Parasound Zamp V.3 Amplifier Review

[amirm]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Parasound Zamp V.3 stereo power amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member. The version I have is a revision or two older than what Parasound builds (I think). The latest version is being sold on Amazon for US $277 including Prime shipping. Considering this is a brand name company and we have a class AB amplifier, this seems like a reasonable price.

The Zamp V.3 comes in a tiny and rather cute, half-rack package:

In addition to power button, you also have a headphone jack. From the bit I have read, the output is just the amplifier with a resistor inline. This means its output impedance is high (not good) and likely noisy as well. I did not test it.

The back panel exposes good bit of control not seen on "normal" hifi amplifiers:

Parasound has a leg in two industries: the Custom Integration (CI) channel and hifi. The former is for companies who install these amplifiers in hide-away places to for example power a couple of speakers for a bedroom TV. The gain controls and such give flexibility to this kind of installation as does the small form factor (the amp could be hidden behind a flat panel TV. Being part of this channel means that when the automation is redone in a home using it, these units are ripped out and put on sale at low prices. I see this amp advertised for as little as $149 on ebay.

I was shocked when I read that this amp was class AB and after I looked inside and saw a heavy and large pancake toroidal transformer. How the heck did they put in inefficient class AB amp in there with no heatsinking that was visible? The answer came to me after I let the unit warm up for a little over 5 minutes at 5 watts being output from each channel. The amp went dead and displayed a thermal overload! It can't produce just 10 watts for five minutes? No, it can't. I touched the bottom of the amp and it nearly burned my hand. A narrow painted strip of metal fastened to the chassis carries the brunt of heat generated. Being on the bottom and having no fins means that the heat is not spread at all resulting in overheating. I put a cooling fan on it and it took a good 2 to 3 minutes to come back to life. And I ran the rest of the tests that way.

Amplifier Audio Measurements

Well, this ain't a pretty sight. One channel is much worse than the other. No amount of playing with the grounding, or messing with the switch in the back helped with any of the mains/power supply related tones either. The averaged ranking is below mean of all of the amps tested so far (77 amplifiers to date!):

Crosstalk was poor, matching a $25 amplifier I tested:

Frequency response is OK:

Noise performance as you can predict from the dashboard is not fantastic:

Amplifier Power Measurements
Let's get into the most important bit which is power capability starting with 4 and going into 8 ohms:

Weird how one channel goes crazy at just 1 to 2 watt. Specs are matched though.

Allowing for higher distortion of 1% doesn't help with max power but does give us more burst power:

Thermal Stability
Here is the test that resulted in the shutdown:

I was messing with grounding and caused that little blip so ignore that.

Conclusions
I really like the cute and small form factor of this amp for desktop use. Alas, with a weak thermal management, it won't produce much volume before shutting down. Used ones have probably had a hard life due to this reason as well. If you are going to play with one and want to shy away from the million switching amplifiers out there in this price range, go ahead. But I can't recommend the unit.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Drove back and forth through traffic all day to drop off tested gear and picking up new (nearly 200 miles). The struggle I go through for you all! I hope you reciprocate by emptying your pocket change by donating using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

 

[RickSanchez]

Probably good advice for people thinking about buying this unit ...

 

[bequietjk]

frequency graph is looking real close to this

 

[suttondesign]

I have been running one of these into a tertiary system for in-ceiling and bookshelf speakers for 7 years or so. Never a down day. they get good air circulation in an open area under the main stairway.
However, feeding a pair of monitor audio bronze in the bookshelf, they run out of steam quickly. It works okay as background and some FM stuff. I bought the amp as a dealer, so it didn’t cost much. Still, sad to see such poor measurements from a company that positions itself as better.

 

[direstraitsfan98]

sorry if this has been answered elsewhere, but why is the shrugging panther figurine now a amputee

 

[amirm]

sorry if this has been answered elsewhere, but why is the shrugging panther figurine now a amputee

He took a fall when I was not looking from my photo booth. He thought he could retire now but he was wrong....

 

[Ron Texas]

How ever could one channel be so far off?

 

[beefkabob]

This strikes me as more headless territory for the price.

 

[amirm]

How ever could one channel be so far off?

Could be close proximity to the transformer/power supply.

 

[jhaider]

I've been using one of these as my speaker measurement amp for as long as I've been doing speaker measurements. It has generally been reliable, but last summer during a measurement run it did get extremely hot, and I ended up blowing a fan over it to complete a CEA-2034 measurement battery. Since then I've been considering replacing it. No action taken yet. There's little else available in its form factor.

However, we also one have installed to drive a set of relatively efficient and high impedance ceiling speakers in our kitchen (Tannoy CMS803Q) and it'll run all day without complaining.

