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An all Parasound system - Good idea?

My brother- in- law visited last weekend and heard my 2 channel system for the first time.  Slightly ocd, he spent much time online and emailed me last night to say he was going to put his own system together and was planning to buy all of his components from Parasound, in part because he thinks a single brand will optimze performance and compatability, and because he is enamored by the John Curl connection. To that end, he plans to buy  a JC2 Preamp, A21 Amp and JC3+ phono amp.

I have told him focus on  speakers first, then source components. That notwithstanding, is the "All Parasound " a good idea to avoid the possibility of components not playing nice together or should he not focus on brand loyalty and shop for "best in class" components instead?

sjtm

Showing 3 responses by 213runnin

213runnin
914 posts
 
Generally speaking, a single brand solution can be somewhat iffy, or at least used to be.  A buddy bought an all Proton system back in the day, and the speakers had drivers from Pioneer and were really nothing special.  The cd player and tape deck were made by someone else as well as I recall and only average.  

But that said, there certainly are brands that would work well as a single brand solution, and these days good brands don't try to cheap out in this regard.   Parasound is definitely one of them, as is Mcintosh or Nad depending on the budget level.
213runnin
914 posts
 
Ricred, for you to describe the JC stuff as 2 dimensional, masks details(What??) and a big disappointment, there was something else at play.  It's not a case of different strokes for different folks.  Perhaps your speakers are a bad match for Halo gear, maybe you didn't break them in properly.  Your cables might be muffling things somewhat.  I know that I've cleaned all my cable connections and with deoxit and had the q-tips turn dark with carbon, and the sound improved afterward.   There had to be some other issue.

I mean, I guess one could prefer another brand, but not because the Halo stuff is 2 dimensional.


213runnin
914 posts
 
Ricred, I'm not telling you what you heard or what to think.  I'm simply saying that there was some other reason for the substandard sound.  Either way, good that you ended up with 3d imaging.
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