Bryston 28B SST


For those of you who have heard the new Bryston 28B SSTs - are they as good as the reviews I have read? From reading these reviews I almost get the impression they can drive any speaker from a highly efficient horn to an inefficient planar speaker and sound great. Are they a major leap from the 14B or 7B or just a bit better?
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Hello Dev,

Joule-Electra Destiny (VZN-300) cost is much less then $70k - I believe its about $20k but can't be sure.

What is interesting that Joule-Electra is experiencing "Renaissance", now, and have so many orders that you will have to wait a number of months before your product will be shipped to you. MY friend placed order for their "latest and greatest" LA-450ME preamp and was told that at best it will be shipped toward end of December...
Tmsorosk, Levenson #431 200wpc, was sonicly better in every way.

Please tell us more because it's very hard for me to comprehend what you wrote, I have had a few of the Lev amps in my set-up but not the one you mentioned.

Kindly elaborate further, what your set-up consisted of etc.

Hi Dob,
yes I'm aware the Destiny (I have been told there is a 350) is much less than the $70K LIST VAC 450 mono's. If I was going to try Joule product I would want to pair it up with that pre also.
Tmsorosk, how many hours were on the ones you brought home, did you have them paired up with RM20 Torus units

I did not like the 28's right out of the box as someone others have wrote, in actual fact it was many hours prior to this happening, if you go onto the Bryston web site there is a posting there that was copied from another site where I had posted my thoughts at that time.

Did you have a tube pre paired up with them. Just interested because you are the first person that I have heard with such comments and I have received allot of emails from others and compared to allot of amps and know of others who have done the same.
Hi Bryceeboy, what does the rest of your set-up consist of besides those marvelous Soundlab A-1 speakers, you aren't the first one making a comment as you have.

Tmsorosk, I quickly went threw some of your past threads to educate myself and saw you have Salon speakers but don't like to use anything tube related. I owned Salon's and I'm very familiar with their sonics over all so I'm shocked with what you wrote. You should get a well broken-in pair of 28's along with pairing them up with say an Audio Research line stage pre Ref3 and give it another listen, you truely are missing out. You mentioned you owned other Bryston's but these new Squared series are totally sonically different.
I have the 28S mated to a pair of Verity Audio Parsifal Ovations. I selected these amps after looking into several others, the final two contenders were the Clayton M300 and the Brystons. The POs just sounded better with the Bryston, but the Claytons were very good.

Its my understanding that the most significant difference between the 28s and the other SST models (other than power) was the transformer (layout, etc - I am not technically proficient). However, when the range went to the "2" designation the same transformer "system" was then used in all the SST products. At which time the performance gap between the 28s and the 14B/7B -SST closed.

I had reviewed the 4BSST which was outclassed by the 28-SST2, but, again, that was before the "2" revision.

All and all, the 28s are a SOTA solid state neutral amp with tons of overhead. You should give them a listen....

jtb