One of the more notable trends in the hi-fi business the past year or so is the sudden ascendancy of that centrist product, the integrated amp. Though long-popular in Britain, where the indigenous hi-fi industry has made a specialty of the genre, it's been a category of goods all-but-unmarketable in the US. The masses consider it too exotic, preferring receivers, which hold in a single box not only an amp and preamp but a radio tuner, as well-while the high-enders, with their purist insistence on separate components for separate functions, deem it not exotic enough. But now the mood is swinging, apparently from both directions. From "below," a surging stock market has set many once-indifferent consumers on an upwardly mobile road where, among the maze of other fancy electronic toys, the proliferation of compact discs and home-theater systems has nudged them toward the fineries of "good sound." From "above," a sheer shortage of shelf space, perhaps combined with the outlandish prices charged these days for a simple one meter pair of cable to connect a preamp with an amp, has triggered a compulsion to wind down. Of course, all this is theorizing. The fact, however, is that integrated amps are spreading, not only from the usual suspects in the upper-mid-fi ranks, but also-as has been documented in these pages from such entrenched highend firms (which never would have stooped to the task a few years ago) as Krell, Goldmund, Conrad-Johnson, Audio Research, and (we now approach our subject at hand) Bryston.

The Canadians at Bryston designed the B-60 integrated amp primarily for the European and Far Eastern markets, but expanded the production line when they discovered, much to their surprise, that it was selling briskly in North America, too. Given the broader trend in the market, there's no mystery why the B-60 should be making waves. It's a sleekly handsome, extraordinarily compact machine, yet sports four pairs of input jacks, a tape and an audio input jack for a video source, plus two more that can be used either for a surround-sound processor or to turn the unit into a dedicated preamp or power amp. Like many mass-market products, it also has a headphone jack in the front and a power-socket in the back. The only thing it lacks, along these lines, is a phono-section (made available since first reviewed), though, alas, the market for such features has diminished (and, for those who still spin LPs, Bryston sells a couple of separate phono-stage preamps: the BP-1 moving magnet for $750, the TF-1 moving coil for $550).

I suspect those who are rising from the bog of receivers will find the B-60 a revelation, and those retreating from the tangle of separates will be find it a pleasant surprise. When it comes to capturing the vital midrange of music (voices, woodwinds, small string ensembles), the Bryston is impressive by nearly any Standard, not just for its size and price tag. On Afterglow (Mapleshade), you can sense singer Kendra Shank's palpable presence. Dawn Upshaw sounds properly, meltingly, glorious on Gorecki's Third Symphony (Nonesuch)-and, speaking of that recording, you can see the cellos before you toward the start of the first movement. On Analog Productions' gold-CD reissue of Spirit Sensitive (or the less spectacular but still quite nice aluminum disc on India Navigation), Chico Freeman's tenor saxophone projects the combination of warmth and brassy edge that one can usually hear only through much more expensive electronics.

The B-60 also does an excellent job of retrieving the ambiance and (if it's captured on the disc) the seamless spaciousness of a recording space, whether it's a studio, a concert hall, a jazz club, or a dive. The distance between the front and back rows of a stage and the layers of air between them are also well-delineated. Instruments and singers take on a natural 3-D focus.

Still, the Bryston has its weak points, and whether you can tolerate them will depend on your taste. Its most serious shortfall lies in the nether regions of the bass. The very lowest contrabass notes at the start of Gorecki's Third are barely audible. On "Maqam Hedjaz," from the Eduardo Paniagtma Group's Danzas Medievales Espanoles [m-a Recordings], the lowest tones of the bendir, a big bass drum, sound not just quieter than its midrange tones, but also less distinct, almost as if it they were coming from a different drum entirely. (However, the resonance of the drum and the echoes from the reverberant church, in which the session was recorded, come through fine.) Even when a bass violin plucks or bows somewhat higher notes, they sometimes lose their distinctiveness -or vanish - when massed strings, or simply a large number of any instruments, enter the fray.

I suspected this weakness came from what must be (in such a small box) the B-60's rather diminutive power supply. The issue, I figure, is not so much wattage (rated at 60 per channel, with clipping avoided up to 71), but rather power reserves. However, upon opening up the case, I saw two reasonably large-and, given the size of the overall unit, amazingly hefty-twin custom torodial power supplies (one for each channel). In fact, a chat with the folks at Bryston reveals that, in terms of parts and circuitry, the B-60 is exactly the same as Bryston's B-20 preamp (which alone costs $1495) and its 2B-LP power amp ($850) combined, all in one box. So who knows what's going on here? Whatever the cause, when pushed to its limits, the B-60 has little headroom for momentary expansion. Certainly, at very least, the amp should not he hooked up to speakers that are difficult loads. (For instance, the Platinum Quattros, which are said to require at least 100 watts per channel, never opened up when driven by the Bryston-though the more efficient, and considerably easier, Gallo Nucleus Solos, which were used for this review, very much did.) The owners manual states, "impedance less than 4 ohms not recommended."

This limitation may also account for the amp's slight softening of transients. Back to the Kendra Shank disc: the various cymbals, bells, and shakers on Steve Williams' trapset lose some of their high octave zing and shimmer; there's also a bit amiss in the forward edge of his drumstick blows.

A competing integrated amp, the almost identically priced ($1400) Naim Nait 3-R (which Andrew Keen admired in the April Fi), is cleaner and clearer when it comes to bass tones (and overtones), percussive attacks, and dynamic contrasts. However, the Bryston is warmer, less strained, and also more detailed at getting the midrange right (especially voices) as well as the air and space in which the music blooms and swirls around. Ah, to find the little, sub $1500 integrated that fuses the best of both units. I suspect (though I base this only on memory, which might well be flawed) that the Musical Fidelity (known in the US as British Fidelity) A-1, which in its heyday sold for a mere $700, may have fit the ticket, but it has been discontinued and was never available for very long in the US anyway.

Still, I do not wish to diminish the Bryston's considerable appeal. What it does well, it does at least as well as many separate amps or preamps that, together, cost a great deal more. And what it does less well, it does much, indeed startlingly, better than the great bulk of gear owned by those for whom the B-60 would represent a big step up.

We invite you to experience the Bryston SST² Series amplifiers

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