Bryston A110: $2300 For An Amazing Speaker Array!

Two grand is a popular price point in the speaker market. What’s the best value for about $2k?

Let’s up the ante a little bit because $2300 gets you into a WHOLE NEW WORLD for just a little more money.

The majority of offerings in this range are Chinese imports. Most are flimsy, booming towers- that actually don’t go very deep. They are literally generic- made by job houses that output a myriad of different brands on different days.

The Bryston A110 Array will absolutely BURY these flimsy imports when it comes purveying the weight of a real musical experience happening in your living room!

Bryston of Canada builds its speakers to a higher echelon of sound and reliability than what

we can get from the far east. Bryston’s A3 tower at $3290 per pair is the least expensive full range tower going. It’s a legit, heavy hitting 3-way that clobbers the imports with prodigious bass and a smooth high end response. A3 will deliver crushing bass in a big room while the imports whimper. But this entry is about speakers for two grand-ish, not three.

The A110 Array consists of Bryston Tiny A stand mount speakers, mated with the prodigious JL D110 subwoofer. The A110 will sound more smooth, clear and can turn the $2k imports into kindling for your fireplace!

Bryston Tiny A $990 Per Pair: 20 Year Warranty!

Bryston recently introduced its lovely Tiny A stand mount speakers for $990 per pair. Tiny A has most of the quality and refinement of its bigger brothers. It primarily gives away points in its bass response. We have a plan for that.

We want you to start this project with a pair of Tiny A’s. It’s a 6.5” 2-way, built very solidly with a 20 year warranty (!!). The tweeter is the same Titanium design as used in its bigger brothers. The bass-mid driver is the same 6.5” Cast Frame, Anodized Aluminum driver used in Mini A. Tiny A has outstanding transparency and imaging characteristics.

Please visit our home page and check the yellow tabs at the bottom. Please read the entry, Bryston Speakers. You’ll see what goes into Bryston that the other guys just won’t spend the time and money to do.

We just need to help Tiny A out with some muscle. That leads me to…

JL Audio D110 Powered Subwoofer $1300

We’re going to augment the Tiny A’s with JL’s sledgehammer powered subwoofer, the D110, made in Florida.

D110 is an absolute FORCE of nature! It uses a SEALED cabinet to deliver deep, tight bass. The amp is 750w RMS, and was designed specifically for D110. JL is built right here in the US. It’s not a flimsy import with plate amp that came across the ocean.

D110 features a Herculean 10” woofer that dwarfs other subs in its price class. Please note its deep, cast frame design. The D110 woofer is so deep and thick that it literally would not fit into any modestly priced cabinet design near this price point. The driver is melded into a one inch thick metal front baffle. All the other guys use 8 screws to load their woofs into soft MDF cabinets.

Bryston Tiny A and JL D110 are providing you with Gibraltar-esque bass response while keeping the price a tick above two grand. Since JL builds its own woofers in its own house in Florida, it can do so to a more rigid standard than the Chinese.

There simply is NO tower at anywhere near this price point that can deliver better bass than the D110. When you study D110’s woofer, you can see it won’t even fit in a traditional tower enclosure. The other guys don’t use drivers like this.

A110 can’t be equaled by stamped speakers with a chuffing, ported sub. We’re selling you bass performance with solid, tight testosterone, made in the USA. We’re selling you stand mount speakers that sound warm, tough and come with a 20 year warranty- made in Canada.

All told, for not much more than $2k you can have your cake and eat it too. That is, you get more Steinway Smooth musicality and rock solid muscle- built in N America!

Isotek Corvus V3 Promo $800

Corvus is a 20 amp (note the C19 terminal necessary to support 20a) mains conditioner with 9 outlets. It filters different amounts at different frequencies. Ultimately Isotek claims 35dB filtering.

Each of its 9 outlets has its own filter. Hence Corvus is a cut above the Polaris, a unit that filters at 30dB and has one filter for the entire bar. Corvus comes with a Premier power cable to go from the wall to the conditioner. That’s worth $250 alone.

