Popular Post pga Posted October 5, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted October 5, 2021 Great review Josh. I haven’t had a Bryston in my system since the 1990s, so I surely cannot say much about the current 4Bs. That said, I’m quite happy with my ABH2s, that replaced a pair of Centaur mono amps. I found the ABH2s to be more transparent and yet more musical. That was with two ABH2s in mono. In my set up with TAD R1s the Benchmarks had plenty of bass slam and dynamics, every bit the equal of the 8x cost Centaur mono. Since then my system evolved to 4 ABH2s in a hybrid biamp using a Pass XVR1 to divide the signal between the woofers and the coax in the TADs. The low pass in the TAD for the woofers is bypassed as this LPF is now handled by the XVR1. The high pass for the coax in the TADs in still in use but an additional active high pass pole is also employed using the XVR1. As a one time Electrical Engineer, biamping the TADs had been a long time ambition. I was very fortunate to get some invaluable input to set up to the crossover from Andrew Jones, if not the most talented then perhaps the nicest speakers designer in the business. Also layered on top of all this is a Mitch Barnett designed 60,000 tap convolution filter. With Andrew’s help, the “hot rod” TADs have an amazingly smooth response from below 20hz on up even without DSP, but then EQing the room properly takes the system to another level of performance in every respect. So how do 4 ABH2s all in mono, in a biamp system with the woofers directly connected to the amps sound? Well it’s easily the best system I’ve had at home. Four Constellation amps just made no sense from a cost, power or heat perspective. So that prompted me to look at the ABH2s. Interestingly Andrew Jones’s twin brother who is an Electrical Engineer, was involved in the design of the ABHs. I’m sure two Brystons would also sound great, and have a similar price tag and power rating to 4 ABH2s. But I felt perhaps out of subconscious loyalty to the Jones’s twins that I should give the 4 ABH2s a try. In the end that was a good bet. feelingears, The Computer Audiophile and yyz 3 Audio Alchemy DMP-1 / Roon / Berkeley Alpha RS 2 / Constellation Monos / TAD R1s Link to comment
pga Posted October 5, 2021 Share Posted October 5, 2021 One slightly off topic point worth mentioning is how much of an engineering company Bryston and Benchmark truly are, and how important this is. I’m less familiar with Schiit and Cambridge, but I suspect that is also true there. There is no substitute for great engineering. The guy that bought my Centaur monos took a listen on my system when it was just two ABH2s in mono. He was surprised at how good they sounded. I’m just glad he didn’t change his mind on purchasing the Constellation amps. But what surprised him the most is that I had taken out all the audiophile cables and at the time had all Bryston interconnect and speaker cables. Guess what, Bryston makes great cables, sound great and are built amazingly well. I needed a bunch of new cables for the biamp system, so I switched to Benchmark cables. These are also excellent. Both companies simply use great parts and quality manufacturing to put these together. One lesson I learned is don’t try to fix a room response problem with cables or subtle differences between electronics, the only real way to fix this is either with a new room or EQ. The other lesson I learned is to avoid audio equipment made by companies that emphasize marketing over engineering. At best you will end up gorgeous, expensive equipment that sounds as good as it looks (like Constellation), at worst you end up with stuff that’s just overpriced. Audio Alchemy DMP-1 / Roon / Berkeley Alpha RS 2 / Constellation Monos / TAD R1s Link to comment
Popular Post pga Posted October 6, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted October 6, 2021 Not to belabor the point, of course engineers (or anyone else that is designing an audio product) should listen to what they produce as this is perhaps the most important test to verify that the product is performing as expected. Schiit seems like an engineering driven company that listens. That's the ideal combination. Specs can be very misleading. In the 1960s and 1970s there was a race to lower THD and increase watts. So much so that the FTC had to step in to dictate how power would be measured. We learned that some products with very low THD and high watts sounded pretty bad. It took a while to realize that stability with reactive impedance loads, IMD, robustness of the power supply all mattered as much as simply THD and watts. Maybe this was discovered by the public by listening, but if I had to guess, the engineers at McIntosh, Levinson and Krell had it figured out. The problem was that the marketing guys at other manufactures didn't care and they were happy to play the spec game. What do you think measures better, a Marantz tube product before the company was sold or a Japanese Marantz? I'm pretty sure the old stuff sounded better and it still sells for premium prices. Behind those tube amps was an incredible designer that was science based, Saul Marantz. You can find many others like him at AR, Pass, Levinson, Quad ... It's a long list. It also seems like when a new technology comes out the marketing priority is to out-spec the technology that preceded it. That clearly happened when transistors first came out. Another great example of this is when RedBook CD challenged the LP. What were the problems with LPs? Noise, frequency response and channel separation are three big ones. But with a CD it's easy to have great specs for all these. Yet early RedBook CD sounded really bad compared to a great turntable. Why? Because in the new technology things like jitter and digital artifacts were more important. Meridian was one of the first companies to develop consumer products that addressed this. Did the engineers at Sony and Phillips that developed CDs understand jitter and digital artifacts? I'm guessing they did, but the marketing guys were fighting another battle which was how do we quickly show that a CD is better than a cassette or LP. The Computer Audiophile, feelingears and Josh Mound 3 Audio Alchemy DMP-1 / Roon / Berkeley Alpha RS 2 / Constellation Monos / TAD R1s Link to comment
pga Posted October 8, 2021 Share Posted October 8, 2021 Suggestions on your off topic, other than the original Sony, some DACs that I would consider historically important are of course the early Meridian, the Wadia 2000 (perhaps first DAC with custom digital filters, sounded good, measured poorly), any of the DACs using the Ultra Analogue chips (Levinson, Spectral made two outstanding DACs) and the pro DAC Apogee made (this was a bargain, better than almost anything at the time, they made a version for Cello). Audio Alchemy DMP-1 / Roon / Berkeley Alpha RS 2 / Constellation Monos / TAD R1s Link to comment
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