Parasound’s 73-pound JC 5 delivers a whopping 400 watts per channel, and it’s stable enough to drive just about any speakers you might care to hook up. In bridged mode, this amp really turns on the juice, putting out an amazing 1,200 watts into a single channel. All that power comes from a beefy toroidal transformer and a high-bias Class A/AB amplifier design that help your system reproduce music with stunning clarity and accuracy. The “JC” designation — and the signature on the front and back panels — lets you know it was designed by the company’s audio design guru John Curl (more on him later).Â
Class A/AB operation for smoother sound
You don’t see a Class A/AB amplifier every day, so let’s break down the benefits.
Engineers and audiophiles generally agree that Class A designs offer the purest sound, but they tend to run hot and take up a lot of space. As a result, home audio amplifiers often use a compromise known as Class AB, which hands off part of the audio signal to a different set of output transistors at high power levels. AB can sacrifice a bit of signal purity, but it lets the amp run cooler and more efficiently.
So this Class A/AB amp operates in pure Class A mode up to a higher power level than most other amplifiers in its price category, before the second set of transistors kick in. The result is a sound that’s smoother, less fatiguing, and more natural.
Convenient connections
On the back panel are balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs for each channel, and each has its own individual gain control knob and loop output. There are also binding posts for connecting a pair of speakers. The amp can be rack mounted using the included ears.
The legacy of John Curl
The Halo JC 5 features circuitry designed by John Curl, a legend in audio engineering. He started his career in the 1970s, designing tape and video recorders at Ampex, and he had a hand in building the Grateful Dead’s famous Wall of Sound. Curl has worked with Parasound since 1989, designing all of their high-power amplifiers and more. The power supply, transistors, capacitors and other parts in the JC 5 were chosen to offer uncompromising audiophile-grade performance.
Product highlights:
- 400 watts per channel into 8 ohms (20-20,000 Hz) at 0.05% THD with 2 channels driven
- 600 watts x 2 into 4 ohms
- 1,200 watts x 1 at 8 ohms in bridged mode
- bridged operation at 4 ohms is not recommended
- designed by legendary audio engineer John Curl
- high-bias Class A/AB amplifier design
- large custom toroidal transformer
- frequency response: 5-100,000 Hz (-3dB)
- signal-to-noise ratio: 116 dB
- left and right balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs
- individual gain control for each channel
- RCA loop outputs for each channel
- let you daisy-chain additional amps
- in bi-amp configuration, passes input signal from one channel to the other’s RCA input
- custom 5-way binding post speaker connectors
- in bridged mode, only the positive binding posts are used
- switchable turn-on options: manual, signal sensing, or 12-volt trigger
- detachable power cord
- rack mounting ears included
