reference-caliber at an eminently reasonable price.
The BCD-1 sports the latest digital components, an audiophile-grade Class A output stage, user-friendly operation, durable construction- and it gets the music just right. Particularly impressive are its dramatic dynamics (large and small) and its ability to unravel the most complex musical passages in a relaxed manner that allows listeners to effortlessly hear everything going on. The sound is never analytical; tonal warmth, dynamic nuance, and timbral veracity see to that. As with Bryston?s analog electronics, the BCD-1 is neutral and transparent, though its soundstage will be squished and its tonality a mite dry if not supported by a good set of cones.
To be able to buy this level of construction and sonic performance for this price borders on the miraculous.
Bryston BDA-1 DAC
AT's new reference DAC, the Bryston BDA-1 reveals previously unattainable (from digital) worlds of information about both the sound and the specific performance of the music. More than any other DAC AT has heard, the BDA-1 allows listeners to hear how instrumental lines relate to each other, how rhythms trade off, why the composer wrote the music as he did, and why each musician plays his line a particular way.
Surprisingly, none of this is rendered analytically; rather, the Bryston?s presentation is warm, relaxed, and analog-like. In addition, the BDA-1?s front panel features an incredibly useful LED arrangement that displays both the incoming sample rate and, should the user select upconversion, the upconverted rate. The back panel includes a bounty of digital source options, including the sonically superior BNC.
