Geluidskwaliteit
Contents
The sound quality of this Bryston 7B3 is very similar to the Bryston 4B3 on which these monoblocks are based. Are you curious what we wrote about the 4B3 at the time, then you can read the review here.
The 7B3 plays with a higher degree of openness and offers a fraction more resolution so that highres audio files come into their own much better. Music comes completely separate from the speakers and creates a very impressive stage in the room. The focus is razor sharp and the musical information of voices or other information is sharply bundled. In this way, the artists are more sharply defined in the musical total picture.
The stage that the 7B3 sets is big and deep. The soundstage is wide and this width is enhanced by the precise detailing that sometimes even seems to emerge from the walls of the room. The music is placed slightly to the foreground. With this we experience, especially in live and acoustic recordings, a high involvement with the music. The depth in the sound image runs imaginary up to about ten metres into the background. The background details in the music are clearly displayed, but remain where they belong; in the background.
Above all, the 7’s have a very neutral sound balance without any colouring in the audible spectrum. It displays instruments in the correct size and has heavy male voices with the weight and authority to match. The power and control from mid-layer to sub-layer is well balanced across the board. The middle area is cork-dried and nowhere hard or bright. This makes snare drums sound uncoloured and authentic. The trebble has a lightness and liveliness that we have never experienced before with our 4B(s). We quickly grab a few random albums from the closet to see how we experience them with the Bryston 7B3s.
Big City, Tol Hansse
We love this album, no matter how many times we listen to it. No, it’s not a high quality musical performance and lacks a few wheelbarrows of dynamics, but for that we have other albums at our disposal. It has to be said, artistically the music of Tol Hansse is sublime. We can follow the lyrics and vocals effortlessly and notice that after so many decades the texts are still topical and our laughing muscles are frequently addressed. We want to pull this album out of the closet to determine the transparency, speed and realism of an audio set. This is a difficult album to reproduce correctly and realistically.
This album is specifically about the combination of the typical nagging sound of the pull harmonica, mouth harmonica, softly muffled warm sounds of banjo or electric guitar. All tracks on this album are packed with sound effects and different instrument combinations with a similar sound. This complex mix gives us a very good picture of the distinctiveness of a set. In less fast sets it quickly becomes a knitting of an undefined ‘background something’, but because of the 7B3 each instrument is surrounded by an insulating layer of air so that the instrument with its own specific sound can be lifted out, as it were.
Drums and simple bass lines often come from a keyboard and sound, as well as the plastic housing, flat and cheap. The different singers in polyphonic parts are clearly distinguishable. Batches of far background brass players and backing vocalists also get enough air with these 7B3 amplifiers and are effortless to follow. Despite the not so good production, this album gets us on a good set again and again.
A Long Walk On A Short Pier
Next we choose an instrumental album of percussion group Van Kampen. This album shows us the dynamic reserves of a set. From the deepest sub-layer to layer and mid-layer. We hear the dry beating of the felt beats on the sheets of the big drums, we hear the sheet resonate and feel the explosive pressure waves hitting our chest.
If the power supply is too tight, if the placement of the speakers is not correct or if something in the chain is not in order, then this album sounds compressed and lifeless. If the set is right, then this album with its catchy rhythms and lovely cadence is contagious. With the Bryston 7B3’s we experience an enormous speed, liveliness and above all a very realistic timbre of percussion and becomes almost tangible. This album creates a wonderful atmosphere at higher volumes. The control of the powerful (bass) drums is very good. Even at high volumes, the 7’s grab the woofers in the neck and fill the room with low, without compressing or clogging.
Miles Davis, Child of Blue
After all this dynamic violence we choose for a more subtle album; Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. This is jazz in a very mild form and gives us an excellent picture of the sound fidelity of the acoustic instruments and imaging properties of a set.
With our eyes closed we can see the band members standing in the medium-sized studio space. One of the saxophonists has shared the left corner with the pianist and is playing in the round recess of the grand piano. In the right corner of the room the second saxophonist is playing in front of the drummer. Both saxophonists present themselves lifelike in space. We hear the lung contents of the saxophonists flowing into the instruments and the straw resonating with all the fierceness and sharpness that goes with it. With this, the 7B3 shows its fast character.
With intensive batches we hear the valves abruptly break the nuts. From the centre, the trumpet player plays it at full blast and lets the muted brass player sing, while retaining that typical ‘squeek’ and fierceness. Next to this and a few steps in front of the piano, the bass player accompanies the band in his own, soothing tempo. The percussion is on the right back of the room. At the start of the ride we hear the weight of the drumstick in the stop and the brass work sounds slightly muffled after without any kind of hardness. The deposit on the snare sounds muffled and fills the entire room. We hear the snare echoes and give an idea of the studio size and ambiance. The dragging sound of the brush over the skin of the snare drum we experience as lifelike. At times we even think “stop that annoying petting and let’s listen to the music”! We’re instinctively just there. As if we were sitting on a folding chair in front of the musicians.
Rachmaninoff
Within the classical genre we quickly turn to the complex album of Evelina Vorontsova and her Piano Sonata No.2 by Rachmaninoff. Music by this composer is not easy for everyone to digest. Our choice for Vorontsova is very conscious. The recordings are of excellent quality and this album immediately shows shortcomings in headroom, transparency and transient information. If the set falls short somewhere, this is directly at the expense of realism.
Vorontsova plays a D-274 concert grand piano by Steinway and when the volume is adjusted to this, it is also placed in the room as such. Now Rachmaninoff is also a heavy cost for us and Sonata No.2 immediately falls over us like a powerful waterfall. The firm attacks at higher volumes at times have the effect of a sledgehammer blow. The attack of the mallets causes a fierce attack and during the piano playing forte and piano alternate alternately. The mood swings of the composer even grab us by the throat from time to time.
The lowest left-handed octaves forcefully roll into space and the higher right-handed octaves in turn aggressively hammer into our ear canal, after which they are alternated with lovely, more frivolous sounds. The typical high-frequency rattles and fragments of the strings are sometimes clearly audible and we can hear even the smallest resonances from the bottom of the grand piano. All this adds a whole new dimension to this album.
In the variations on a Theme of Corelli we hear an enormous depth and listen alternately to the muffled attacks and the extinction time of resounding attacks. With the 7B’s we can hardly process the information and after fifteen minutes of intensive listening we feel emotionally wrecked, partly thanks to the enormous dynamics the Bryston 7B3’s deliver; the experience with which the 7’s bring this album is unparalleled for us.
We limit ourselves to these albums, but no matter what album we pull out of the closet, we keep discovering new layers that were previously hidden from us and hear nuances in songs we’ve never experienced before. This feeling only gets stronger when listening to highres music files. We realize that getting to know these 7B3’s may have put us in an awkward position. At least… the position of our savings.
