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It was a hot, humid, New York City evening in early August, and I was thankful to be sitting in the air-conditioned dark of Avery Fisher Hall, up in the Second Tier, for a Mostly Mozart concert. Listening to cello soloist Alisa Weilerstein in Osvaldo Golijov's hypnotic Azul, I was suddenly jolted by an explosive mix of primitive cello sonorities, accordion, and staccato riffs on ethnic percussion instruments. My thoughts turned to the importance in music of both power and delicacy, and of how Bryston Ltd.'s 28B-SST, a 1000W monoblock power amplifier, was designed to address both.
The same delicacy and sweetness were evident in the Brystons' reproduction of Steve Nelson's soft, translucent vibraphone on "The Mooche," from Rendezvous: Jerome Harris Quintet Plays Jazz (CD, Stereophile STPH013-2). The image of the softly playing vibes reached from the far left to the center of the soundstage in my room, and could be clearly discerned, even though Billy Drummond's drums were much louder. I could easily distinguish timbral shadings among Drummond's vintage cymbals, just as John Atkinson stated in his liner note for Editor's Choice (CD, Stereophile STPH016-2), on which…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid-state monoblock power amplifier with balanced and unbalanced inputs. Specified output power: 1000W continuous sinewave power into 8 ohms, 20Hz–20kHz (30dBW). Power bandwidth: 1Hz–100kHz, ±3dB. Distortion: 0.005%, 20Hz–20kHz at 1kW into 8 ohms. Intermodulation distortion: 0.007%, 60Hz+7kHz mixed 4:1. Signal/noise ratio: 110dB ref. 29dB gain, full output, input shorted, 20Hz–20kHz. Damping factor: >500 at 20Hz, ref. 8 ohms. Input sensitivity for full output: 3.2V unbalanced (29dB setting), 6.4V balanced (23dB setting). Input impedance: 30k…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Linn Sondek LP12/Lingo turntable, Linn Ittok tonearm, Spectral moving-coil cartridge; Day-Sequerra Classic FM tuner.
Digital Sources: Krell KRC-28 CD player, Sony SCD-C555ES multichannel SACD/CD player, Slim Devices Squeezebox network music player.
Preamplification: VTL TL-6.5, Krell KCT preamplifiers; Bryston 10B-Sub electronic crossover.
Power Amplifiers: Mark Levinson No.334, Krell FPB-600c, VTL S-400.
D/A Integrated Amplifier: Bryston B100-DA.
Loudspeakers: Quad ESL-989, Revel Ultima Salon, Escalante Design Fremont; JL…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I preconditioned the Bryston 28B-SST by running it at 330W into 8 ohms for an hour. The THD+noise was 0.00265% at the start; by the end of the hour, it had dropped slightly, to 0.00218%. The amplifier's heatsinks were way too hot to touch after 60 minutes, but despite the thermal abuse, the amplifier didn't turn itself off.
The amplifier was non-inverting from both its balanced and unbalanced inputs. The voltage gain into 8 ohms was 28.75dB from both inputs with the gain switch set to "29dB/1V," 22.9dB with it set to "23dB/2V." The input impedance was…
I had planned to feature a few intriguing new products I saw at CEDIA's Expo 2007 held last September in Denver, but I did that on the Stereophile website. Instead, I'll just tell you about the only big audio trend I saw there: HDMI.
What? Ain't that a video interface? Sure, but HDMI can also handle multiple channels of audio in all current high-resolution formats, including DSD and uncompressed PCM. Everywhere I went at the Denver Convention Center, manufacturers were shouting that their players had HDMI outputs and their pre-pros and AVRs had multiple HDMI inputs, although…
With all the connection options, installing the DTC-9.8 can be complex, though it need not be. To get started, I simply connected the six XLR jacks to my Bryston 9B-SST power amp, the HDMI output to my plasma display, and my Denon DV-3910 universal player, Pioneer Elite BDP-HD1 Blu-ray player, Oppo DV-980H universal player, and cable-TV box into HDMI inputs 1–4. That was it: 11 wires. My heap of discarded analog and S/PDIF cables was more than ankle deep.
I then went through the now-familiar setup procedures of associating the physical inputs with the logical names that appear on the…
The 6dB difference in level between the Oppo's PCM and DSD outputs remains (Oppo and Integra are still pointing fingers at each other), but the volume control fixes that. Also, with PCM from SACD, the Integra displays the sample frequency as 88.2kHz, but with DSD the display reads "44.1kHz." Oppo explains this by quoting the HDMI 1.2 spec: "For Super Audio CD, the SF bits are typically set to 0, 1, 0, to indicate a Sample Frequency of 2.8224MSamples/s (ie, 64x44.1kHz)."
Nonetheless, I was a bit unnerved by all this. It may contribute to my preferring SACDs transcoded to PCM by the Oppo…
Sidebar: Recordings in the Round
HAYDN: Die Schöpfung Miah Persson, soprano; Topi Lehtipu, tenor; David Wilson-Johnson, baritone; Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg & Salzburger Bach Chor, Ivor Bolton Oehms Classics OEH609 (2 SACDs)
Haydn's joyously spectacular oratorio The Creation has been one of my favorite pieces since I was in college, when Vladimir Ussachevsky introduced me to the remarkably forward-thinking opening depiction of Chaos. What tone painting—and what follows is melodious and uplifting. I own four other recordings, but this one joins the top of the list for its…
When I arranged to review the Bryston 28B-SST monoblock power amplifier, I wanted to be certain that the 1kW amplifier wouldn't be starved for current. Bryston advised me that Plitron, who manufacture the 28B-SST's toroidal transformer, also make Power Isolation Units (PIUs), under the brand name Torus Power. Torus explained that its PIUs combine surge suppression with massive toroidal transformers to provide AC power conditioning and protection from voltage surges.
For this review, I was supplied with Torus's RM20 ($3000), a PIU that uses a single 2400VA toroidal transformer to supply…