I respect NSGarch's view here, but after owning 3.3s and 3.5s for a combined 6 years, and having heard them with so many amps in my home and at the dealer, the Brystons were by far the least musically involving of the bunch.
The issue of Brystons and Maggies comes up all the time and I think this is more due to marketing than due to people actually working hard to find an amp that brings on these speakers' musicality that few others can match....and certainly at this price point.
Amps that I tried included ARC VT130 (lush lush midrange and dimensionality but lacking headroom to drive the speakers to dynamics), VT100 (tonally coherent but same issue as VT130), Classic 150 (way too forward/fatiguing and still lacking headroom), Counterpoint NPS400 (absolutely phenomenol amp with great tonal coherency and lots of driveability) and Wolcott mono blocks which brought on the VT130 magic and the Counterpoint driveability.
If I was to go solid state, I would give serious consideration to the McCormack amps, especially the DNA500, or look at the higher powered Pass, Threshold or Rowland. Each of these products have far greater ability to bring on the Maggie magic than the very sterile Brytsons. I have nothing personal against the Bryston amps. My comments are simply relative to the amps here in discussion.
The most unfortunate downside of these speakers is that their cost is so affordable for what they can do. But they require a rather serious amplifier investment to truly hear their capability. Pairing them with high-powered lower-cost amps is not going to allow one to enjoy what makes these speakers so special. And what makes these sing even more is a top-notch preamp with great portray of space, decays, etc.
John
