Hi Walker,
PLEASE do post your impressions after hearing the VT's. I really want to know if your impression matches ours. Sorry for the long-winded post.
We have had experiences with VT200 (my hand-me-down from my brother), VT200 MKII (friend's), VT200M (dealer) and Bryston 7BSST2 (family -> brother -> sister). All four drove the Thiel CS3.7. We used ARC CD's incl. CD 7 and LS 26 and Ref to drive the amplifiers so this is mostly an ARC system with 7B plugged into the chain.
The 3.7s love power and the VT's were rated at the minimum of what 3.7 prefers, so this may make a decent comparison for you.
Compared to 7B, the VT is slightly more polite, more rounded in each note. Cymbal rolls off just a hair sooner and a hair less airy. Bass is full and well controlled but ever so slightly less dynamic or more polite. Mid range is where the 7B is obviously richer revealing more harmonics. VT is wonderful too but just a hair less "sweet".
In revealing details, the VT seems to reveal about 20% less than what we heard through the 7B. The 7B clearly revealed instruments and lines that were somewhat hidden or hard to hear through the VT. We were surprised by the amount of difference in details. This is not caused by tipped-up frequency either, it is true musical notes played by instruments that were hidden before. The 7B separated these lines for us.
The VT has a larger sound stage that extends deeper to the back of the speakers, taller to the ceiling and wider to the side. The 7B is slightly smaller side to side, shorter and layering is slightly more shallow. For the VT, it is like I am sitting up closer to the orchestra so it is laid out larger in general. For the 7B, I am a few rows back so it is slightly narrower and shallower.
The VT gives a "rounded", slightly rolled-off but slightly denser image. The 7B gives a crystal clear but less dense image. We prefer the 7B for all that we can hear but you may like the "sensation" of having a dense object suspended in space. The differences are slight but taste-specific.
The 7B has none of the hard, ear-killing solid state noise. In many ways, it sounds like an excellent tube amplifier. As solid state strives to sound like the best of tubes and tubes strive to sound like the best of solid state, I would say the 7B (28B?) comes darn close to the ideal range.
In terms of realism, both VT and 7B were quite adapt at being accurate with the 7B better by enough to make us notice. WHere we thought the VT's were realism champs before, the 7Bs outdo them with that much more information. THe shades of tonal changes coming from a single violin string being struck are that much more vivid. This is not a slight difference but clearly audible.
Added: We did not find the VT to be "harder" in the upper range. May be leaner and with Less details than the 7B. I use "lean" because lean does not heard our ears. "Hard" as in typical solid-state "hard" and "etchy" will ring our ears and chase us out of the room.
Added: In terms of honesty in reproduction, neither the 7B nor the ARC is forgiving. They are both brutal in their honesty. Bad upstream will bring bad sound to our ears. One interesting note is that a CD that sounded bad on the ARC may sound tolerable on the 7B because of higher resolution. This is counter-intuitive until we heard it. For example, a CD sounded lean in the highs, lacking mids and so so lows through the ARC. Played through the 7B, suddenly the lean high opens up to reveal two or more higher freq instrumental details. The mids reveal several more instruments and the lows become better integrated with the rest of the music. The 7B is better able to reveal more details so it can change our impression of what we thought was a bad recording.
In matching, we thought it all depended on what speakers they were driving. We thought the 7B is a better match for the 3.7 due to 7B's ability to control the speakers. The VTs would be perfect for speakers with high sensitivity (90+?) and lower power demand (100W+?).
In terms of ease of use, the 7B fires up and if we really must be picky, wait 10 minutes and off it rolls. Our older VT's generally require 40 minutes of warm-up before sounding their best. We did not ask how long it would take the newer VT200M to warm up.
My brother was plowing in $1600 a pop and $1800 if we count the $200 for re-bias and adjustments each time tubes were changed. He did not want to do the adjustment himself. Tube cost got expensive given how much we play our gear.
My brother was the one who dragged us around shopping, made us listen for hours, asked for our input and made us lugged all sorts of pre-amp, amp, cables and speakers around before finally settling on the 7B to replace his 9B which nearly replaced his old VT200
.
We thought a better comparison to the 7B may be the ARC Ref 300 or Ref 600. If you have not heard them, it is definitely worth a session. There are still differences but the 600 is one excellent amplifier. The 300 comes close to the 7B but hard to tell if it could surpass the 7B.
Hope this helps.
ps.
if possible, you may want to hear both amps driving your speakers.
