![]() ![]() "The fact that it replaces up to four separates is more than just space saving, it’s smart in our economic climate, for me anyway." "It performs exceptionally well, quiet for a preamp, a low noise floor, balanced input/output, digital processing and bass management," notes Piero Gabucci, in his Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity review for July 21, 2014. Very well made and complete for the price. Heartily recommended," reports Art Dudley in his Apreview for Stereophile. "This is about as fine a $1095 preamp as I can imagine in 2014. Considering the superb audio performance of the P 3, that makes the new P 5 extremely special. How good does the P 5 sound? “It’s audibly superior to the P 3 in every respect,” observes Richard. It does so much, founder and president of Parasound, Richard Schram, calls it “the Swiss Army Knife of stereo preamps.” Among its many advantages over the P 5 are a high-quality DAC with coaxial, optical, and USB inputs, subwoofer outputs with analog bass management, Parasound’s most advanced home theater bypass to date, a phono stage with moving-coil capabilities, and a precision, motorized volume control. Parasound’s Halo P 5 replaces the popular and long-lived Halo P 3 stereo preamplifier. The P5 does sound cleaner and more defined.Looks brand new. Sometimes I do switch in a tube preamp, if I'm in the mood for a bit of tube goodness. Streaming 320K Rhapsody through the Sonos sounds better than I expected it to. Love finally having a remote volume and input control. I run a CD player into it, a Parasound D/AC-2000HD, my PC, and I run a Sonos Connect's Toslink into the P5's DAC. Their crossovers have been customized to level resistance and output across frequencies. My Von Schweikerts can't be used with external active crossovers, as their internal crossovers can't be bypassed without totally ruining the sound. Then that runs into a 20 wpc triode tube amp, which drives the mid/tweeter modules. The other outputs go into a Parasound equalizer which I use to roll off bass frequencies and to tweak the volume a bit to match the volume level across the 200Hz crossover point. I run one set of outputs into a 250 wpc solidstate amp driving my bass modules. I have Von Schweikert tower speakers which have a bass module and a mid/tweeter module on each side. The P5 has RCA outputs and Balanced outputs. I'm using my P5 in a somewhat unusual way. I've searched on my own and the P5 seems to be the best fit for me but I'm open to other suggestions as well.Īlso, does anybody have any impressions of the P5 for better or worse? My price range is up to a maximum of about $1200. I want a new pre-amp and a remote for at least volume and source selection. My system is a stereo only set-up with subs to augment the bottom end. There are even a couple easy mods with shielding that seem to reap improvements. It gets pretty good reviews and seems to be built well. I like that the Parasound is a 2.1 channel unit that has sub outputs and a remote control. Plus the frequent cleaning and lubing of controls has become tiresome. I like both of my pre-amps and all the controls with great adjustability but now that I have the MiniDSP those controls are redundant and unnecessary. I use my MiniDSP to control volume and as the active crossover that it is, to route the signals to the amps. In both cases, the preamps are only used as a means to connect and select my sources. I'm currently using a Rotel RA-1312 integrated amp as a pre-amp or my Heathkit AP1800. I'm wanting to get a new pre-amp and so far the Parasound P5 is looking pretty good. ![]()
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