PARASOUND NEW CLASSIC 200 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
I LIKE SIMPLE. Simple is good. Simple works. Simple makes my job easier and helps me sleep at night.
Parasound, a Bay Area maker with a half-century of success walking the parapet between high-end audiophilia and valueengineering design, apparently concurs. The company’s new Newclassic 200 Integrated is, as you might well guess, an integrated amplifier, with a high-quality onboard digitalto-analog converter section.
The 200 Integrated was in fact derived by the simple expedient of sliding a class-d stereo power amp sourced from Danish class-d amp-module stalwart Pascal Audio into its otherwise-identical preamp stablemate. This slim, two-channel module delivers a claimed 110 watts per channel into either 4-ohm or 8-ohm loads with typical class-d efficiency, pulling only a modest 50 watts from the wall.
Simple, in this case, does not mean stripped-down, however— not hardly. The Parasound is well-constructed on an oldfashioned steel chassis and nicely but unfussily finished. The amp’s D/A converter, a 24-bit/192khz design borrowed from the company’s well-regarded Halo
P 5 preamplifier(discontinued) is limited to 96khz from its USB input but tops out at 192khz from optical or coaxial digital connections.
There’s also an onboard phono preamp compatible with both moving-magnet and moving-coil cartridges, an unusual bonus. Next, analog-domain bass management is manifested by subwoofer outputs and crossover filtering supplying both a fixed 80 Hz low-pass and an unfiltered sub output, along with a variable (and, of course, defeatable) high-pass to the main left/right outputs present on both speaker and preamp-level outs. (The fullrange sub output could also service a mono whole-house zone.) Parasound’s clever “bypass” input— basically, a power-amp input— lets it integrate with a volume-controlled source like a music streamer or stand in for the front left/right channels of an A/ V receiver for serious two-channel listening. In the latter use-case, the 200 Integrated could drive the front main speakers with more or “better” power for both stereo and multi-channel listening while providing the option to select among the dedicated listening sources feeding its own inputs.
The 200 Integrated’s front has two nice-feeling knobs for volume and input-select, along with a mini-jack headphone output and mini-jack stereo input. Around back are speaker outputs on solid multiway posts, a pair of line-level stereo RCA inputs, and a phono input with selectable gain (the portable device-friendly front-panel minijack overrides one of these). Digital inputs comprise optical, coaxial, and asynchronous USB type-b. There’s also a 12-volt trigger output, an IR input, and an RS-232 port to link the 200 Integrated with a wholehouse system using Control4, Crestron, or other protocols.
That’s a lot for a “simple” design, right? But there is one obvious 21st-century feature that the Parasound lacks: wireless streaming. There’s no Bluetooth, Airplay, or any other untethered audio capability baked in. Of course, there are countless ways, low-cost or otherwise, to get that particular jelly into the doughnut, so no big deal in my book.
SETUP AND LISTENING
The 200 Integrated seemed wellsuited, if perhaps a little over-qualified, for desktop audio, so I started out that way, with the Parasound connected via USB to my imac and driving a system comprised of excellent 4-inch two-ways speakers with a compact 8-inch subwoofer. A fixed 80 Hz low-pass crossover on the 200 Integrated’s Subs1 output made for an easy match with this setup (Subs2 is full-range). The amp also features a variable high-pass option, but I let my desktop monitors roll off naturally, which worked well.
Streaming hi-res music from
Tidal and Qobuz produced the anticipated result: clean, defined, highly dynamic sound with plenty of punch. The 200 Integrated’s 110 watts per channel was something of an overkill for small two-ways at a 20-inch listening distance, but the effortless dynamics I heard confirmed my long-maintained belief that more power is always better than less power.
