Bryston or Classe audio ? what do you think of both?

Why considered Classe or Bryston? Simaudio is right next door to you and it's best buy for the bucks (IMHO) since I've tried all three. I'm not Canadian BTW.

I have had both Bryston and Classe in my house and they are both very different. They are both high quailty pieces, but the sound is where they differ most. The Bryston is more neutral and they are textbook perfect for square wave reproduction. The Classe manipulates the square wave a bit to give the sound a sweeter warmer presentation to the music. The extra warmth is great with dry digital sound. However, I find the Bryston more neutral. But, the Bryston can sound too dry with some recordings. Bottom line, pick your poison, they are both great but not perfect given what we have in software these days. If you pick a dry, lean sounding speaker, go with the Classe. A warm speaker, get the Bryston. Jeff

I found Bryston to be a little too flat in the mids and too bright in the treble for my taste, but I'm a tube lover so maybe I'm biased. No pun intended. I owned Classe for a number of years and was very happy with the sound. To me, the Classe amps sounded a little sweeter, more robust, warmer, but not too extreme. Classe is a good match for neutral to dry sounding speakers like my Thiel CS 1.5's.

I have since moved more toward the sweet musical sound of tubes with my Conrad-Johnson and Audio Research gear. I guess this doesn't answer your question but it's really a matter of personal taste and component matching. I lean more toward a slightly sweet, warm, and musically engaging sound. I prefer Classe over Bryston for SS gear and I even prefer Classe over Krell. I didn't like Krell at all. I found Krell to be powerful but dry and almost harsh.

The Brystons are good, tough and reliable but in back to back comparisons in the same system a friend who sells audio and myself both preferred the simaudio 4070SE and the moon W-3 were also much more musically compelling on vocals.....I haven't heard the newer classe but an early 90's amp I heard seemed uninvolving but my audio friend owned an old classe monster that ran full out classe A....a dark sounding musical old monster.....however I should point out if we hadn't heard the sim amps back to back with the brystons we would have been happy with the bryston sound....hope this helps. Remember, you should get to try in your system before deciding....have fun....cheers, bluenose

I have owned both brands. One was an old Bryston 4B ( 250 @ 8 / 400 @ 4 ). I had purchased the unit used via the net and it arrived in poor condition. I ended up sending it back to their US repair facility.

While Bryston's customer service and warranty are second to none, i was not impressed with the unit when i got it back. It did not seem to be nearly as powerful as it was supposed to be and was constantly going into clipping. I was guaranteed by the service tech that the amp was running better than factory spec when it left their shop. I sold it shortly thereafter.

Using the same set of speakers, i tried a Classe' 70 ( 75 wpc @ 8 / 150 wpc @ 4 with 3 db's of dynamic headroom ).
While this amp was last made in 1994, it was WAY newer in terms of parts & design as compared to the Bryston. Not only did it drive tough loads much better than the more powerful ( on paper ) Bryston, it sounded much more musical. While both amps were somewhat lean sounding, i would have picked the Classe' if it came down to either sonics OR "power".

Please keep in mind that each "system" is a sum of all the parts combined. As such, try not to look at things "piece by piece" but as "what will work well together". Good luck and do as much listening in person as you can. Sean
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