Bryston

The Bryston 4B SST Pro is a stereo power amplifier, and at that is one of the best of it's kind. I've used this power amp with a pair of passive ProAc Studio 100's at the studio where I work. These aren't our main monitors, rather we set them up occasionally as an extra choice for engineers, and the power amplifier that we always used in the Bryston 4B SST Pro. I don't know a whole lot about the background of this power amplifier, but everyone at the studio agrees that it's one of the best they've used before. Sometimes we'll also use these with our Yamaha NS-10m's, but for the most part they are used with the ProAcs. This is a pretty heavy piece of equipment, so we tend to keep it and one spot, as it does take up about three to four rack spaces if you wanted to keep it in a traditional rack casing. The 4B SST Pro has an array of different connections for you to choose from, starting with dual XLR-1/4" jacks, and followed up with RCA and traditional speaker cable jacks for hooking up your monitors. I'm not sure exactly how much power these deliver, but it should absolutely be enough (maybe even too much) for your passive monitors. These days most monitors out there won't require an external power amplifier since most of them have one built in, but there are still plenty of monitors out there that will require a power amp. Especially in a professional studio environment, it's extremely important to have a good amp to go with your passive monitors. With the Bryston 4B SST Pro, you're getting one of the best power amps available. The only downfall is the price, but as always you get what you pay for, and what you get here definitely lives up to the price if you can afford it!

The Bryston 2B LP is a stereo power amplifier that I have used in the recording studio to power up a set of passive monitors. This is a pretty powerful amp, but isn't overbearing - it's got 60 watts per channel at 8 ohms and will fit in a single space in a rack casing. I'm unsure what type of connections it has since it was already connected and ready to go in the professional studio where I used it, and there really wasn't any reason to get back there and switch connections or anything like that. It does have a ground lift switch on it, which I didn't need to use. The amp does seem to be built extremely well, and built to last as well. I think that as long as you don't bring it around too much and treat it right, that this is an power amp that could last a seriously long time. The speakers that I used the Bryston 2B LPs were a set of passive Tannoy monitors, and it did a perfect job of getting power to them. We didn't have the levels up the entire way, and didn't really want to find out what would happen if we did! The studio had them preset to the amount that they usually do and that they had experimented with, do I didn't see a reason to mess with that at all. Bryston has built up a pretty good reputation over the years, and if I'm not mistaken they have been around for a pretty good amount of time. I haven't used all that many other models made by Bryston, although I have used one or two. It's hard to say if this was the best one that I've used without trying them all out with the same monitors in the same room, etc. Either way, in the space that I did use the 2B LP, it was flawless in it's performance and didn't present any issues. While there are a lot of different stereo power amps to choose from, if you're looking for a mid level priced one that packs the sound of those more expensive than itself, the Bryston 2B LP is definitely something worth checking out.