Headphone listening is of increasing importance to buffs these days—witness the proliferation of audiophileaimed “cans” at every price level. I tried the Parasound’s headphone output with three different models covering a range of impedances with good results. The 200 Integrated had enough output to drive even the least sensitive pair—a planarmagnetic Hifiman set—to full concert levels without any sign of strain and with consistently excellent audio quality, but perhaps a very slim reduction in dynamic thrills. Nonetheless, I’d rate its personal-listening powers as very fine, even on one of the most demanding headphone recordings I’ve encountered: the San Francisco Symphony’s binaural (Atmos) 24-bit/192khz file of The Ice Field by American/canadian composer Henry Brant (downsampled by my playback software to 96khz for compatibility with the Parasound’s Class1 USB input). Not only is this a mind-stretching work of spatial and tonal antiphony, it’s among the finest binaural recordings I’ve heard. (If you love the headphone experience, download it: https://www.sfsymphony. org/brant.) Henry was my undergraduate composition teacher, a relentless champion of musical innovation, an adversary of rote composing forms and habits, and a wonderfully idiosyncratic mentor. The Ice Field was the last large-scale work he composed before his death at 94, in 2008.
With little doubt remaining that the 200 Integrated was sonically legit, I moved it over to my big system and tasked it with driving my aged-but-excellent Energy Veritas 2.2i, a compact, three-way standmount design from the Canadian brand’s long-ago, pre-klipsch days. This speaker’s low sensitivity but amiably stable impedance makes it a fair test for a wide range of amplifiers
(one big reason I keep them around): power-hungry, but not so unrealistically currentsucking as to rule out real-world listeners whose values prohibit dedicated 20-amp circuits, Cnc-milled amplifier stands, or inch-cross-section cabling.
What I heard was what I expected: the 200 Integrated had plenty of grunt to move the Veritas 2.2i to realistic levels on either full-orchestra or rock material. A challenging recording like the pre-12-tone Schoenberg’s massively post-romantic, Mahler-on-acid Pelléas et Mélisande (24/96 FLAC, Qobuz), played by the Berlin Philharmonic with Karajan at the helm, managed to both unpick the impossibly dense strands and reproduce the relentlessly repeating climaxes without congestion and with goosebumps-inducing dynamics. After that, a boogie classic like Willie Dixon’s “Mellow Down Easy” played by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (24/96, Qobuz) was no challenge even at band-room volume: the sound was propulsive and intense, yet clean and punchy, and clearly retaining the record’s homespun room sound despite the primitive split-stereo mix.
Not having drunk the vinyl revival Kool-aid, I don’t spin a lot of LPS. Even so, my hoary but healthy Rega/ortofon (movingmagnet) setup sounded just fine when connected to the
200 Integrated’s phono input (I did not have a moving-coil cartridge on hand to try its MC option). Noise was virtually nonexistent, and a borrowed copy of the latest remaster of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band renewed enough fascination from this shaving-mirrorfamiliar, yet new-sounding music to encourage some very close listening.
ERGONOMICS
I diligently scanned the gamut of the 200 Integrated’s key features. Unlike a lot of competing integrated amps, Parasound gives you a real, full-sized remote control—and it’s backlighted! It’s also fullfeatured, with control buttons for tone, balance, subwoofer level, and direct-access input selection. Kudos to the company for going the extra mile here. The larger of the two knobs on the 200 Integrated’s front panel is fixed to volume, while the smaller one, which normally rotates through the amp’s seven inputs, cycles with a push through bass, treble, and balance adjustments.
Other convenience features on the 200 Integrated allow users to memorize a specific volume level for turn-on, and set a different, discrete one that’s recalled by the remote’s Vol Mem key. Input volume offsets can also be managed ±8 db, so that a “loud” source can be reined in, or the opposite. Input labels follow the expected “Input 1/2/3/Aux,” but these can be assigned any of 28 provided names such as BLU-RAY, LAPTOP, SONOS, VIDEO, and so on.
CONCLUSION
Simple, utilitarian, unfancy— these may sound like lefthanded compliments, but in my lexicon they are the highest praise. (Anyway, “left-handed” is the ultimate encomium to us sinistrals.) Parasound’s 200 Integrated is not just all of these but also audiophile and adaptable enough to get all the music out of your music, and all the functionality out of your system.