Switch from Parasound JC-1 to Bel Canto Ref 1000?

Pricing out of reach? A great deal has changed and it's changing rapidly.

One of the best sounding switching amplifiers, the Hypex nCore 400 sells for less than $1200 a pair in a simple to assemble kit form.

The switching module and the power supply are in house Hypex manufactured. Or you can spend 10K for the assembled and more powerful Mola-Mola in nice casework.

The affordable Channel Island line is using the Hypex uCd modules as is Rouge in their hybrid. Higher end Devialet and MBL are selling their own in house switching designs. Many of the older marks such as Rowland, PS Audio, NuForce, Spectron, and others have been steadily upgrading.

The very large Harmon/Levinson mono's are a whopping $53k but their build looks very expensive.

At this point the ICE modules being used are extremely modified. The off the shelf products have been surpassed in quality some time ago.

That's a wide spectrum of quit new class D designs with one of the best sounding examples at a very affordable price.

Two products aren't a market. I listened to the Devialet unit and it was indeed very open and precise, but with a restricted sound stage. When the music opens up, it didn't. The MOON A/B unit was tremendously more dynamic and thus, much more musical, not to mention much richer in texture.

A/B amps have been around since 1967, almost 45 years, and are still improving. I really haven't seen class D get where it needs to be in the last two years. Better, yes.

I think that they can match the needs of low to mid full-range applications in performance most successfully but are still not as consistent as a high-end analog power supply at getting clean Vcc DC voltage to the AC signal path. Restricted to low frequencies in matched systems (powered subs) where they work best is a good audio nich.

My biggest complaint is the poorly market indexed pricing. Again, one or two products isn't the market, and one's that are pretty esoteric at that. The average Joe or Jane won't even register that the Hypex nCore 400 kit even exists.

Clear winners in sound? No, everyone will determine the sound that they enjoy. There will never be a winner there. I don't like the Plinius SA-103 at all for instance, but it is a good amp for a lot of people. So SOUND is NOT my point, base material cost / pass through mark-up is. Most class D amplifiers exist to substantially pad the pockets of the manufacturer's and dealers. Especially now, realistic pricing is needed to pull people into the hobby.

The plethora of class D amps is changing as manufacturers try to ride the excessive mark-up wave much more than true design improvements. Adding a few caps here or there to a D-class power supply (maybe $300.00 in parts at best) and pricing a unit at $2,000.00 is close to the 5X parts to sell ratio. $8,000.00 for a Bel Canto REF1000M II series is suspect.

Be careful out there.

Do listen to NCore if you have a chance...

You are correct, though. $1800 for the NC400 pair and $9000+ for the OEM-only NC1200 version is too bad. I would like to know what Hypex is charging OEMs for the NC1200 module.

To Rower, The Ref1000 m is NOT 8k per pair. They list at 6k. I bought a new pair for close to half that. Have you heard them? They sound really good. They aren't perfect but they do a lot right for the money. Your posts make you sound like a real blowhard. And you certainly don't have your facts right which doesn't make your argument any stronger.

I see this discussion has new life. I never did get the bel cantos. What I did do was buy an Innersound ref 500 amp for a great deal. It's a cool running class A/B amp that gives 500 watts into 8 ohms in a single chassis that idles cool. Exactly what I wanted so I can leave the stereo on all the time. I even bought the matching Innersound ref preamp. I spent a good deal of time comparing these to the parasound jc1s and the Ayre k1x. I had these all on hand for a few months so I really got to live with them before deciding what I liked best. I ended up keeping the full Innersound rig and selling the jc1s and k1x. The Innersound amp had a little quicker attack and punch the jc1s were a little rounded sounding still good I could live with either but the Innersound amp doesn't heat the whole room so that is important and really I like the sound of the Innersound amp better with the dynaudio C4s though the JC1s are certainly not bad. The preamp I clearly like the Innersound ref better than the Ayre k1x. Granted the price on the Innersound gear was very high when originally sold (25k for the set) I paid less than what I sold the other combo for so it was a good deal and I got what I was looking for. After hearing how good a cool running high powered solid state amp can sound I don't think the marginal improvements to big hot mono blocks will sway me. I've owned a bunch of amps VTL 450 BAT 150 SE Ayre v5xe pass labs simaudio so I've had a fair share of experience.