Authorized Re-print of:
Fi - The Magazine of Music and Sound

May 1996

The Bryston 3B-ST is one of those audio products that is so inherently good at what it's supposed to do - letting us enjoy music - that I feel many dyed-in-the-wool audio junkies will never ever audition it. It doesn't cost tens of thousands of dollars. It's not big and beefy and impressive looking. Nor is it sexy or exotic. It won't perform one death-defying feat after another - "Step right up, ladies and gents, and you will hear, for the first time ever in history of high-end audio, the subway cars traveling a north-south pattern under London's Kingsway Hall!" No, it won't impress your audiophile buddies, and it certainly won't gain brownie points in the component-of -the-month club (a 3-series amplifier has been part of the Bryston lineup for some twenty-odd years). Yet here is a product that, at $1,495, is affordable, extremely well-built, easy to use, and powerful enough (120 watts/channel) to drive almost any speaker one might mate with it. It comes with a twenty-year transferable warranty. It will give to whomever chooses to take it home lots and lots of musical pleasure, and really is, for regular humans, about all the amp most of us will ever need.

Like the venerable Vandersteen 2CE, the Bryston 3B-ST could best be described by the old adage "better than the sum of its parts." Indeed, over the years I've experienced components that, although they may not excel in their ability to soundstage or render a sense of depth, get the basics of tonality and coherence so very right that they are among the most convincing, involving, and present I've heard (like the classic Spendor BC-1 loudspeaker, or for that matter, many of my favorite mono records). Conversely, there are components that do excel in one or many areas of the audio check-list that don't come close to engaging our emotions in the music - for this listener the highly-touted BEL 1001 MkII exemplifies such a component.

Now, although they've always been workhorses and a "good value" (that's sort of like the euphemism "cute personality"),earlier Brystons were distinctly solid-state, sort of Schwarzeneggers of the power amp world, with all the good and bad that term implies - robust and reliable, efficient, clean and crisp with thunderous bass but also with some of the attendant crudities, such as graininess, dryness, and electronic edginess. Few audiophiles would take one home to meet mother. The ST series is a different breed altogether.

The 3B-ST - the ST stands for Stuart Taylor, the man largely responsible, along with Chris Russell, for the development of this design - has been in production since March 1995, and was direct result of Bryston's first attempt at building a multi-channel amplifier (by essentially sticking two 3B-NRBs, the then current model, onto one chassis). Realizing that they'd merely stepped laterally instead of forward, Russell and Taylor set about rethinking what they wanted from an amplifier. The began by further improving on the modular construction of the NRB series, (where they had eliminated the wiring harness associated with the power supplies, and instead decided to incorporate the power supply into the amp's main circuitry). Relocation of the power transformers to minimize and mutually cancel their magnet fields resulted in a further 8dB improvement in signal to noise ratio over NRB. They then redesigned the amp circuit path itself. Through further simplification, and the elimination of high-impedance pathways on the printed circuit boards, Taylor and Russell achieved a reduction of 6dB in distortion - cut it by half - especially at the high frequencies.

This new thinking, and the measurable gain in lowered noise, have led to audible improvements in all ST-amps. The 3B-ST is an accurate, neutral (those are good qualities) device that projects the music against a background of deep black.

Listen, for example, to the delightful Tarantelle [Harmonia Mundi HM 379]. The Atrium Musica de Madrid plays, with great wit and beauty, an amazing array of instruments on these early-music dance hits. And the different tonal and textural qualities of the guitar, viol de gamba, various wooden flutes, organ, clavichord, tambourine, triangle, drums etc., have been captured by Harmonia Mundi engineers with all their distinctive nuances, sizes, shapes and materials in tact. Also captured is the sheer joy the musicians of the Atrium Musica took in playing this unusual music together. The 3B-ST allows all this joyousness to be communicated with a natural, unforced ease. At times it may slightly warm up or round things out - a touch of warmth is the most consistent additive of the amplifier - and, although it tips the tonal balance to the darker side of neutral (unlike say, the Pass Labs Aleph 3, my current reference amplifier, or many of the classic pieces from Audio Research), that quality is far from offensive.

This music also demonstrates one crucial area in which the 3B-ST excels; pace and dynamics. In order to evoke the hurdy-gurdy frenzy whipped up by a number of these tunes the amplifier must be quick and nimble. The Bryston kept up with the astonishing variety of tonal, textual, and dynamic twists and turns that make this record so much fun.

These great middle-age dance tunes inspired me to pull out another classic recording of gypsy music, Manitas de Platas' Guitarra Flamenco [Vanguard VSD 79203]. The Andalusian roots of this moving, earthy music were conveyed through the Bryston with gritty beauty, poetry, and sensuality. The spidery, sometimes brooding, always virtuosic guitar playing of "Silver Hands"e; - and on the third track, "Tarantas", the mournful singing of Jose Reyes - conjures images of olive-skinned, black-haired men and women in smoky cave-like taverns drinking wine and living a life far removed from our workaholic world.

Continuing the Spanish theme, I played the Classic Records CD reissue of the magnificent Decca Espana! [CSCD-6006-]. Here, Argent leads the London Symphony Orchestra through a variety of saffron-flavored orchestral showpieces (see Michael Gray's review page 123) with great rhythmic energy and vibrancy. The space carved out by the Bryston - by the way, it will convey, quite convincingly, the acoustic spaces of different recordings - is big, dramatic, and most importantly, plants the musicians and their instruments solidly between the speakers with weight and volume.

Shifting musical gears, I played two of the finest - but quite different in mood and feel - (Capitol) Sinatra records, Only The Lonely [SWW 1053], and Songs For Swingin' Lovers! [W 653] Thematic records like these create a very specific atmosphere and feeling. Swingin' Lovers!, for example, is all uptempo, cool, light and Martini-dry. Only The Lonely, on the other hand , is amber colored, definitely a Scotch or Bourbon album. The final track on the latter, "One For My Baby"' begins with a distant saloon piano. Sinatra sounds so weary it seems as if he can barely get the words out. At the end of the title phrase the word "baby" disappears into the air like a wisp of cigarette smoke. When he sings, "I'm feelin' so bad, can't you make the music easy and sad", the Bryston delivers the mood so well that you want to go put your arm around the guys shoulder and comfort him. It gave me chills.

Although the Bryston is highly satisfying musically, there are few colorations I should point to that keep it out of the world-class category. In addition to the added warmth that I noted earlier, there is also a slight grain - call it black velvet or charcoal - that is somewhat soft and powdery (not to say, tube-like) in the texture it adds to the signal. Those qualities, along with a slight lack of refinement and low level resolution, are about the only quibbles I have with this amp.

So, the 3B-ST isn't perfect. (But then, what is?) It won't help you lose weight, have a better sex life, or become fabulously wealthy and beautiful. But based on this listener's experience - the 3B-ST sets a new benchmark for "entry - level" high performance in a power amp. Unless you've got the needle in way deep - buy one, forget about it, and live happily ever after.

We invite you to experience the Bryston SST² Series amplifiers

20 Year Warranty - A Generation of Music