Making a difficult decision


I am trying to decide between a peachtree nova 150 or a parasound 135 both are intergrated amps. The parasound has a lot of power and connectivity options. The peachtree has power and connectivity also but what worries me is in the reviews I have read the build quality and the power supply not discussed. The parasound weighs47# the peachtree is only 17# this concerns me some. I plan on using them to drive my Magnepan 1.7s. Any thoughts?
audiomaze

Showing 1 response by ridavher

I've owned both the Peachtree Nova 150 and the Parasound HINT (Original - not the HINT 6).  To me, the Nova 150 felt like a toy in a lot of ways, though I felt it sounded great (when it was operating correctly).  I didn't like the volume control and I had several issues that Peachtree was very helpful with.  One unit had a high pitched sound with the analog input, the replacement had another issue, and the 3rd unit had a bad remote control or remote sensor.  1-2-3 strikes and your out, so I moved on to other options.  This was when the Nova 150 had just come out so I would expect that they have since cleaned up QA.  The Parasound was very nice but perhaps a little uninvolving or unexciting to me.  All in all, If I were forced to choose between the Peachtree and the Parasound, I would go with the Parasound based purely on my experience with the reliability.  The Rogue Audio Sphinx 2 mentioned above is a very nice integrated.  It's bare bones but sounds amazing.  I owned it as well, but decided to move to a more up-market integrated.