Building the Bryston A2 Tower loudspeaker

Building A Bryston - Model A2 Loudspeaker - YouTube

james

Hi James I'm curious if the warranty on the Bryston speaker line is transferable.

Thanks,

Scott

No sorry it is 20 years to first owner only.

james

Oh I would sooo much love to audition a pair of these!!!

Road trip :whistle:

Thanks James, thats what I thought I just want to inform some people on audiogon that it isn't transferable.

Scott

Yeah...a trans-continental road trip! :D

A World of Audio Wonders await you! ;)

ohhhh...so Robert is going to meet with Dan Laufman at Jade. Cool!

James,

Can you comment on what you perceive (and/or designed!) as sonically different between the middle T and model T? I'm trying to decide for my room which is the better choice (Attached a picture of my room schematic for reference, hope it works!). 8 ft ceilings. Anyway, I'm leaning towards the middle T, but I haven't had the chance to demo both (just the model T) and I'm curious what one gives up when stepping down to the middle T. Would the big model be too much speaker for my relatively small room? Also you can be honest if you think one just 'sounds better' than the other (in a private message if you prefer and I'll keep it to myself haha)

https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/...55983599_n.jpg

Hi,

I would say the Middle T's for sure given the room size. A lot will depend on how loud you listen to your music. The Model T can be used in a smaller room than you would think because the Sound Power Response is equal in all directions but the Middle T is a safer bet if the room tends to load up easily.

The power handling capability of the Model T is really the only benefit over the Middle T. The sonic characteristics, the crossover points and the listening window and sound power are all similar on all the different T models.

I did a show in Toronto at a dealer last Saturday in a room similar size to yours and the Middle T's sounded superb:music:

Hope this helps.

james

Definitely does! Thanks for your advice James!

Questions: Would the Middle T or Mini T be an "upgrade" from my Vandy 2CE sig ii?

The wife constantly bitches about the size of the Vandys, however I love how they sound with my MA6600.

If I downsize, I was thinking Middle or Mini T from Bryston or possibly a Harbeth 30.1
I would prefer a 3 way system (Bryston) vs the 2 way of the 30.1 (the 3 way 40.1 are out of my price range), however I have heard great things about the Harbeths as well as the Brystons.

I have a chance to hear the Brystons next week, however I am not sure they would sonically be enough of an upgrade over my Vandys to merit the extra bucks.

I understand "sound" is subjective, however opinions are appreciated.

Hi

Yes I agree that sound is subjective to a degree but the design philosophy of the loudspeaker manufacturer has a lot to do with the resulting sound.

Both Vandersteen and Harbeth are excellent companies but they differ from my goals with the Model T Series.

The below is lengthy but it does explain the birth of the Model T series of loudspeakers.





DESIGN CRITERIA FOR BRYSTON SPEAKERS

If you like the sound of our speakers the comments below are relevant … if you do not like the sound of our speakers then the comments below are irrelevant.

It really depends on what you want the speaker to do. There are many different philosophies about how real world speakers in real world rooms should behave.

Do you want the speaker to beam the sound at the listener so there is little on and off axis energy in the polar response? Do you want a Dipole or Bi-Pole design? Do you want an Omni design etc.?

Our philosophy is discussed in detail below.


BRYSTON MODEL-T LOUDSPEAKER SYSTEM

Bryston is pleased to announce the “Model-T Loudspeaker System”.

For many years Bryston has employed a number of quality loudspeakers to assess our electronic equipment but we felt the time had come to develop our own reference grade loudspeaker system. The Bryston Model T loudspeaker was designed to meet the challenge of a North American designed and manufactured world class reference loudspeaker.

We embarked on this loudspeaker journey with Axiom Audio with very demanding requirements to exceed my current reference speakers. Originally, only one pair of these loudspeakers were going to be developed as my personal reference loudspeakers. However, the Bryston distributors, dealers, and clients expressed a strong interest to bring a Bryston loudspeaker to market that would be competitively priced.

The initial design was an expensive and complex active design using a Digital Signal Processing (DSP), six channels of amplification, and a myriad of cables. Much effort was used to get to a performance level that met our requirements. Interestingly, Dealer & client feedback requested a passive version that could be powered by a two channels of amplification. So, the Model T (Passive) loudspeaker was developed.

Considerable effort was put forth in new driver design, enclosure vibration analysis, crossover refinement, anechoic chamber testing, and countless hours of listening tests. Blind listening tests were routinely performed with the Model T and today’s highly regarded and expensive loudspeakers. We invite you to bring your favorite music to your local authorized Bryston dealer to give them a serious listen and let me know what you think.

BACKGROUND:
The two most critical parts of any loudspeaker system choice is the listening ‘ROOM’ and the loudspeakers‘POLAR’ response. Recognizing how the room imposes its boundaries (floor, ceiling, walls) on the speaker and how that speaker radiates its energy (polar response) into a specific room is critical to the understanding of the overall performance of any speaker and it is no different for the Bryston Model T loudspeaker.

