For my Thiel 2.4s with an Aesthetix Janus front end: I received a Pass x150.8 yesterday and I have to say this amp and the Bryston 4B3 are entirely different sonically. The Pass is very liquid, three dimensional and palpable whereas the Bryston is very analytical and revealing. While the Pass also retrieves a HUGE amount of detail from recordings there are some that will find the Bryston preferable. Since I'm only one day into the audition of the Pass I haven't quite decided yet but for people who believe all SS amps sound the same as long as they are high current and have plenty of power reserves compare these two because there's a huge difference. I would say initially that I favor the Pass but the problem I'm having with the Pass is that on orchestral music and particularly loud orchestral swells the Bryston is simply more accurate and conveys more information...i.e. its more analytical whereas on the Pass I get a bit of a homogenized sounds on orchestral peaks. I DO find the Pass amp far less fatiguing when listening to loud orchestral music. One interesting tidbit of my experience is that the Pass idles at a far higher electrical draw than the Bryston even though they're both Class A up to 10 watts for the Bryston and 15 watts for the Pass. The Bryston hardly ever got really warm even when it was driven hard while the Pass does produce about the same amount of heat as four KT88 tubes I would say. The heat from the Pass is not bad but just be prepared to use your air conditioning more.
