Parasound, who's made their reputation on Bang-for-the-Buck audio and hometheater gear, releases their latest, the NewClassic 5250v2. Should it score a place in your home theater?
The Parasound NewClassic Model 5250 v.2 is a redesigned version of their 6 year old New Classic line flagship power amp. With a robust 250 watts per channel, you’d think it would be more than enough for just about any home theater.
I’m definitely one who subscribes to the “too much is never enough” when it comes to amplifier power.
It’s tough to explain the philosophy to the uninitiated, who’ve heard their cousin Frank’s OEM car stereo in his ’78 Buick get so loud it makes their ears bleed. Good, clean watts are like money though; used correctly for good, there is almost never a time when you can have too much. It brings things to life like almost nothing else can.
So, while your receiver may strut around with 120 watts per channel, doubling that to 250 (I know the math’s not exact) from a high quality separate amp will give you much more than the extra 3db the added power would suggest. For one thing, all power is not created equal, and I’m sorry to be stealing that line from whoever said it originally, but they were right on the money. One thing that most middle of the road receivers can’t do with anywhere near the alacrity of a good, separate amp is deliver current, and the other is deal with the reactive load presented by many speakers.
Back in Japan, where most of the mass market receivers are designed and tested (built in China, most of them are), and anywhere else for that matter, the amplifier section of a receiver undergoes a trial to determine just how many of those all too precious watts they can produce. Do they test them into an actual speaker, like you’ll be using when you lug it home from Best Buy? Not exactly.
Power amps are tested using a large, 8ohm resistor. That’s all well and good, but from the amplifer’s perspective, that resistor is a poor substitute for the actual voice coil / magnet assembly that’s typically found shoving a real speaker’s cone back and forth. The power from the amplifier passes through the speaker’s voice coil, which, as the name suggests is nothing but a large coil of wire wrapped around a hollow tube. This wire coil hides inside a magnet. An alternating current passing through a coil creates a magnetic force, which pushes against the magnetic field of the speaker’s magnet assembly.
Enough for the physics lesson, already.
What does this whole thing have to do with an amplifier, anyway? The speaker assembly’s motion wreaks havoc with many a connected amplifier, due to the fact that not only does the audio signal cause the speaker to move, the residual motion also causes an AC current to be generated by the moving speaker’s voice coil & magnet. Amps hate this kind of stuff, and the ones used in most receivers just aren’t robust enough to deal with it very well. They repay you for the hell you put them through by delivering sound that’s just not what it could be.
Enter a real power amp, the kind you buy by itself, not wrapped in a metal box along with a preamp, surround processor, audio analyzer, network interface, and a tuner. Whether you have a receiver or a separates stack, when the preamp/processor and amplifier are in separate enclosures, the fact remains that your system will need an amp.
If you can, you’ll get much better sound by either going with separates from the start, or adding a separate amp to the preamp outputs of your receiver, if it’s so equipped. While a pure separates solution is typically a better way to go for many reasons, except economic, you can get much of the benefit you’d get from true separates by simply giving your receiver’s built in amps the gift of early retirement.
Off loading the task of driving your speakers to good, external power amp will give your better dynamics, which is the holy grail of many a guy’s home theater.
After all, dynamics make the world go round, especially when it’s spun by a few dozen explosions and some gunshots. Everything will sound so much more real, especially if you’re using a set of high quality speakers. You’ll find yourself drawn much more into the movie, and you’ll just plain hear things you’ve never heard before, in addition to the fact that everything will be so much, well, bigger. Yeah, it IS better.
How does Parasound’s new 5-channel wonder child enter into the picture? Simple, you can add it to your system by simply connecting it to the preamp output jacks on the back of your receiver with some high quality RCA cables. You now have a quasi-separates system, with the actual task of driving the speaker now handled by the Parasound, instead of the receiver’s built in amps.
If you’re building your system from the ground up as a separates system, just pick one of these babies up and be done with it. Why? Well, I’ll cop to being a long time Parasound owner. They are a great bang for your sound quality buck, not a bad thing in this day and age. I’m using a double decade old Parasound HCA-260 in my home theater system even now. It’s served all those 20 years admirably, sometimes under less than ideal conditions, such as when I used it in bridged mode to run my subwoofer for about 10 years. Now it handles my center channel.
How is the NewClassic Model 5250 v.2 different from the original?
Parasound says there are more than 60 improvements to the design. It’s still THX Ultra 2 Certified, five-channel, and 250-watts per channel as before, but now they’ve gone and thrown in adjustable gain controls, so if you are adding it to your receiver, instead of using it with a pre/pro, you can dial it in for a perfect level match.
How do you do that? Put on some of your favorite music, preferably something with limited dynamic range, like rock. If you can find some without tons of built in distortion, so much the better. Turn your receiver up to about 85% (with no speakers connected to the receiver’s speaker terminals, only the Parasound’s), or until it’s preamp section begins to distort. Back it off about 5% or so. Then, turn the Parasound’s level controls up until you start to hear distortion, or you get to the loudest level you’d ever really listen to. When you get there, your amps gain controls are set.
That lets you run your amps gain controls at the lowest possible levels, while still letting you reach the loudest volume you want. Setting it up this way maximizes your system’s signal to noise ratio, by keeping the amp’s gain controls low, so they don’t amplify any residual noise as much. The technique works for all manner of amps with adjustable gains, not just the Parasound.
Okay, so what else did they change on the new guy? Well, the NewClassic 5250 v.2 has a new simplified and more effective audio turn-on trigger that eliminates the need for a separate sensitivity control. In addition, they’ve redone the internal grounding topography, resulting in increased noise immunity without the need for a ground lift switch.
It looks better too, thanks to a redesigned front panel. Unlike many mid priced separates, and nearly all receivers, which use standard power transformers, the HCA5250v2 uses toroidal power transformers for lower radiated noise, and because two is better than one, it doubles them up. Actually, it’s because there is one for each channel, which is a very nice design feature that pays real performance and packaging dividends.
There are plenty of reasons for eschewing the mega buck receiver, and going either pure separates or a lower priced receiver and accompanying power amp instead. Parasound’s president Richard Schramm put it this way:
“A high quality and powerful amplifier will never really become obsolete. Rather than spend $2,500 to $5,000 for a high power surround receiver every time technology changes, why not spend $800-$1200 for a lower powered surround receiver which has the same decoding and most of the same useful features, while connecting its preamp outputs to a 5250 v.2 to give the system a significant increase in audio power?”
He’s right on the money. I’ve never understood the $4,000 to $6,000 receiver market, when you could pick up so many good separates stacks for the same money, and enjoy many advantages. If space isn’t a concern, Megabuck receivers should stay on the dealer’s shelves, while a separates stack should adorn yours. The Parasound NewClassic Model 5250 v.2 has an MSRP of $2,850, near bottom dollar for an 5-channel amp with this power output, performance level, and feature set. Enjoy!
