Product Reviews
- Jay's Iyagi -
Lone Star Audio Fest (LASF) June 2-4, 2023 Dallas, TX
Miller Audio LLC, Dallas, TX
A personal highlight from LSAF 2023 was hanging out after hours with Bryan Miller, who was exhibiting his Miller Audio LLC mods and upgrades centered around the classic Dynaco amplifiers. The demo system in Bryan’s room featured GR Research NX-Studio speakers and sealed servo sub courtesy of Michael Lundy’s Uilleam Audio. Sources included laptop-based music server running JRiver, a CD player (a 5-disk changer kicking it old-school!), into a AKITIKA PR-102 preamp, and then on to the featured attraction: a Dynaco ST-70 equipped with the Miller Audio LLC (www.milleraudiollc.com) Dyna-70 Ultimate Upgrade.
I was initially surprised that Bryan’s amps did not look 40+ years old where’s the rust? He informed me that the Dynaco ecosystem is such that new production chassis, transformers, and other parts are available sufficient that these are in fact new production amplifiers combining the classic Dynaco ST-70 architecture with his new design audio & power supply circuits. Speaking of the architecture: seeing it in person, I was quite taken with the compact
size of the Dyna 70. In a time when some segments of the hi-fi amplifier market are engaged in an arms race, making amps ever larger and heavier, it was refreshing to find a tube amp that doesn’t require a crew of piano movers to install. The sound Bryan and Michael achieved personified everything one looks for when going tube. The classic warmth and accurate bloom of the type, along with the modern accuracy I attribute to Bryan Miller’s circuit. For those of us who followed the writings of the late Harvey “Gizmo” Rosenberg of Julius Futterman OTL and NYAL fame,
Bryan’s switch to big, bold 6SN7s in his new circuit gets marks in the plus column. Gizmo lauded the tonal qualities of the 6Sx7 family over the later smaller 12AX7s, a promise Bryan’s design fulfills. Bryan’s circuit also upgrades and stabilizes the biasing system with
manual or auto-bias options and, as seen in the photo above, uses latest audio specific parts like Mundorf MCaps. This was a system that led the listener to just relax and enjoy.
