Bought a pair of Magnepan LRS. Should I buy a Schiit Vidar or Bryston 3B-ST?

maplegrovemusic,

     Responding by just stating "bryston", with no further effort at explaining why, is intellectually lazy, myopic, meaningless and its actual value to this thread, the OP or anyone else is in direct proportion to the number of words you proffered.  Why bother?


Tim

In an annoying twist of fate, UPS messed up the internals of the amp in shipping. It worked well for a couple hours and then gave up the ghost. https://imgur.com/a/i8c4gL

Could someone please tell me what kind of part it is that’s cracked? I’m not proficient in electronics terminology but I’d like to know what I’m looking at to get it fixed. Already have a great guy who fixed my turntable so I’ll go to him again.

Impressions while it worked was that the separation and soundstage were the best I’ve heard; not even close. Blasting Deafheaven’s The Pecan Tree made that already massive sounding song sound nothing short of cataclysmic, moving me to very real tears. Roger Water’s Three Wishes was startling, with the Genie’s voice zooming in and out of the edges of the room. Bass definition and detail were fantastic as well, with Primus' Tommy The Cat sounding truly awesome, Les Claypool's bass playing came through with no perceivable blurring of notes at all. The amount of bass isn’t quite what I'm looking for, but I think I can live with it. Bad recordings sounded pretty bad (Daniel Johnston) but I wasn’t surprised about that.

Once I get a good phono pre I’ll report back with my decision on whether or not to get a tube linestage, because it’s a little more sterile than I’d like on quiet acoustic recordings, but that might be my DAC. (Grace SDAC Balanced) Basically if my vinyl rig sounds great when I find a used ifi iPhono2, which I’ll use with my Technics SL-10 w/Grado Red2, I’ll start saving for a Schiit Gungnir Multibit. If it’s still a smidge lifeless I’ll start saving for a Schiit Freya+ or if I’m super patient, a Woo Audio WA22.

Whoops messed up the link while editing, here it is: https://imgur.com/a/i8c4gLf

Whoops messed up the link while editing, here it is: https://imgur.com/a/i8c4gLf


Hello areasonableman,

     I must be missing something in your linked photos because I can't identify anything that appears cracked.  Can you please be more specific in your description of the part that is cracked?  Just for your reference, the silver/gray section in the middle of your 1st photo is a small aluminum heat sink for dissipating excess heat from the amp and, thereby, cooling it.  But I don't see any cracks on the heat sink.  Can you describe the crack in relation to its direction from the heatsink?  Such as just in front or just in back of the silver/gray heatsink, etc.?
     Also, how did you discover that UPS damaged something?

Thanks,
 Tim
   

@noble100 in front of the heatsinks, between the 4 small bronze capacitors there are what I can best describe as as small silver wheels with one continuous wire wrapped around them. I was suspicious when I first picked up the amp and heard something moving around in it, but I figured it was slightly old and may be fine.