Bryston Middle T: $6870 Per Pair

(39.4h, 10.4w, 16.3d, 81 lbs, 88 dB SPL, 20 Year Warranty!)

Who would be a candidate to buy the Bryston Middle T speakers?

How about… someone who wants large and powerful sound without adding subs?

How about … someone who wants reference level size and scale but doesn’t have room for a monster tower?

There are middle linebackers, and then there are Nitschke and Butkus who broke the mold.

Middle T falls into that category!

Middle T is a great sounding speaker regardless of size. The bullet point not to miss here is that Middle T is not enormous. It’s under 40” tall. If you take a look at any $2k tower these days, they’re virtually all significantly taller boxes without anywhere near the muscle of Bryston.

Middle T is Steinway smooth and yet has bass that will explode out of your floorboards if its in the music. But you have to pay attention how to make it sing.

Middle T is, as much or more than any speaker system, going to show you what your amplifier is made of. If you hook Middle T up to a sissy, it will sound just OK. If you hook it up to an amp with some serious octane, you’ll hear it fire barbells across your room! Seriously, Middle T will perform anywhere from stunning, to pedestrian- based on what you run it with.

If you want to hear Middle T at its best, of course consider a Bryston 4B Cubed power amp, $6800 (300×2). If you don’t want to spend $6800 on an amp…

Please consider the brand new NAD C-298 ($2000, 185×2) Eigentakt designed amp that will light up Middle T like no amp short of a Bryston! C-298 is a Ferrari and will make the Middle Ts sound downright ferocious! You don’t need a $7k ish amp to make Middle T sound spectacular. Oh, and by the way you can bridge C-298s (620w mono).

Or, you might consider NAD’s C-275BEE ($1400, 150×2) and Middle T will love it. Please don’t run middle T with flimsy amp or surround receiver. Middle T will swallow them whole.

Middle T uses two massively constructed 8” ceramic coated aluminum, cast frame woofers. These are the kind of woofer drivers that subwoofers are jealous of. They’re housed in the 81 pound cabinet which is thick and generously reinforced with a complex bracing network.

Middle T uses one ceramic coated aluminum midrange driver, housed within its own enclosure in the cabinet. Middle T uses one Titanium tweeter, also housed within its own enclosure within the cabinet.

When you analyze the hardware you’re getting for your money, Middle T offers a substantial- built in Canada- value with a TWENTY YEAR warranty. When you see Middle T in the flesh, you’ll be surprised at how small it looks. When we hook it up to substantial electronic mates, you’ll be surprised at how large it casts a soundstage, complete with earth quaking testosterone.

By the way, Bryston and Axiom have merged to become one company. Since 2012, Bryston CEO James Tanner has designed Bryston loudspeakers. Hence the T designation. Bryston funded the speaker project and hired Axiom (friends down the road a piece) to do the actual build out, because Bryston didn’t have the logistical space and staff in its Peterborough facility. The business has flourished and now we’ll expect an even more synergistic relationship since the companies are now ONE.

Hegel V-10 Phono Preamp $1500

Hegel’s Bent Holter has turned his attention to phono preamps! The new V-10 is already turning heads as a phono preamp that competes with the best available, running $3k plus.

V-10 supports MM&MC, of course. V-10 offers BALANCED and single ended outs. At $1500!!

V-10 is an all out Hegel assault on the top phono preamps on the market.

As always, Hegel thinks outside the box. V-10 has:

*MM&MC with numerous adjustments

*Low noise J-FET transistor design for both MM&MC

*Subsonic Filter

*MC settings: 33-550 ohms

*Comprehensive capacitance load settings (MM 100-467pF)

*Output jacks are XLR and RCA!

The chassis is divided into two compartments. The power supply is physically separated from the electronics. If you missed it above, please note that V-10 does have BALANCED outs as well as RCA. Hegel’s biggest problem is making enough V-10s. They’re way behind in production on integrated amps with C-19 clobbering their supply chain. Hopefully we’ll get enough V-10s to support you serious vinyl lovers.

