Montreal Audiofest 2025

Bryston CEO James Tanner is not only an Audiofest regular but an affable, down-to-earth guy who refuses to use either high-end cabling or hi-rez files at his show demos. Why? Because he doesn’t want visitors to think that the sound from his system is shaped by anything other than Bryston gear. That doesn’t mean he denies that better-designed cables or hi-rez files through his streamer will elevate sound quality—only that, when you hear his system at a show, you know exactly what Bryston gear sounds like. I found that an interesting viewpoint.

Also interesting to me was the company’s Middle T10 speakers’ new and innovative modular proprietary crossover, which the user can pull from the back of the speaker to enable one of five different modes: passive, bi-amped, tri-amped, bi-wired, or tri-wired.

Used in passive mode at the Audiofest—James showed me a graph depicting how flat the speaker’s frequency response was in this configuration—the tall, slim Middle T10 speakers ($8295 each) were powered by a pair of 600W 7B monoblock amplifiers ($8245 each) and a BP-19 preamp ($7495), while the source was a BDA3.14 DAC/streamer ($4995) playing music from a thumbnail drive.

The resultant sound I heard was rich, coherent, and imbued with natural warmth, airy highs, authentic timbres, and big, well-defined images anchored solidly within a vast soundstage.

Prices listed in CA$.