When you are listening to a loudspeaker in a room you are always listening to a balance between the ‘Direct Sound’ and the ‘Reflected Sound’ from the boundaries of the room – this is called the ‘Power Response or Sound Power.’ It is that balance between direct and reflected energy which changes depending on the frequency radiation pattern (polar response) of the given speaker and the boundaries of the room the speaker is placed in. Dipoles, Bipolar, Omnipoles, Direct Radiators, Horns etc. all behave differently due to their specific radiation patterns and therefore exhibit different power responses in any specific room. Bryston has chosen a direct radiator approach in the design of the Model-T loudspeaker for numerous reasons but one critical reason is because we feel it is currently the best way to accomplish the correct balance between direct and reflected energy in real world listening rooms.

DIRECT and RELECTED SOUND:
The ‘direct sound’ is the sound radiating from the front of the loudspeaker and the ‘reflected sound’ is all the sound your ears perceive after the sound waves have interacted with all the different boundaries in the room. It is important given real world conditions that the on axis response and the off axis frequency response of a loudspeaker be as uniform as possible. This on and off axis characteristic is generally referred to as Polar response. The smoother and more uniform the on and off axis polar response of the speaker the better the tonal balance between the direct sound and the reflected sound will be. In other words, the reflected sound will have the same overall tonal balance and sonic characteristics as the direct sound if ‘on and off’ polar response is smooth and even. This approach also provides the optimum overall 3-dimensional soundstage presentation as well. The Bryston Model-T is a very wide dispersion design so the polar response is very flat on axis and very uniform all the way out to more than 45 degrees off axis in both directions from center to provide a very wide and even listening window.

LISTENING WINDOW and SOUND POWER:
In a loudspeaker the ‘listening window’ is an average of a front set of curves whereas the ‘sound power response’ is an average of all the curves right around the whole speaker. What we actually hear seems heavily weighted to be a balance between these two conditions. The listening windows frequency response should be very linear (flat) across the entire audio band but the sound power should fall off by 8 – 10dB by the time you get to 10kHz (see diagram below) while still remaining linear in its march down from the bass frequencies.

Striking the proper balance between these two is extremely important to the sound of the speaker. Keeping the listening window and the sound power both linear is not an easy task and is where most speakers fall down.

Typical Model-T Passive Anechoic Response

Typically there is a lot of attention paid to the linearity of the direct on-axis frequency response by reviewers and knowledgeable consumers but it is really just one curve in the mix of 64 curves Bryston utilized in the design the Bryston Model T passive loudspeaker.

PASSIVE CROSSOVER:
The passive crossover in a loudspeaker provides the correct frequency response, levels, roll-off slopes, phase etc. to the different drivers (woofers, midranges, tweeters). The crossover uses very sophisticated parts that allow for very precise tailoring and control over each of the drivers. This attention to details in the crossover provides the utmost in spatial and depth imaging performance as well as overall realism. Proper application of the integration of the drivers/crossover and box is critical in determining uniformity of the speaker’s output in all directions (power response). The crossover the drivers and the cabinet all work in tandem and cannot be designed independently. The Model-P crossover is meticulously engineered to achieve extreme tonal neutrality and is constructed with extensive use of high quality components. The result is astonishing clarity, transparency, and true three-dimensional realism.

CUSTOM DRIVERS:
All the drivers in the Bryston Model-Tspeaker are custom made. The advantage of custom made drivers is you can design the driver to do a specific job in a specific cabinet with a specific crossover. Many loudspeaker manufacturers use off the shelf commercially available drivers but that severely restricts their design options because the manufacturer has to design around the specific drivers characteristics. We have developed our drivers to be part of the overall design window and have integrated them with the crossovers and cabinet in a way not possible with off the shelf components. We use cast baskets, substantial magnet assemblies and custom motor systems in all our woofers and midrange drivers.

CABINET:
The cabinet plays an enormously important role in the quality of music reproduction, and so the engineering of the cabinet incorporates several innovations that contribute to the speaker’s stunning clarity, its utter tonal neutrality and its exceptionally realistic imaging. Another task the cabinet must perform is to allow the sound from the drivers to radiate freely without encountering cabinet edges or cavities that will diffract some of the energy, causing interference and delayed sounds that produce tonal colorations and obscure spatial information.

