Magnepan 3.7?

[Feanor]

LMAO, Richard, you are the Echo Boomers answer to the crusty, curmudgeony sound mavens of old...a new breed of audiophile...and, it's an honor and a privilege to give you the King Melvin Audiophilic L'enfant Terrible medallion in recognition of moving the conflict forward into future generations...

(...actually, I love reading your stuff, I just wish Flo could be here to read you extoll the virue of a planar speaker in such a full-throated yet tepid way)

Did you mean verbose equivocality?

[Florian]

I do lurk around here sometimes

[bobsticks]

I do lurk around here sometimes

Aha! Good day to ya, sir...good to see the lurkers come out of hiding if only for a moment.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Bryston sounded utterly dreadful. So that's actually a VERY GOOD thing because the speaker SHOULD tell us how truly pitiful SS amplifiers are.

I don't know which Bryston amps you are talking about, but you should be more specific. To say that SS amps sound pitiful is ridiculous. That is like saying all people are stupid, without recognizing that their are smart and stupid people. There are good SS amps, and bad ones, There are good tube amps(love the VTL MB-450 series III amp), and there are really bad ones as well.

It is always entertaining to see a person paint a picture with a street sweeper....

[E-Stat]

To say that SS amps sound pitiful is ridiculous.

Especially when you consider that many speakers don't tango well with tubes. Although I didn't get a chance to hear the 28B-SST amps a reviewer friend on hand, he says they are exceptional sounding amps. And he's a tube fan. It is fair, however, to say that some earlier models were not exactly in the same sonic class.

rw

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Especially when you consider that many speakers don't tango well with tubes. Although I didn't get a chance to hear the 28B-SST amps a reviewer friend on hand, he says they are exceptional sounding amps. And he's a tube fan. It is fair, however, to say that some earlier models were not exactly in the same sonic class.

rw

I agree with you Ralph. Some of the earlier models sounded like cold steel.

[RGA]

I don't know which Bryston amps you are talking about, but you should be more specific. To say that SS amps sound pitiful is ridiculous. That is like saying all people are stupid, without recognizing that their are smart and stupid people. There are good SS amps, and bad ones, There are good tube amps(love the VTL MB-450 series III amp), and there are really bad ones as well.

It is always entertaining to see a person paint a picture with a street sweeper....

The problem is that most people have a budget - you are quite wealthy and have stated several times that "budget" is not a consideration. For most people it is. The Audio Note Kit one is an "excellent" amplifier regardless of budget. You can argue that there are good high power solid state amps and there are - Technical Brain, top of the line Pass Labs but the costs are astronomical compared to a $2k amp.

Even if I were to say that the 28B is a good amp (and I've heard it a few times and was not the least bit impressed - the Maggie 1.7 sounded FAR better on a Soro at around $6k than the 28B which I am pretty sure is more than $6k and Bryston's flagship preamp.

SS at high power can be good but the cost is far too high for it versus even entry level and comparatively inexpensive tube amplifiers (for $1600 the Shengya PM 150 monoblocks (you get both for this price) are 150 watt tube hybrid power amps with plenty of power for most speakers. There isn''t a bryston that I have heard that sound better but ploenty of them cost a lot more - and the Shengya's even seem to me to be better built.

I do agree there are poor sounding tube amps but I have not experienced them nearly as often perhaps because I am in my 30s and wasn't around in the 50s, 60s and 70s and heard the truly abysmal that no doubt cluttered the department stores of the day. The tube makers that last today in a SS world generally all sound pretty good to very good. Even companies selling $1500 to $5000 amps like Rogue Audio and Mystere driving speakers like Wilson Sophia and Martin Logan Summits made those speakers sound better than I have ever heard them sound and made me partially rethink what I thought of those speaker makers. Martin Logan I usually always heard with Bryston - bad sound. Wilson Sophia I heard with top of the line Krell - OK sound but bad when money factored in. Even Magnepan has sounded "bad" almost every time I heard them. For years I have been extremely diplomatic on just how terrible sounding I felt Magnepan has been with the exception of the 1.6 and 12. Which sounded ok. Finally hearing them with a good tube amp and a great CD player does help me see more in them.

The dealer here carries Magnepan 1.7 and the 3.7. He carries and has carried Bryston for many years. They carry top of the line Bryston - they don't like the combination and neither do I. Some people do like the combination - that's fine.

What counts as good or bad will be somewhat subjective but my hearing of it is my hearing of it. And Bryston is generally tiring and grating. And if it takes one to spend $30,000 on amplifier so that it gets to a point where even the "fans" say that they don't sound metallic - that is hardly high praise for the competencies of their design team.

Even reading what you are saying here about bryston is that "All some or most of their previous amps suck and have always sucked but they finally got it right with their top of the line most expensive amps" Huh? while other companies got to that no metallic irritating mess with their entry level gear at 1/10 the price. I know which design team I'd rather support. Not the one building amps for 30 years and only now have got one amplifier line to sound anything remotely correct. Yikes.

I don't pretend to make new arguments - I clearly and do prefer speakers that can be run with relatively low powered amps - these kinds of speakers almost always sound better top to bottom, tonally and especially dynamically. I certainly understand the crowd that argues "you need more power" but that is usually because they need to turn the volume WAY the hell up to make things out clearly because the system lacks resolution. And that is why it confounds them when I say - "I like the 1.7 with a Soro at 18 watts" because they can't understand that this amp had very good bass - wonderful resolution and I never even need to get the volume dial past the 11 o'clock position and it played pretty loud. I was roundly impressed with the 1.7 so much so that it would be my number 1 choice under $2k. And I genuinely mean it. But ONLY if it is connected to this kind of amp. With bryston it's a complete pile of dog poo.

As an edit - this is not to say that Bryston is bad in itself either because I did enjoy it with PMC and even my own Wharfedales - in fact it was Bryston with my Wharfedales that started my entire interest in higher end audio because the Bryston kicked the snot out of my Pioneer Elite receiver way back in the day to the point where rather than selling the speakers I got rid of the amplifier. The Bryston was SO SO much better than the Pioneer Elite. But as eye opening as that experience was when I first heard a very good SET amp that amp sounded SO SO much better than amplifiers like Bryston.

The interesting thing is that Soundhounds is also selling the Cerwin Vega CLS 215 and I am betting that the Soro has more trouble with that speaker than it has with the Magnepan. At $1k they looked very nice in terms of value for the money. Next time I am there and if they have not sold out of them I will be very interested in comparing them with a MF, Ayre, Audio Note, McIntosh, Classe, Bryston, the new NAD series, and maybe even my Rotel pre/pro. People always laugh at Cerwin Vega - but for the music most people listen to - if they don't butcher classical and jazz too much they'll be excellent in this price range and with reasonably high efficiency and assuming the load is not stupid they may be a great deal.