Haven't heard the 28B (sigh ...), but I'm sure HP's accolades are well deserved. Congratulations.
I do have issues with HP's assertion that, hithertofore (his word, not mine), Bryston has not had the
respect of high-end aficionados (are any of you Bryston guys out there high-end aficionados?). Be that as it may, HP remains an influential force in high-end audio, and he has given Bryston some very positive recognition.
For those of us who have, hithertofore, respected Bryston, that is good news.
Enjoy your Brystons!
pjg66
I admit to be one of those who used to ignore and thought very poorly of Bryston. It was due to ignorance and intense bias against solid-state gear after hearing a few "high-end brands" some 15+ years ago. All the solid-state gear then sounded so hard and etchy, my ears would "bleed" only after 10 minutes. Price then was also outrageously wild. There was a Meridian CD Player that wanted $5000! I thought then that all of "high end" was a big joke. How could anyone sell something that sounded so bad for so much?
Wife and I gave up on "high end" and went to a dealer asking for something decent but must cost no more than $500 (five hundred). He chat us up about our musical tastes before leading us to a listening room. We sat down and he turned on a system on a rack and my jaw dropped. I had never heard anything like it. I was ready to pay the $500 until he unveiled the Audio Research gear driving Thiel 7.2. We became Audio Research convert immediately.
Fast-forward to about two years ago. The tubes were getting expensive to replace and I was tired of having to wait 40 minutes for them to warm before starting a listening session. So a search was on for replacements. A friend mentioned Bryston and I actually laughed and waved him off. Bryston? Some no-name wannabe audio company in Canada? Canada? What do they know about good music? More bad room-shaking bass and sharp deafening highs, I was sure. Selling on spec and cheap price, I thought.
Then as luck would have it, I visited a new friend's HT and was extremely impressed by the seamless and effortless extension and dynamics. Not one hint of compression or strain from top to bottom. The best HT movie sound I had heard up until then. When he showed me the 9B-SST, I was speechless. OK, so this is Bryston? Those tiny little per-channel circuit boards stuffed into a small chassis can actually sound like THAT? "THE" Bryston that makes solid state for relatively cheap price? Solid state can do this? The 9B-SST sounded like a top-notch tube amplifier revealing details that my aging 10+ year old ARC amplifier could not even render. The rest is history
. We are now Bryston converts.
It is possible there are many like us. We are not "high-end" or "low-end" people, just music lovers. We are very skeptical of claims and specs and the outrageous prices and trust nothing but our ears. We won't pay more than what we could hear nor less than what would satisfy our needs. We have to be convinced and we refused to be sold a bill of goods. So all the awards and endorsements are good but we remain skeptical until the demo
.
There is nothing like DEMO!