I highly recommend snaring a Corvus at $800 because the new price will be $1100 when the promo runs out. Polaris was disco’d and its replacement model hit the market at $900. We love Polaris but it would be wise to get a Corvus instead- for less money while we can offer that price.

You have superior isolation 35-30 dB, more outlets with more filtration (9 outlets and 9 filters compared to 6 outlets with 1 filter) and a 20 amp conditioner instead of 15 amp. Corvus comes with one Premier power cable ($250 a la carte). All aspects of Corvus are a notch up, and the promo makes it a great buy.

Ending of Simon & Garfunkel

Paul Simon reports that as “Bridge Over Trouble Water” was going to be made, Art was making a movie, “Catch 22.” After completing C22, Paul thought they would get back to working on music full time. Paul heard from a C22 actor that Art would soon be working on “Carnal Knowledge.” Paul felt there was a real tug of war in the studio when doing BOTW and decided to call it quits as a duo when Art told him yes, another movie is in the works.

JL Audio Double Subs

Most hi-fi guys know that it’s very tough to get tower speakers to produce bass as deep and powerful as a good subwoofer. Much less TWO good subwoofers.

Bryston is among the very few speaker companies who can give you such prodigiously deep bass in a tower that you might think- well, I really don’t need a sub.

Bryston’s A3 tower runs $3290 per pair. It’s the least expensive tower out there to “trick” you into thinking a sub might actually be hiding in the dark over there.

With virtually any other speakers, when you kick in a great sub or two, you’ll say “Holy cow! I didn’t know what I was missing.”

JL Audio of Florida (yes, made in Florida) is a huge proponent of running a PAIR of subs. JL construction allows JL to eclipse what its competitors can produce.

All JL subs are sealed cabinets for tight bass. They run massive cast frame woofers rather than stamped frame woofers. They meld these woofs to be intrinsic to the face plate of the sub. This attains rigidity that the other guys can’t- who use and handful of screws into an MDF board front panel. Each JL amp is made specifically for the subwoofer design it will be employed in. JL doesn’t buy plate amps from a vendor and simply assemble a sub- as if you were building a kit.

*You can run a single sub

*You can run one per channel

*Listeners with a keen ear CAN tell where a single sub is

*It’s better to have two subs coasting than one blasting its brains out

Visit Audio Emporium

Here we are in 2023. There are all kinds of experts online telling you this and that. What’s more, they fight and rarely agree with each other. We have a solution for that.

How about, visit us- to hear these options for yourself?!

Yes, we do it the old fashioned way. We demo the products for you to hear. My contention is, you can hear in very short order which set up you’ll like the best. NO amount of reading forums till 3am will tell you what we can demo in two minutes!

You can hear a fine pair of speakers with no sub.

Then we’ll add a single sub.

Then we’ll add a second sub.

You can even go back and forth the compare all the options to see which one YOU like best. Because it really is YOUR taste that matters. Our set up is so flexible that you’ll be able to discern the differences immediately.

You’ll be able to know, absolutely, positively, quickly, how these iterations compare.

We have spent the time and money to set up these demos so you’ll know exactly what your money buys you. We’re hopeful to win your business for making this effort.

Our competitors aren’t willing to make the effort to let you do these comparisons. It takes time and effort to set up a great demo that will PROVE the benefit of adding one sub, and then two.

NOTHING can compete with actually hearing these options for yourself. The audio biz now is often a shell game with marked up Chinese made subs – being sold via fake discounts online. It has become just like furniture. Check out our demo rooms!

Demo Room One

JL D108 subs, $1100 each

JL D110 subs, $1300 each

Demo Room Two

JL E110 subs, $1900 each

Demo Room Three

JL E112 subs, $2500 each.

Summary

Since subwoofer muscle eclipses that of almost every tower, it makes sense to run a sub or two- with less expensive towers or stand mounts than you might have been planning on.

