Tweemaal vier is zeven
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The 19-inch Bryston 7B3’s have a wider hip size than our own 17-inch 4B3. This makes the Bryston 7B3 monos look more premium and more robust in our experience. The only real difference with the 4B3 is that the double power LED is now a single LED and of course the front proudly displays the designation 7B3. The rear has, compared to the stereo 4B3, a undressed rear panel.
Logically we miss the switch that allows us to switch the amplifier in bridge mode and a set of inputs plus loudspeaker terminals is missing. After all, they’re monoblocks. However, the 7B3 is equipped with the usual switchable gain (29 and 23dB) and with a switchable RCA and XLR input. Finally, the 7B3 also has a circuit breaker and a mounting block with which a remote cable can be connected. A handy feature we notice. This remote cable saves a lot of walking and bending to switch the whole chain off and on each time. If we listen through the headphones, the end blocks also switch off automatically. Internally, the similarity with the 4B3 is also striking. The differences are mainly in the details.
The similarities with the ‘4’ go far, because in fact a Bryston 7B3 is a 4B3 permanently switched in bridge-mode. This roughly means that a set of 7B3’s compared to a 4B3 has a double power supply capacity, a double number of power transistors and a couple of specific tweaks which makes the 7B3 play at a higher level than a bridged Bryston 4B3. Apart from its power, the 7B3 is technically almost identical to the Bryston 4B3, as are its specifications.
With the introduction of the inventive “Salomie” input stage, Bryston power amplifiers have undergone a major transformation. Compared to previous generations the neutrality has increased, the Salomie generation sounds much more sophisticated and the imaging properties have improved considerably. Especially the realism and the three-dimensional character with which the Salomie generation plays can be called very good. If you want to know more about the technique in this amplifier generation, you can click here to the reviews of the Bryston 3B3 and the 4B3. Here we explain in detail how the ‘Salomie’ input stage is put together.
We review this Bryston 7B3 power amplifiers in combination with the BP26 preamplifier and MPS2 powersupply, a BCD-3 CD player and the BDP-3/BDA-3 streamer/DAC combination from Bryston’s stable. The balanced TPR interlinks come from Grimm, the speaker cabling and power cables are the Boaacoustic Silver Actinum BP-001 and the Boaacoustic Oxygen HF-009 from JIB.
