Parasound, McCormick, Odyssey - best under $1000

Mccormack

But the best bang for the buck is cj Sonographe sa 250

Hey Wade,
I cant comment on Parasound or Mccormack, but the Odyssey line is pretty impressive at its price point. I have a Stratos with the upgraded caps, and having owned Threshold, Pass Labs and currently Plinius, this amp doesnt run far behind all the big boys.

Mccormack DNA 1, DNA 125, DNA 0.5 Rev B
In reference to the opening question,IMHO you can not do any better.

I own Stratos monos and, while I haven't compared them to McCormack or Parasound, I have A/B'd them with my Krell KSA 50s (mostly using the Verity Parsifal Encore). The KSA 50 and KSA 50s (sliding bias) are lowish power devices employing a single pair of output transistors, and are sometimes cited as the best sounding amps Krell has ever produced.

The Stratos is a higher powered amp than the Krell, but both can drive the Parsifal to painful SPLs before showing stress. My real comparative experience is at more modest SPLs, where I've found that the Odyssey and Krell sound awfully similar and, to my ears, superior to most SS amps I've heard. In the context of my system, the Stratos are very, very good amplifiers.

Marty