Parasound JC-1 and B&W 803d

Having owned the JC-1's and a few other solid state amps, I'll chime in here. I second Braro's view that JC-1's can be bright, they were in my system. I use Avalon Eidolons, and quite frankly I was dissapointed with the JC-1's. I have recently been using the Gilmore Raptor, which is a new Class D mono block amp made by Mark Gilmore. I have found this amp to be far superior to the JC-1s in my system. The Ratpor has plenty of power, 250 watts into 8 ohms per channel. These amps blow the JC-1's away, period. The Raptor overall sound fabulous, and especially excel at soundstaging, with just fabulous width and depth, like the musicians are in my living room! Tonally, the Raptor are also outstanding, with the instruments and music sounding so real. The Raptor have a great high end, in fact I marvel at how clear the highs come through on them, without any grain or glare. Also, you'll get great bass slam with these amps. Basically, they are very well balanced across the frequency specturm. I always found I was getting a lot of grain and glare to the sound with the JC-1's, which meant listening fatigue. I don't get that on the Raptor, which is great. This amp is also very musical, and fun to listen to, I do not ever feel like I am missing anything when listening with them. On balance, the Raptor are by far the best solid state amp I have ever owned, and they offer great value for the $$$. They retail for about $5000. Do a search on Google for Gilmore Raptor, and you'll find them. I encourage you to check them out. I am just very pleased with these amps.

I find it disturbing to read comments saying the JC-1s are bright and, now have grain and glare. These amps don't have a bright bone in their body, and they don't have glare or grain. No. No. It seems there is always some new amp that is touted as the latest darling.

I'm very sensitive to hearing flaws and characteristics of products. If the JC-1s had the flaws claimed, I'd be the first to have named them. One of their fine points is that you can play them very loud without getting the glare and brightness that is common to many amps. They are highly listenable at loud volumes. A bright or grainy amp wouldn't sound good loud. My experience, and that of other audiophiles I speak to, is that Class D amps have an unnatural, incoherent sound. I can't speak of the Raptor, but I certainly can speak of the JC-1, and, I repeat, it is not bright.

I have heard some earlier Class D amps that I found unnatural and incoherent, and I heard those on the Avalon Eidolons speakers as well. However, I do not hear any of that with the Raptors, they sound very natural and coherent to my ears. I think the implementation of Class D has improved over time. You will note that you are seeing more and more favorable reviews of Class D amps in the audio press.

I own N803, which are considered to be brighter than the D series. I use McCormack DNA-125 with Audio Research tube pre with all Acoustic Zen cables. The system is very smooth, not bright at all. DNA-500 should even be better.

Will have to side with Kevziek on the issue of JC 1s being bright.Before purchasing them I had lived with SET amps for 8 years and before that PP tube amps for 10.I was therefore pretty much biased against SS amps.
Now mind you I'm not saying that jc 1s sound like tube amps,but they definitely don't sound at all like most of the other powerful expensive big name SS amps.IMO they sound pretty neutral.Neither bright,nor glary and not grainy for sure.These problems other posters are reporting
may be due to the amps not getting enough juice from socket,associated equipment or possibly the issue of the long break-in period(60 days playing music 24/7).
As for synergy with BW can't say.But don't do yourself a disservice into believing everthing that is said here,by doing so you may be missing out on some awesome amplifiers.Also check out the PASS X.5 and XA series.A bit sweeter than JC 1s.