Learn how to read between the lines and interpret spec's. This will give you greater insight as to what to expect out of a product. Listening to it in your system with your ears is the only way to finally judge something. Just be fair enough to work with the individual product within the confines of your system as there is no product that is a direct replacement for everything without some need for futher fine tuning. Sean
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Aroc: I've heard from more than a few folks, including straight from a Classe' dealers own mouth, that the Omega's are not that good sounding. Like anything else though, it is a matter of system synergy and personal preference.
I also had a response typed up to Tok2000 and Twl but it somehow disappeared from my computer. Must have happened when it locked up earlier today. Sean
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The "sound" of a unit has to do with the design of the circuit, how the circuit is laid out and the quality of the parts used. A good portion of what one hears can be described in specs IF one is provided with ALL of the pertinent specs. By "pertinent specs", i'm not talking about the typical stuff that is provided in a buyers guide either.
If the specs check out phenomenally good without having to resort to "tricks" such as high negative feedback, etc.. and one doesn't like the sound of the product, it is quite simple to alter the sonics of such a unit by changing passive parts.
What do you think that most of these "tweak guru's" do for a living ? Most of them leave the circuitry as is ( for the most part ) and simply swap higher grade components in place of what the manufacturer used. This is work that a monkey could do for the most part. It is only when one gets into altering circuit design that knowledge of circuitry comes into play.
The fact that this unit is built like a tank, has a good basic design, careful attention to parts layout and hand selected high grade parts for every inch of the circuit tells me that it should be pretty close to what you can get out of a SS circuit. Like anything else, i'm sure that it could be improved in more than a few ways. It makes life a LOT easier if you start off with something that is "solid" to begin with though.
The first thing that would have to go on these amps would be the binding posts. I'd also like it if if was a little bit faster too : ) Sean
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Bob: Hope you had a good time at CES and everything went well.
My comments about the binding posts are based on what i've seen in pictures. They look like standard "generic" binding posts in print.
As far as my comments about the "speed" of the circuitry go, I noticed that the top octave ( 10 KHz & up ) was slightly soft and rolled. This became more apparent as impedance was dropped. According to what Atkinson measured, the amp was starting to take a nose-dive in linearity below 100 KHz. JA's testing showed a -3dB point of 95 KHz, which is pretty reasonable to say the least and much better than some amps that i've seen.
Personally, i like to see a bandwidth that is out to well beyond this point. Fast, wide-bandwidth circuitry only increases in-band linearity via improved rise time and slew rate with less in-band phase shift. Then again, one can run into problems with high frequency instability and oscillation with specific loads. Pass and Spectral gear are prime examples of "vulnerable" amps.
With that in mind, I know that John is more than capable of designing a wide-bandwidth circuit and Carl has laid out gear to well beyond the multi-MHz range. As such, my thoughts are that Parasound probably doesn't want a bunch of these amps coming back in for warranty claims. Hence this was probably a design trade-off with safety in mind.
As i've said before, nothing is perfect, but IF i had the cash.... : ) Sean
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Asa: I typically don't spend much time on specs because most people don't understand them or how they relate to each other. As far as "going overboard" on this specific product, i don't think that this is the case. If you look back to the last amp that i posted about after reading a review of it, it was the PS Audio HCA-2. I did make a big deal about the specs on this unit and how horrible and inconsistent they were. I also stated that i thought that specs could be interpreted to provide a reasonable idea as to how the amp might sound and react to various loads. Finding an amp that sounds good only in one system with one set of speakers with specific cables is a joke as far as i'm concerned. Looking at "real" specs can help you weed out those that lack versatility and are only suitable for specific types of loads. Sean
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I'm not going to get into the "tubes vs SS" debate on this one. I will only say that what some people think sounds "good" or "musical" is not necessarily "accurate". Nor is what some people find to be the sound of "accuracy" very "musical". There is a point somewhere in-between those two that i'm looking for and, judging by what the actual specs under test conditions show and the commentaries made by those that have listened to, reviewed and own these units, the JC-1 may fall into both categories.
I own both SS and tube amps and am looking for something that combines the best of both worlds in one simple to use package. Quite honestly, i could care less which method ( tube or SS ) such a piece ends up using, but SS is surely a LOT more convenient, reliable and cheaper in the long run. Sean
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As far as i know, the closest thing that Parasound offers to this would be the HCA-3500. The 3500 is high powered and is still very different in terms of the quality of parts used, but from what i understand, it can be modified to be quite a good sounding unit. Only problem is that by the time you're done with all of the modifications, the only thing that you have left of the original 3500 is the chassis, transformers and circuit board. The cost runs about $5K for CTC to modify these and then you still end up with an amp that isn't as good as the JC-1, which would cost less ( total ) than buying the 3500 and having it modified. On top of that, the JC-1 will still walk away from it for multiple reasons.
I can see a good sized market for a smaller stereo amp ( 10 watts Class A, 100 @ 8 / 200 @ 4 ) and Bob, John & Carl should talk to Parasound about doing something like that. If you or anyone else would be interested in such things, you should probably contact Parasound directly and ask if they have any plans to market such a product. It would let them know that there is a market for something like that if they were to get multiple inquiries. Sean
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Once again Tok20000, one has to look at ALL the specs and know what they mean / how they are arrived at to know what to make of them.
As far as your comments go about damping factor, that is the ratio that compares the output impedance of the amplifier to the load impedance of the circuit. As such, one would have to run a LOT of speaker cable to drastically alter the load impedance that the amp sees. That, or use REALLY small gauge speaker cables. Otherwise, using twice the length of cable if using a "reasonable" gauge speaker cable ( like at least 16 or 14 gauge ) wouldn't make any "real" difference in damping factor at all.
As far as your comments about low THD and the "distortion wars" of yesteryear go, i agree. The designers sacrificed a lot of other important design criteria to concentrate on achieving good specs in the area of measurable distortions. They did this using high amounts of negative feedback. Having said that, if one knew about specs, you could look at the distortion measurements AND the amount of feedback used and draw conclusions by putting 2+2 together. It is not a matter of any one spec being more important than the other, but how the various specs affect each other and work as a whole.
Mr Crump: I had no idea as to what your email was talking about until i saw this thread. I kind of wondered how you ended up talking about the CD player project when we were discussing something else : ) Sean
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