Ordered my new amp today... been a long road!

Hi Cap
I had to respond to your post because I've had the same quest.
I have a mc250 to drive my Maggie 1.7i's and thought more power would be the answer. So I purchased the parasound p5 and a A21+. What a disappointing result. The p5 is a very good preamp with all kinds off versatility but the A21 had little or no soundstage and muddled up the highs. The lower range was all there but no musicality.  Very disappointed.  The little mc250 with 1/10 the power did better with the p5. I hope you kept your mac and your receipt.  Sorry for the bad news.

Cap, if audiomaze is unfortunately correct I have an inexpensive amp alternative. I have Aerial Acoustics 8b’s, which are power hungry like the 10t. If the Parasound doesn’t work out suggest you look for an old Proceed HPA 2, 500w/ch at 4 ohms, basically a Mark Levinson amp from when Madrigal owned both Proceed and Levinson. You can find the HPA 2 for around $1,500 on Audiogon. It has the grunt to drive your new speakers and its sound is neutral.  I’ve been happy with mine for over 15 years. Hope you don’t need it. 

Happy listening. 

audiomaze, on 4-6-19, on another thread you wrote regarding your Maggies ….. "Then another salesperson said it will sing with a McIntosh mc 275 tube amp great imaging a smooth sounding but still something missing. Than I bought a parasound A21+. WOW!!! Paired with a Parasound p5 it was off to the races . Only 5 years to get there but worth it.".....

It appears something pretty big happened to change your mind about the Parasound? I would be curious if you would share.

Hi jetter.
When I first got the A21 it sounded so much more of everything I was just overwhelmed with the sheer weight of the sound . But after a while I noticed the highs were muddled ,lots of sound but no detail. So after weeks of changes ,cables, power conditioning and some major tweaks to my Maggie's with improvements to the mids and bass ,still no soundstage. That's when I dug out the old s.s.  mc250 and did some serious a/b tests.  It's been three weeks and I still haven't used the A21+. I want to be happy with it but can not seem to get it to come alive. Any suggestions would help.  Thanks

@audiomaze - I have read that the Parasound amps take a very long time to burn in (like 400-600 hours sometimes.  Some people say 1200 hours on the JC1)}.  That being said, my own experience with A21 and JC1 amps were the same as yours.  The amps are very refined in the midrange, but in the end, the highs just were not crisp enough.  I even did the Hi-Fi Tuning Supreme silver fuse upgrades (that was an expensive test of nothing).  The A21 has 5 fuses that affect the audio signal path and the JC1 has 7 fuses.  The silver fuses did help but in the end the sound became too unatural (sterile / solid state) from the silver influence.  This is just the sonic signature of Parasound.  I think they fuse the crap out of the amps because the fuses actually slow down current draw and helps voice the amp to be more warm sounding with rolled off highs.  This is exactly the same thing you see in the Marantz equipment, which is also voiced warm.   The 10T speakers that captbeaver has do tend to be very bright on the highs, so the Parasound might actually be an nice fit.