Further, a lot of guys already own stand mounts that they really like. We recommend adding a JL or two, to fill them full range. That’s more expeditious than trading something in.

Bluesound Node X $750

Bluesound has made one version or another of its fabulous streaming platform Nodes for over a decade. Bluesound has the technology down pat, and they support operations with a team of engineers. You’re always in good hands with Bluesound.

There are many streamers out there that sound good when they work. But nobody has Bluesound’s reliable streaming history. Bluesound continues to support its streaming platform better than anyone on the market. The support team is even more important that “the box” you buy.

We have tried some alternatives over the years. They all coughed, sputtered and outright quit. Bluesound is part of the NAD family of gear- an international company with deep pockets who has proven it WILL support streaming quite well.

The new Node X is the best Bluesound streamer ever. It has a faster operating system, DAC and line stage than prior Nodes. Especially if you’re going to run analog out of your streamer, Node X is the smartest choice out there.

It doesn’t have a server on board. You don’t need one!

If you want to attach a USB drive to Node X, you can.

I recommend you don’t buy a streamer with an onboard server because someday the streaming portion of the piece will be obsolete – and the server will likely fry as well.

I’ve had customers want to argue about whether they should buy the Node ($600) or Node X ($750). If you’re going to use analog out, why not spend $150 more for Node X for better sound? If you want to obsess about $150, you’re in the wrong hobby. Please don’t cheap out for $150.

If you’re going to run from the Node digitally to a DAC, you could save $150. But since Node X has a newer, faster operating system, I would still buy Node X for the modest price difference.

The DAC inside Node X is the same Sabre DAC used in a myriad of very expensive stand alone components, like McIntosh and the jewelry priced offerings from Switzerland. Node X is one of audio’s best values!

Kimber Kable PAIR Speaker Wire

Kimber introduced its PAIR speaker wire in 1979. Up until then, all we knew is that fatter wire carried more bass to your speakers than thinner wire. Monster Cable, Fulton and Mark Levinson were pushing bigger is better. There was a little something to it.

Ray Kimber taught us that BRAIDING wire- carried the stronger bass AND made our sound MORE CLEAR. Using virtually pure copper, Kimber Kable sold its FOUR PAIR and EIGHT PAIR speaker wire proudly for over 40 years.

Under the night of Covid, Kimber made an upgrade to its PAIR technology, that didn’t get noticed by many people, except Audio Emporium of course.

The upgraded PAIR technology yields a tad more detail with NO EDGE or hardness. Let’s look at the nuts and bolts.

For 41 years the PAIR wire was all the same thickness. Look at your five fingers. Let’s say all the wires were the size of you pinky finger. The original FOUR PAIR wire, had four jackets of ten conductors. All ten were the size of your pinky finger.

Kimber determined that they could give you superior smoothness in particular, by using VARIABLE STRAND thickness of wire. So instead of ten wires all being the size of your pinky finger, they use two the size of your pinky, two the size of your ring finger- all the way through your hand.

The culmination of these ten wires (5×2 if you will)- combined with four jackets in the case of FOUR PAIR and eight jackets in the case of EIGHT PAIR, provides appreciably smoother sound.

Kimber rolled out this VARIABLE STRAND version of the new 4PR and 8PR wire during Covid. If you buy two ten foot runs of 4 PR with Kimber’s top notch SBAN banana plugs, the price is $224. If you buy two ten foot runs of 8 PR with SBANs, the price is $388.

To my ears, EIGHT PAIR (8 PR) is the best bang for your buck on a full range system. If your speakers are limited low frequency stand mounts, 4 PR will perform just as well.

In a world where cable is sometimes priced for Bill Gates, it’s a pleasure to have the Kimber PAIR cables because they hit the law of diminishing returns in our hobby.

Rick Allen: Drummer

So you think you’re handy? Rick Allen of Def Leppard had his left arm severed in a car accident in 1985. Doctors reattached it- but it had to be amputated due to infection. With help from a custom electronic drum kit with foot pedals to trigger sounds he would have played with his left hand, Rick plays on!