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Article: Power Amp Comparison | Cambridge Edge W, Benchmark AHB2, Bryston 4B Cubed


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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

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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

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