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John Curl and Parasound were in Century Stereo in San Jose, CA this evening. It was great to finally put a face to a name that we've heard over and over. He shared some great stories, especially about working with The Greatful Deads, Mark Levinson, Dave Wilson, Sheffield Labs, etc.
FrankC
Follow Ups:
Thanks! for sharing.
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Lots of scalp in the photo! (hehe)
http://mindseyemusic.blogspot.com/
Well Sonny, just wait till you grow up. '-)
Laughing...
nt
long-term storage of blood plasma. Oh wait, these weren't invented by a bunch of fat, bald, old white guys.
By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.
Galileo Galilei
Some of them are simply balding.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" - Michael McClure
Someone did ask the age old question about the dying of the hobby with no "new blood". I think if this was an event on DACs or vinyl or headphones, you would see a much younger crowd.
FrankC
True Otis, but we were young once!
Just kiddin' ;)
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see, staying away from this place can really benefit some.
;)
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
Hey Frank, glad that you had a good time. How was the turn-out? Any hot girls there?John looks just like he did 40 years ago, only more so. ;)
I don't remember his hair being gray, though.
BTW, it's Grateful Dead. ;)
:)
Edits: 07/18/14
Smile
Sox
The early JC Parasound amp was dreadful, at least they took mine back for a full refund.
Edits: 07/18/14
The early JC Parasound amp was dreadful
The? There were about a dozen different models of the older HCA series dating back nearly twenty years ago. Remember that Curl's involvement is that of providing the schematic. For the most part, execution and parts selection is up to Parasound. Much like the designs Nelson Pass provided for Adcom and Nakamichi.
The only one I'm familiar with is the JC-1 amplifier which is superb. His original JC-2 preamplifier manufactured by Mark Levinson in the 70s was the first solid state preamp I heard that bettered the Audio Research SP-3a in some respects.
Yes, the first HCA-2200, which had an IC in front, failed to sound as good as it measured. I still don't know completely why, but the MK2 HCA-2200 was very successful, and the changes were minor. It really ticked off the IC designer, however.
It was also extremely badly made, the two reasons why I returned it. I have yet to hear an amplifier with a J-Fet input that sounds natural, they sound artificial like the latest Sony TA-1AES
Edits: 07/19/14
Thank you kindly for placing Disbeliever's comment into perspective.
It really ticked off the IC designer, however.
He likely wasn't one who verifies theory with practice. :)
What did you replace it with and how long did the love affair last?
I am using an amp called Prime Design A100 for the last 20 years, long out of production, only 100 were manufactured.
You do know there is a reason that they only manufactured 100 of them don't you ?
I know ,the amp was rushed out onto the market, before it was signed off and got a bad review. however my one has been extensively modified and sounds great. I cannot find a better one ,but I keep on trying.
father did a poor job, "socializing" cannot much better it.
Sometimes the design is good but just a few details are off. Perhaps corners were cut in manufacturing. It may be a "good deal" was available on some part that proved to be low quality despite coming with good "specifications". Perhaps the bean counters "value engineered" a good design by using low precision components to save money and some samples of the product failed to work well, ...
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
This is actually a good example of what we audio designers have to do, IF we want to be ultimately successful. We can create a design on paper, then build a prototype that might measure very well or at least 'well enough'. However, we HAVE to listen to it, much like an audio reviewer would, or leave the listening to a trusted colleague with a track record of having 'good ears'.
With the first power amp that I helped design for Parasound, I left a lot of circuitry that I did not design myself, but it seemed to do the job that it was designed to do. I personally did NOT put it into my home hi fi system, as I was sure of my measurements, and I was afraid that I might damage my WATT-Puppy speakers, especially the tweeter. I SHOULD have taken it home and listened to it extensively.
We took the original design to Stereophile and we were fairly confident that everything would be OK, but it wasn't, so I was forced to redesign the input stage to something more radical than an IC. This IC was added, not to be directly part of the amp, but a convenient way to have switchable single ended or balanced input. I realized from the beginning that this was the ONLY IC in the reproduce chain, including any preamp that I had developed over the years, but I used the best one that met the criterion for use in this circuit. I even knew the IC designer as a colleague, so what could go wrong?
Well, I HAD to remove the IC, and then we did a number of small improvements, and we released it as a MK2 HCA-2200. This time it was successful, and we got a B rating, exactly where I thought it belonged at the time. It was an IMPORTANT lesson for me, but about 5 years later, I made the same mistake again, but this time my associates actually listened to the amp, after I measured it, and found it wanting. This ultimately led to better amps from Parasound, when we found and fixed the problems, once again.
Must be exclusivity, can't think of anything else on the spur of the moment...
Always got to rain on the parade!
truth will out. Like it or not.
...you can't handle the truth!
Thanks, I was about to write something similar. It's amazing how audio people who know just a little think they know more than the giants of our industry, isn't it?
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