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Bryston B60R Integrated Amplifier

It's an inescapable fact: despite my admiration for what valves can do in audio amplification, a major drawback is that as you use them, the performance is deteriorating. No sooner have you put that expensive selected set of tubes in, biased them up and left them to burn in, the clock is ticking. How long they last is dependant on their quality and how hard the amplifier pushes them, and because it is a gradual process (rather like stylus wear) you are only aware of how much they have deteriorated when you decide to replace them.

I was recently reminded of this fact when I came to use my guitar amplifier for a recording session the other day, only to discover that it sounded really quite awful. There was nothing basically wrong, but none of the harmonic richness of the guitar was coming through, and after much messing around I put new output valves in, where upon it sprang back to life. But the original valves were no more than a year old. Of course, all of this made me think about the amps I use for hi-fi, and I must admit that it irritates me that the performance is subtly changing as I use them. There is always that nagging paranoia that your system doesn't sound quite as good as it did last week... And as anyone who runs large thermionic power amplifiers will testify frequently replacing valves is an expensive business.

Of course, none of this is a problem with solid state...or is it? There are those that believe that transistors can suffer deterioration with time and use, although whether there is scientific evidence of this I do not know. (I can believe, however that like any device that is thermally stressed, such as a power transistor, factors like contactresistance might well change.)

It was while I was contemplating this that the Bryston B60 turned up on my doorstep, the result of a conversation with UK importer PMC. Having had great results with the top of the range 14B SST/BP25 pre - power combination, they wondered if I would like to try the entry level integrated. Well, why not? My feelings about the 14B in particular were that it was one hell of an amp, and if such a thing as value for money existed in high-end audio then this was it. If any of its qualities had trickled down to the B60 it could be an interesting proposition - particularly with a starting price of £1350 inclusive of vat. Bryston are a company who would not, I think subscribe to the theory of transistors having a finite life. Why? Because they are confident enough in their products to offer a twenty year guarantee against parts and manufacturing defects, and not only that, they have been around long enough to mean it.

Based in Canada (a country which incidentally seems to me to be the source of a lot of interesting hi-fi these days) Bryston amplifiers have found considerable acceptance in professional audio, in particular studio monitoring where reliability and general ruggedness is just as important as sound quality. Not always a recipe for success in domestic audio, the Americans have for a long time recognised the Bryston amps as being rather special, while their profile is steadily growing in the U.K. Having described my introduction to Bryston amplifiers over twenty years ago in some depth with the review of the 14B (in Issue 14) I will not cover that ground again. Suffice to say that I have a high regard for both the company and their products.

The B60 looks almost identical to the BP25 to the extent that a couple of visitors to the house have assumed that it was a pre amp and asked where the power amp was. Hinting at its professional origins, the BP60 is 1 standard rack unit high, which equates to 44mm, which makes for a very slim, almost diminutive amplifier, while the front panel finish is available in black or silver. The version that arrived for review included the remote control option the handset being identical to the one supplied for the BP25, which sensibly only offers mute and volume adjustment - why on earth would you need anything else?

The same attention to detail that is evident with the more expensive pre and power amplifiers applied here, and one could look upon the B60 as the marriage of Bryston's smallest power amp and a basic version of their preamp with consequential savings in cost, particularly regarding the casework. Bearing in mind that the B60 is primarily intended as a domestic amplifier it doesn't need the substantial external heat sinking that the bigger units have instead opting to use the case to dissipate excess heat.

Internally all of the electronics are mounted on a single board, which as you might imagine with such a small box is pretty densely populated In spite of this, layout is neat and methodical with short signal paths and effective placement of components. (Which are all discrete by the way Bryston are not a fan of op-amps for audio use) For example the reservoir capacitors for each power amp channel are situated close to the output transistors, which are in turn near the output sockets. The power supply utilizes two slim torroidal mains transformers, one per channel with regulated rails for the pre amp section. All of the components look to be of high quality and I suspect that the B60 (which has been in production for several years) has undergone a certain amount of revision as a result of improvements made to the bigger power amplifiers; I could be wrong but the output transistors look very similar to those used in the new 14B. I should also mention that for an extra £350 there is a version available incorporating a moving magnet phono stage, which if it is anything like the one in the BP25 is pretty damn good.