The Model-T cabinet is made from a high quality MDF and precisely constructed in our Canadian manufacturing facility. The cabinet was designed with exceptional attention to reducing cabinet resonances. You want the cabinet to be as inert as possible so that only the drivers are contributing to the sound emanating from the speaker. Bracing in the correct areas is critical and contrary to popular belief you can easily end up with improper bracing – too much or not enough. Everything vibrates or has a natural resonance at which it will vibrate and the ear is much more sensitive to higher frequency vibrations as opposed to lower frequency vibrations. The general thought is the more bracing the better but it actually doesn’t work quite that way. There are two things to be cognitive of in brace design. One is that you can actually increase the SPL of the “cabinet output” if you put the wrong number of braces in the wrong place and the other is that as you add braces you will increase the frequency of the “cabinet output” which at some point, even though the SPL will likely be substantially lower, the cabinet output will become audible because we humans far more sensitive to noise at higher frequencies. So measuring and optimizing at what frequency vibration occurs and at what amplitude is critical to producing as resonant a free cabinet as possible

The Model-T cabinet is shaped and contoured to provide the practical elimination of diffracted driver energy from the driver’s specific dispersion characteristics and to reduce or eliminate any internal standing waves in the loudspeaker cabinet. Less vibration contributes to greater clarity, while the absence of diffraction allows for very open, box-less reproduction. The cabinet sides achieve great stiffness by a construction of shaped panels and bracing using accelerometers to measure precise movements and bracing them appropriately to reduce resonances. This construction preserves the nuances and delicacy of the music by reducing unwanted sonic artifacts that would otherwise obscure musical detail.

UNIT TO UNIT MATCHING:
One of the critical requirements for creating a quality three-dimension image in your room is that each and every loudspeaker must be synchronized as much as possible to one another in all aspects of their performance. Small variances in performance from unit to unit can inhibit the audio systems ability to place
instruments in the proper location and create a believable soundstage where the speakers disappear and the performance fills the room with a convincing performance. We take great care in making sure this continuity is maintained for each and every loudspeaker we manufacture.

ANACHOIC CHAMBER:
Our speaker design and manufacturing facility has a very unique advantage – an on-site ‘anechoic chamber’. Anechoic chambers are reflection free rooms and are used by the superior speaker manufactures to do all the loudspeaker testing in an environment where early reflections and outside noise issues are eliminated from the measurement curve(s). Anechoic cambers are very, very expensive to build but they are invaluable when designing a quality loudspeaker. Measurements can be made showing exactly how the on and off polar response of the speaker is performing, cabinet resonances due to improper bracing are easily measured with accelerometers, driver abnormalities and resonances are easily detected etc. It allows one to move in a constructive direction in a calculated manner because it brings to the forefront many of the discontinuities not necessarily obvious with other test methods. The Bryston Model-T speakers were meticulously designed utilizing the factory anechoic chamber and then fine-tuned and adjusted utilizing blind listening tests to provide our customers with as accurate a loudspeaker as is currently obtainable.

DYNAMIC COMPRESSION:
One of the major issues with many speakers is ‘dynamic compression.” In the real world if you hear a loud (dynamic) sound like a gun-shot or a back-fire or a scream etc. there is a huge dynamic range associated with the sound. Many speakers, especially small 2-way or 3-way speaker’s are terrific for what they do but many fall short trying to recreate the huge dynamics necessary to produce the kind of sound pressure levels needed to reproduce these huge volume swings in your listening room. With the Bryston Model-T loudspeaker one of the foremost priorities was to create a speaker that could truly reproduce these real world dynamics without compression. In our opinion, utilizing multiple drivers in a vertical array was the best way to achieve this goal.

SUMMING UP:
A ‘state of the art’ audio system involves what some refer to as a “suspension of disbelief”, which means that the playback system transcends the recorded medium and transports you to a live venue. You forget it’s a recording and believe you are there at the live performance.

Our goal with the Bryston Model-T Passive loudspeaker system was to provide our customers with a superior level of ‘disbelief’.

James Tanner

Think you'll be VERY pleasantly surprised by the Bryston. They're amazing speakers.

Hi Folks,

Because they are more alike than different:

Here is a link to a new Bryston Speaker Brochure which includes both the Model T and Model A Series.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5gpj2lr56d...1214%20web.pdf

james

Hi James,

What are the Canadian prices on the Model A line? Also due to the size of the Model A line would a sub most likely be needed to make up some of the lacking base?

Looking forward to hearing these.

Scott

Awesome thanks James,

Price wise the Model A's are very attractive. The room I will be using is fairly large (in my mind) at 16' * 34', and I listen to all types of music. #1 purpose would be home theater though, and at the price of the model A1 I could get 2 sets of those for fronts and front wides for the price of one set of Model T's. I did fall in love with the Model T and they would fill that room nicely. Arg so many choices which are so good but so hard to make.

Thanks again,

Scott

Finally going to audition the Mini T today.
Looking forward to hearing these bad boys.

James, when will the Model T speakers start being manufactured without the word "Axiom" cast on the baskets?

It would strictly be cosmetic as the driver is built by them for us and to make another casing costs a lot and as you know I have been trying to keep the costs as low as possible without affecting performance.

That being said the market forces seem to be pushing me in the direction of getting our own midrange tool made with Bryston on it - (funny how perception affects acceptance aye!) So I have started the ball rolling and should have Bryston Cast on the Mids in a few months - we already have it on the Tweeter. The Mids will be retrofittable if someone has the speakers now and wants to change them out.

james

It would be great if you could offer that as a firmware download. :D

LOL :tresbon: