Bryston-A Sleeping Giant
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.
Russ The Mobiusman