RIP Chick Corea (1941-2021)

We’ve lost the ever versatile and talented (with 25 grammys) Chick Corea. Chick played with Miles Davis in the 60s and was a pioneer of jazz fusion, forming Return To Forever in the 70s. Time is flying by. I can’t believe Chick was 79!

Bryston BR-20 Preamp/DAC $6000

Bryston announced in the spring of 2020 that it would be coming out with a new, state of the art Preamp/DAC. Well… that was when C19 was ramping up and, to make a long story short, it has taken over a year, instead of a couple months, to deliver on the promise. But it’s been worth the wait!

BR-20 is a stunningly immediate and transparent sounding preamp- that just happens to have a state of the art DAC on board too! The Bryston BDA-3 DAC sells alone for $3800. It has been revered throughout the audio world as being in the top tier of DAC performers REGARDLESS of price. For just $2200 more you get an unsurpassed, balanced, line stage preamp on board as well!

Let’s think about this for a moment. What would it cost to buy a fully balanced, state of the art line stage preamp? If it comes from Switzerland it will run $72k. What would it cost to get a state of the art DAC? Bryston’s is $3800. It runs about $9k for a Weiss DAC 502. I’m happy to proclaim, pulling no punches, that BR-20 performs right there at the same level, for only $6k, instead of $81k.

There are some unique features to BR-20. Most notably, it is a fully balanced design that supports two balanced outputs. Bryston is serious about quality. BR-20 doesn’t have RCA outputs.

Nope. They’re not good enough for Bryston’s state of the art effort. BR-20 is as quiet as anything you can measure- but will reveal vibrant musical colors.

I’ve been outspoken about the fact that Bryston preamps never seem to get their due in the audiophile press. I suspect that’s because Bryston power amps have always been MASSIVELY raved. It’s as though the mags don’t want to give Bryston tooooo much love. I’m promising that’s about to change. BR-20 is so good, and so affordable, that even the rags that love to write about preamps that are as expensive as sports cars, will finally recognize a Bryston preamp, BR-20, as belonging in the top echelon or preamps, regardless of price.

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Marantz SACD-30n $2600

It’s time to reassess your relationship with silver discs and DACs! Marantz’s SACD-30n is so good that it will allow you to fall in love with the silver discs you may have forgotten.

Some of us have been on board with silver discs forever. But some of you started to believe that foolishness about silver discs being obsolete. Did you believe that LPs were obsolete too? My contention is that you have not even heard how good your CDs (& SACDs) can sound.

Now, you can stream till the cows come home if you want to. I have no problem with that. But for A LOT OF US, streaming can’t do it all.

There is a fair amount of music I want to hear that isn’t available via streaming. I have it on CD. I am happy to get off my fanny and play those discs. How tough is that? I like to choose a CD and play the whole thing. Listen to the PROGRAM as was intended. People that stream, typically bounce from song to song, if not sound to sound. It’s a different experience.

I recommend you not waste countless hours of your life saving discs to a server. The metadata won’t align so you’ll have to type it in. And every server is going to crash and burn some day. When customers tell me, I have no place to put my CDs, I shudder. Seriously? Look at all the crapola around your house. You used to have hundreds of LPs and tapes. You can find a place to store the majority of your CDs, and then a place near your system where you might keep the top dozen or so that are on your short list right now.

Recently a customer came in with a dozen CDs that wouldn’t play on his mucho expensive, one year old, Naim CD player. We challenged the SACD-30n. It played each and every one of these discs without hesitating. Why? Marantz makes its own drive mechanism in its plant in Japan. It isn’t a generic, purchased from a vendor like China.com.

The DAC in SACD-30n is Marantz’s own creation, MMM (Marantz Music Mastering). It sounds tremendously open and transparent. It is more airy and alive than a player using a chip. You get the sound of this MMM technology through your discs, as well as a streamer or server you can run through it.

I’m saying there’s a lot more to your discs than you knew. Give them a chance with the best disc player going. You’ll be happy to pull them out of storage!

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Skunk Is A Missile Defense Engineer

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, guitarist of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, became a consultant to various government agencies on, among other things, the topic of missile defense systems. He wrote a research paper in 1994 that was so well received that he has been asked to consult on various technical issues.