Save yourself $1000 and just get an Anthem MCA amp. Top notch quality, reliability and a great company to deal with. I have to MCA amps going on 15-20 yrs old, both still work flawlessly.
I have had various Parasound equipment (decent in the past,, not so much these days), always seems to be something goes wrong. Company support used to be good, now not so much. They are good at saying there is no issue with a product, even though other people report the same issues. I would not trust their repair department one bit. I'll quit talking about Parasound because it probably sounds like i'm bashing them, i don't mean to. I just have zero faith in the company and products as of lately.
Just save yourself any headaches and money, go with Anthem. There are many fine amplifiers out in the market today. When i factor in quality, cost, reliability, customer service etc, Hands down Anthem gets my vote.
Unfortunately, these kinds of generalizations on the forums do more harm than good. It becomes more like Seagate vs WD debates depending on the last anecdotal experience of the individual for specific models.
I do rely on online forums to judge the vendor and equipment from user feedback and problem reports. With that you get to learn to filter out noise and individual gripes that could be anecdotal. Over a period of time, those do get normalized to what is likely to be the case. You learn to triangulate from multiple sources including this forum opinions and measurements.
You can say they are not as good as they used to be for almost any company. You buy one thing that lasts for a long time and because of that you buy a different one and it doesn't last as long and there you go.
One thing that has remained constant is praise for durability and Parasound customer service especially for currently selling equipment. One problem companies like Parasound with equipment that lasts for decades is the availability of service and parts. Like good cars. They also run into problems when out of necessity, they are forced to bring out different-tier equipment to meet lower price points. They also do well in some types of equipment and not others.
Discussions like this one are typical:
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/parasound-service-problems
But the OP of the Audiogon thread could very well paraphrase his anecdotal experience to Parasound sucks. But would that be valid?
I would say the quality and build of their Halo amps are the one of the best you can have for long term durability and service. You can nitpick on their design philosophy or the way they write their specs but not the quality. Analog pre-amps have also been decent but not without some issues. Things get a little murkier in their more complicated equipment like the Halo Integrated but as far as I know there are no endemic problems and service takes care of it.
In terms of accessibility, they are active and respond reasonably. The one time I corresponded with their team, the CEO Richard Schram himself took over the conversation and went to great pains to explain their design/build philosophy and rationale for what they had. So, they still have the boutique company flavor. I think they only produce in lots of hundreds or a thousand or so for the size of their market.
I would say some of the same things apply to Anthem as well. They have gone through their up and downs. There is a loyal following for their amps. The customer service, however good they might be can get overwhelmed by poorly released product like what has been happening with the AVP 70.
I have heard good things about Anthem in the past and poor things about them in the recent history.
So, I would say the two are really like Seagate vs WD in hard-drives. You get very reliable stuff for most, you get some bad anecdotal evidence. You get some "bad apple" models once in a while when they try something new, etc.
The difference between them is really the difference in their design and build philosophy as well as their pricing. Anthem would be more favorable in Canada and Parasound would be more favorable in the US for comparable equipment. Have always felt Anthem was bit overpriced for what they had.
People in HT (which includes Anthem Pre/Pro fans) are equally happy with the Monolith amps for multi-channel.
Bottom line: It is probably better to go with evaluations and feedback on specific models of any company than be brand loyal to any one. Reliability and service issues get factored into those discussions. Just like Seagate and WD.
