Parasound vs Rotel Amps

Well coming to this party LATE...

Parasound versus Rotel? I own, compared, and still use some vintage stuff. Namely Rotel 900 series - 980BX & 981 compared them to Parasound’s HCA-1000/1000 collectively tri-amping towers. 

The P’sound were great for driving unmodified Polk RTi A series speakers as their mid & top are a bit forward & bright. 

My RTi A series are bi & tri amped - yes no passive filtering save for Clarity DC blocking caps on the tweeters.  To me the P’sound sounded “flat” & the top rolled off. During one energetic listening session, I saw the P 1000 “Overload” LED flash driving 4 ohm tweeters. 

Rotels make the speakers disappear. They idle & run cooler and even during very  demanding program material I’ve thrown at them, they don’t seem to break a sweat. 
My $0.02. Thanks. Tony

I think the older 900 series gear was very musical with a slight grain but not enough to detract. The 10 series seems to follow the trend of much gear of  detail and more  detail which leads to a thin lean sound.  Parasound is also good  but  I would not say one is better then the other  Just different
  I see the word technology thrown around a lot  I worked in the audio bizz back in the day and it seems   amp technology has not changed much since 1980 other then Class D.  Things are made cheaper and you do get better sound for less money it seems.  Things keep recycling.  Tubes are in  tubes are out  MOS FETs are in MOS FETS are out  (usually at the same time).  The only way to know for sure what you like is to bring them in and compare. 

Geph0007: more truth to those words than some would admit😊

geph0007"I think the older 900 series gear was very musical"
I think it is so funny when people say the sound was musical it is like having a fine meal and saying it was food and spice like in flavor. very funny!

I do not think it is that hard  To many sit around audiophile style with there hand in the chin listening to the gear NOT the music..
The brochure for the legendary  New Advent Speaker 1978 ( which still sounds better then a number of speakers out there today) they close with this( modified slightly )
note just how quickly you tend to cease listening to the speaker/electronics r itself and begin to listen to the music.

I found despite the Rotel 990 and 995 ( owned 2000 to 2006) slight grain and just slightly lean sound when drinking cocktails on Saturday getting ready to go out it was a rocking time   I replaced it with a Bel Canto EVO  II gen 2.  Lots of WOW factor  It took me 3 years to figure out why I was not getting into it   Turns out others had the same issue  It had no soul . That is the difference between musical and un musical for me. .
NAD 3020 ,musical. Exposure 2010S and S2 ,musical . A lot of older vintage gear despite its flaws, musical  Things are detail driven now  I do not hear the guys nose hair moving when he is standing in front of me with guitar.   I do not want to hear it through my system.  A well known speaker maker said to me about 10 years ago "There is more crap coming out of peoples speakers then you ever hear at alive performance" I was not sure I got it at that time but I get it now.Your mileage may vary