Absolute Sound Magazine HPs Editors Choice Award


 

Date: 2010-02

 

We are extremely please to announce that the Bryston 28B SST² Mono Amplifier has been awarded HP’s 2010 Editors Choice Award in the March 2010 issue of the Absolute Sound Magazine.

Since I first reviewed this 1000-watt monoblock (issue 189), Bryston has twice updated its innards, each an audible improvement over the original. Yet it is the latest version (SST²) that is, putting it simply, a solid-state breakthrough, so much better than the original that I am flabbergasted (and a bit perplexed). It is faster by a good bit, with absolutely no edge or enhanced “definition”; indeed, it sounds much airier (particularly at the top) and more relaxed than did the original, while exhibiting more subtle dynamics, both at the micro- and macro ends of the spectrum. All of this is bathed in a pool of ambience that never sounds like too much second harmonic distortion (or, to these ears, euphonic in the colored sense at all). Need I say this is the most musical solid-state design I’ve heard, and from what I once would have considered the unlikeliest source?

Update in progress.”

Harry Pearson.