 

[Silly Valley]

This review has me scratching my panther head. I have owned and used one of these for about 5 years in a secondary system driving 4 ohm speakers. Granted, I don't drive this system to loud levels but I have never noticed overheating issues and not even overly warm. Perhaps I am only using a watt or two but these are 4 ohm 88/89db speakers. I have always thought it sounded pretty good for what it is. On couple of occasions I have run it on my main system just for grins and while doing swaps etc, and was surprised that I really had a hard time distinguishing it from the much larger Rotel amp. Here too of course, I was mindful of not expecting unreasonable volume levels. But all the things you might listen for such as imaging, tonal balance and such sounded just like the Rotel at normal levels. This system also features 4 ohm speakers although high passed and running a sub.

Many of you may be familiar with the more extensive test done by The Audio Critic years back and they gave it a pretty good review. And this test also included the difficult PowerCube test where it did well considering this amps modest power supply. I wonder if this particular test unit was a representative sample. Something just does not add up here. I don't expect top notch performance but this is perplexing. Or, I am just easy to please when it comes to amplifiers.

 

[Blumlein 88]

This review has me scratching my panther head. I have owned and used one of these for about 5 years in a secondary system driving 4 ohm speakers. Granted, I don't drive this system to loud levels but I have never noticed overheating issues and not even overly warm. Perhaps I am only using a watt or two but these are 4 ohm 88/89db speakers. I have always thought it sounded pretty good for what it is. On couple of occasions I have run it on my main system just for grins and while doing swaps etc, and was surprised that I really had a hard time distinguishing it from the much larger Rotel amp. Here too of course, I was mindful of not expecting unreasonable volume levels. But all the things you might listen for such as imaging, tonal balance and such sounded just like the Rotel at normal levels. This system also features 4 ohm speakers although high passed and running a sub.

Many of you may be familiar with the more extensive test done by The Audio Critic years back and they gave it a pretty good review. And this test also included the difficult PowerCube test where it did well considering this amps modest power supply. I wonder if this particular test unit was a representative sample. Something just does not add up here. I don't expect top notch performance but this is perplexing. Or, I am just easy to please when it comes to amplifiers.

the Audio Critic review of this.

https://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_web3.htm#pm

It does okay in the powercube test, but that test is 20 millisecond 1 khz tone bursts. Apparently you can do fine on that and fail to manage the thermal load of 10 watts constant for a few minutes. They show more channel separation than the unit Amir has. Otherwise not too dissimilar in the results.

 

[maty]

https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/parasound-zamp-v-3-two-channel-amplifier.21937/reviews

Resized, rotated and optimized

 

[maty]

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/parasound-and-burson-adventure.830082/

For giggles the Zamp V.3 went under the knife and got its JRC 072D removed for a Burson [v4] upgrade. Short work was made and a machine wrap 8 pin socket went in. The burned-in Burson went in and something new was born. The very good Parasound V.3 amp is now on a different level. I like it way more than the Zamp V1 and it’s a worthy upgrade. Music is very detailed, open and alive. Doesn’t sound clinical at all and you can easily listen to your jams for hours on end...

Resized and optimized

 

[maty]

[PDF] https://parasound.com/pdfs/Zampv3Manual.pdf

 

[beefkabob]

Maty, I don't much like your opinions on audio, but I do like your photos and specs!

 

[maty]

Parasound Z Amp v3 90W Two Channel Zone Amplifier

https://www.amazon.com/Parasound-Am...erType=all_reviews&sortBy=recent&pageNumber=1

 

[wwenze]

I'm starting to wonder how many maimed panthers are there

Is one of the transistor spoilt so it starts getting worse performance into AB biasing territory? Might actually show up as asymmetrical top vs bottom waveform if you still got the sine wave. Then again doubt my eyes can see -65dB.

Add: Yea, it happens at 2W @ 4ohms and 1W @ 8ohms = V is the same when it happens.

If that's the case I think the panther having 1 broken leg and 3 good ones is indeed a good analogy.

 

[JIW]

[PDF] https://parasound.com/pdfs/Zampv3Manual.pdf

View attachment 52811

The spec for the input sensitivity in the manual seems wrong. 0.6 V input for full output of 19.8 V output is 30.4 dB gain while the website says 1.5 V input for full output.

The voltages at specified maximum continuous power output are 15.5 V at 2x4 Ohm, 19.0 V at 2x8 Ohm and 26.8 V at 1x8 Ohm. For a 1.5 V input for the first two and a 3 V input for the last, this gives a gain of 20.3 dB at 2x4 Ohm, 22.0 dB at 2x8 Ohm and 19.0 dB at 1x8 Ohm. Thus, gain seems to be 22.0 dB (as indicated by the dashboard).

The level difference between 0.6 V and 1.5 V is 8.0 dB so that seems to make up most of the difference. Further, 19.8 V over an 8 Ohm load gives a power of 49 W. Looking at Amir's measurement that seems to be about the 0.1% THD+N point. The level difference between 49 W and 45 W is 0.4 dB and makes up the remaining difference.

Since Amir likes to measure amps at 29 dB gain when possible and the Parasound has variable attenuators in place, 30 dB gain would allow for that while 22 dB gain would not.

 

[raindance]

When you're measuring Parasound amps, you need to check bias current. They use crappy bias pots.