It's a funny thing. This guy actually SELLS his Bryston gear. Most stores I have been in hide the Bryston stuff, and if you ask about it they say something like "it's a pro amp, made to be reliable but its not musical" and so on. As if reliability and quality are mutually exclusive! I think many places signed up with Bryston just so they could keep it from being sold by competitors. And, if the customer insisted on a demo, they would demo it with cables that accentuated brightness and ,in general, did what they could to make the other gear sound superior.
One dealer, on the QT, told me that the reasons stores did that is that Bryston ruined their business model; they relied on customers constantly changing their tastes, or the gear changing due to degradation in the parts. The problem with Bryston buyers was that, sure, they could hear the difference between the very best SS and the Bryston gear (this was in 1993) but were more than happy with what the Bryston could do and would keep the Bryston and not get on the endless upgrade path needed to keep the store running.
See, the way that Bryston sounded was the way it would continue to sound for the next few decades. It would not degrade. A lot of gear changed over time, by quite a bit in fact. He mentioned the names of the stuff that was, well, variable, in its sound. I could understand the tube stuff, but there was a lot of SS gear in that camp too. Price had no bearing on that.
Even after all that, my own experiences included (for instance, before the 20 year warranty, I new only one person that EVER payed for a Bryston repair...and it involved beer spilled in the amplifier), and seeing the dirty tricks in the stores, the high-end myths were too hard to shake. I STILL lusted after the tweaky gear! It finally took me being able to actually work with the gear in question and, compare over a long time period , to appreciate what a wonder the Bryston company is.
No, I don't think Bryston gear is perfect. They are man-made and have flaws too. But, they are easy to live with flaws, they are consistent from unit to unit, and the company stands behind their stuff. I guess what I mean here is that the gear seems amongst the most "human" of SS gear. Like good tube gear, you might be able to "pick out" some flaw or other but, really, just not care. The music is there. (Some other pro amps have that quality too.)
For instance, is their 1.5 phono stage my favorite phono stage? No, a tubed behemoth is. But it IS my favorite backup preamp, always delivering a balanced musical performance that other, flashier and more expensive, SS preamps just cant do. It is a joy.