The B60 is essentially a straight forward design, offering basic facilities for four line inputs and one tape loop. Front panel rotary controls comprise volume, balance and input selection while two toggle switches are used for power on/off and tape monitor. An LED indicates green for normal operation and red for mute, this also doubles as a clipping indicator. Rear panel connections consist of high quality phono connectors for signal input and output the pre-out and power-in allow the connection of processors where required. Loudspeaker connections are made by way of sensible insulated five way binding posts. A small problem arises should you need to use two sets of 4mm plugs; while the connectors have no problem accommodating this, your access is limited by the shallow depth of the amplifier - there is simply not enough room to get into the underside of the sockets. As well as the pre-out (which has a low enough output impedance to make it genuinely useful) there is also a headphone output, a feature that for some people I know will be a godsend.

If the B60 has inherited some of the finer points of its more expensive relatives, It would appear that it has also picked up some of the more tiresome as well. Don't even think about listening straight out of the box.

Running in was an extended process, requiring at least a couple of weeks to settle down and shed a boring lifeless character. The main switch on the front panel cuts the supply to the whole amplifier, and it takes about half an hour to sound its best after switching on.

One of the more endearing aspects of an integrated amplifier is the freedom to dispense with the multitude of boxes and cables that go to make up my normal amplification system. Instead I end up with comparative simplicity in the form of a CD player, record player and phono stage, and of course the amplifier. Whether this influenced my first impressions I don't know, but the B60 sounded clean and uncluttered from the start. While rated at sixty Watts, the Bryston will, not surprisingly considering its heritage, produce considerably more power into lower impedances, (although 4 ohms is the recommended lower limit) and thus drove the Primary monitors to quite reasonable levels. However when it runs out of steam it is quite sudden rather than graceful, and you are left in no doubt as to when to back off with the volume control.

But, up to that point, the B60 sounded great. There are definitely hints as to its heritage, and while it doesn't have the sheer unlimited power reserves of the big power amplifiers, it demonstrate a good ability to remain under control and not get flustered with demanding material. I mention this because I have recently been listening to an album of electronic music (Boards of Canada - Geogaddi, not normally my sort of thing, it reminds me of Eno/Fripp circa 1976) and it is hard work. The music is dark and at times dense with so many things happening, the B60 impressed me with its ability to present everything that was going on with great clarity and definition, even with the sub-bass noises on some of the tracks.

That same clarity was evident with vocals and acoustic instruments, where detail of the performance and the acoustic were well presented, together with a hint of the 14B's forte, an ability to reproduce what the instruments are not playing. If that sounds silly what I'm getting at is the background from which the sounds emerge, the "blacker" this is the more realistic things become. Where the B60 did fall down a bit was in the presentation of a sound stage - while it was good at presenting images between the loudspeakers, it was a little disappointing in terms of depth to the front and rear, and I sometimes felt as it the music was lacking in projection away from the loudspeakers.

I have just about finished a slow and painstaking restoration on a pair of Quad ESL 63s, and testing them with the B60 proved an interesting combination - they absolutely loved it. The control coupled with finesse and delicacy really got the best out of the electrostatics, and the sound was musically dynamic and full of expression with a wonderful transparency, while the Bryston had no problems at all driving them to healthy levels.

The B60 was party to one moment of complete hi-fi madness, as the review period overlapped with the arrival of the Revel Salon loudspeakers, and I couldn't resist the temptation to try the two together. So that's fifteen hundred pounds worth of amplifier driving loudspeakers costing ten times as much. I have to say that the Bryston acquitted itself extremely well, and while the Salons do really need more power than the B60 can provide, at reasonable levels it sounded pretty damn good all things considered. OK, the bass didn't have quite the authority and slam that a large loudspeaker like the Revels demanded, and when asked to go deep there was a lack of control. But the chances of the B60 being used with something like the Salon are, I hope, pretty remote - Using more sensible loudspeakers suggested that within its limits bass control was pretty tight for a modest integrated.

The Bryston B60 has got a lot going for it. It offers the essence of what I am beginning to discover is the Bryston hallmark; clean uncoloured delivery without having to tread carefully with partnering loudspeakers. Or to put it another way a fuss free, real world amplifier that plays music with a degree of musicality usually reserved for more 'specialist' designs. More importantly, it applies its strengths to the job of reproducing music, and while I have absolutely no doubt as to its technical prowess, this is what really matters. A carefully selected system based around the B60 could offer a degree of musical satisfaction that a lot of more expensive set ups miss; that in itself is a recommendation. The fact that this kind of performance comes in a diminutive little box which is fuss free to use, guaranteed for twenty years and, dare I say it, not a lot of money should make it an extremely attractive proposition.

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20 Year Warranty - A Generation of Music