The mighty JC1+ power amp is 450 W with 25 W of Class-A operation.
Own a circuit that traces its lineage to The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound.
When Parasound joined Upscale Audio in 2023, the long-time industry types on our staff were the most excited. After all, American-built Parasound is another of what we called a "quiet brand", one that has zero flamboyance but is revered by the people who own it.
We wrote in 2023, "In road cycling—to pick one rabbit-hole hobby beloved by hi-fi enthusiasts (and to make a change from watch and sports-car analogies)—that brand would be Giant. It doesn't have the home-team recall of Trek and Specialized, the style of Pinarello and Colnago, or the new-kid excitement of Canyon. Yet, Giant owners are some of the most loyal in the peloton, riding their bikes for 10 to 15 years and then just going out and getting another Giant."
Look at the photo below, for example, to see the level of componentry that sits inside the unassuming chassis of Parasound's flagship Halo series. This is ultra-serious, high-end engineering at non-stratospheric pricing. Read the full Parasound introduction here.
The JC5 stereo power amplifier exemplifies Parasound's ultra-serious, high-end engineering.
The Legend of John Curl
John Curl is a legendary circuit designer whose power amp circuits were first developed when he worked on The Grateful Dead's famous (or infamous) Wall of Sound concert PA system. He designed the circuits for Parasound's flagship products, and his approach avoids capacitors and inductors in the signal path, using fully balanced, complementary (push-pull) designs. "It’s pointless to design something that is prone to distortion and then try to remove the distortion," he says in an interview on Parasound's website.
John is also a big proponent of ultra-high-bias Class-A, saying, "All else being equal, the more class-A you have, the better. We don’t need a full class-A amplifier because people don’t listen to full power levels all the time."
The JC1+ mono power amplifier proudly sports John Curl's signature on the front.
We've been playing at the very top of Parasound's range with the JC1+ monoblocks and are reminded, again, how underrated this American legend remains. It's time to wake up, people! Let's look at the numbers. The JC1+ is a 450 W, high-bias Class-A amp, meaning that it offers 25 W of Class-A operation (that's an entire Musical Fidelity A1, which is an incredible amplifier), switching to AB only when needed.
There's a notion among armchair engineers that a powerful amp can do scale and dynamics, but can't handle fine detail and musicality. All of Parasound's big amps prove this wrong. (As does any high-quality power amp, but most of those are far more expensive than the Parasound.) We demoed the JC5 stereo power amp and observed how it rendered fine detail with love. We wrote, "Add in the JC5’s performance on bass-heavy tracks and you should picture this amp as the Incredible Hulk smashing through the brick wall of your living room and executing a perfect pirouette to arabesque."
With the JC1+, you get the same voicing, but just more: more scale, more authority, more separation, more ease and flow. Read the whole story here.