Bryston Vs Classe

Isn't one piece in the bryston line I'd be interested in personally keeping!..20 year warranty considered. I've owned lots of high end amps, and Classe's have been in my system as well. For the money, they are indeed superb! I find them more refined than what Bryston has made(no, the 7b's don't belong in class A, sorry). Yes, the top end slam, and overall refinement isn't what something like high end Pass, Krell, Threshold, or Levinson is offering in solid state, but it bests Bryston IMO! (of the older Classe, the CA150 was the best sounding!
I do give current delivery to the Bryston however, but I couldn't live with the Sonics. I think it's a bit warm, bland, and bloated in the bass..not to mentioned rolled off on top, as a line. I just think the Classe's offer more transparent and more pure sound compared to Brystons' sound

After auditioning the bryston 4b SST in my system (Adcom "temporary" CD player GCD-700, Rowland Consonance Preamp, Transparent musiclink super ICs (SE) and speaker cables, Signal Audio "new model" balanced ICs, Martin-Logan SL3s, Velodyne ULD-15 series II sub) I found I preferred the Classe CAM-200 monoblocks, much to my surprise. You don't have to scroll up very far to find me saying I don't like Classe. Someone made me a great deal on the monoblocks used, good enough that if I needed to I could re-sell them and roll into a 4b SST or something else-- to shorten the story, the Classe design really excels at letting detail come through, and has plenty of slam. The fully balanced amplifier circuitry was a good match for my preamp, and the noise level just dropped to nothing. The Bryston was good in this regard, but not as good.

The Bryston sounded good, but more "abrupt"- attacks were too "in your face"-- to the point of being unnatural (yes, the amp was broken in well, a floor piece is what I demoed)-- acoustic guitar strings were plucked too hard- like they were miked too close or something. Not sure if this is describing it well- this is why I don't write for a stereo rag.

The Classe's midrange was more natural, and whereas both amps imaged well, the Bryston's presentation was too forward, a bit shallow, and a bit narrow. The Classe seems to allow the soundstage to extend outside the speakers, with excellent depth. With the right other components, the Bryston might be outstanding, but with the rest of my stuff it was just too pushy. Some of this may well be interaction between the Rowland and the Classe vs. the Bryston.

BTW, before any of you ask, yes, the Classe and the Rowland use different pin-outs on the XLR plugs, Rowland adhering to the "commercial" pin out standard (pin 2 inverted, - signal), Classe and Bryston the "consumer" (pin 2 + signal). The preamp has a handy phase invert button on the remote, problem solved.

I also had a nice email chat with an extremely helpful tech advisor at JRDG about this issue. I'll start a thread for that. Beats working.

Classe!!

Hm. Kinda late to comment, but I demo'd Bryston (4B-ST), Classe and Aragon in my house, doing side by side blind comparisons with my family. In blind tests, my son and I could tell them apart without trouble, every time. The sound was that noticably different. The Aragon was warmer, and the Classe added a fullness to the sound. The problem was, it wasn't a warm, full kind of sound that was being played... they were adding stuff that didn't belong there. I ended up with the Bryston and have been very, very happy.