Bryston - Stereo or Monoblock

@mvrooman1526 I went down the road you are on and I am in a good position to advise. I started out with a pair of Magnepan 1.7i with a pair of Vidar Monoblocks. I quickly moved away from the Vidars when my left monoblock went into thermal shutdown when playing Jeff Beck loud. I don’t often play music that loud. But it just goes to show the limitation of headroom they have. I think if you played piano jazz at low to moderate volumes all the time it wouldn’t be noticeable. However, that gave me the impetus to upgrade. So I got a pair of Bryston 4B3s and I can tell you that most everyone will be happy with 4B3 Monoblocks. But I also recommend a few other upgrades to the 1.7i which are a phenomenal bargain for the price. But with help they are superb. 1. Get the Mike Powell silver upgrade to upgrade the stock steel plate jumper and fuse. 2. Get a pair of MyeStands from Grant VanderMye. These two things will tighten up the sound and provide tighter bass and treble. In the interim, I got an opportunity to upgrade from the Bryston 4B3s to a pair of the Bryston 28B3 Monoblocks. That is endgame for me. Very fast with lots of headroom. Not really necessary. But Maggies do well with more power. The most impactful upgrade of all I made recently is to add a pair of REL T/9i subwoofers to the system. Wow. A transformative experience. Maggie’s transmit nice bass I. The frequencies that it can handle. The problem is they can’t handle very low frequencies and sub bass. Plus there is no oomph or air pressure. No slam. The RELs are THE solution. With the RELs in the system the setup is addictive. I hope this helps. Good luck. 

Hi @wegenert. The Jeff Beck album was one of his latest albums and I was streaming it. I didn’t have a device to measure the sound pressure. But it was LOUD. Like if I had a neighbor in and adjoining room they would have complained. If my wife was there she would have complained and left. If I had opened the window you could have heard it down the street. Not way down the street. But it was loud. Now I hardly listen to music that loud. But I expect that my amps will never go into thermoprotection. It also demonstrated to me the lack of headroom and therefore the lack of power for transient dynamics that the Vidar had for MY system. Since switching to Bryston I have had zero issues. I agree that you don’t need the 28B3 monoblocks I have. But I happened onto them and got so good a deal, I couldn’t pass them up. They are end game for me IMO. Most folks will be pleased with a 4B3 run in stereo. But the great thing about the 4B3 is that they can easily be run in bridge mode and run as “monoblocks”. You can get one and try it. If you want and find another at a good price you can get a second. That is what I did after the Vidars. I hope that helped.