A value pitch, a retail background and a Taiwan partner.

Parasound began in San Francisco in 1981. Its founder was Richard Schram, according to a company press release published by The Absolute Sound in February 2023, and he was still the company’s president when Parasound announced its Halo JC 1+ amplifier in January 2020. A 2019 version of the company’s website said Parasound was founded “not just on engineering expertise, but also 15 years of experience in retail audio.”

The pitch has always been value. The 2019 site promised “the most performance for the money,” and the current one says the company set out to show that “audiophile performance did not have to mean audiophile pricing.” The trading company was Parasound Products, Inc., the name on its website in 2005 and 2019 and in its 2020 press release, which also called it “a privately-owned U.S. company.”

For most of its history it was a San Francisco firm. Its 2019 website said its entire support team worked at the San Francisco headquarters, and its press releases as late as February 2023 carried a San Francisco dateline.

From the start, Parasound’s products were designed in California and built abroad. Its own boilerplate in the 2020 release said its quality standards were assured by “close relationships with their Taiwan manufacturers that date back to 1982” — a year after the company was founded. The current website says its reference line is “Designed in America,” not made there, and in the pages we checked we found no statement that manufacturing has moved.

John Curl and the Halo line.

The name most associated with Parasound is John Curl. The company says he has designed its amplifiers since 1989, and that the “JC” prefix on its top models is a dedication to him. Curl’s reputation predates Parasound: The Absolute Sound’s Jonathan Valin credited him with putting transistors “on a competitive footing with tubes in the mid-1970s” with the ML-1 and ML-2 amplifiers and JC-1 and JC-2 preamplifiers he designed for Mark Levinson Audio Systems. Parasound’s biography of him adds mixing consoles for the Grateful Dead and tape research at Ampex.

The line that carries his circuits is Halo, launched in 2003, according to the company’s 2006 website. Its first flagship, the Halo JC 1 monoblock, was “an immediate success” in early 2003, Schram said in 2020, when Parasound replaced it with the JC 1+: a 450-watt monoblock that runs in pure Class A up to 25 watts and sold for $8,495 each in the US. Valin described the less expensive Halo A 21 stereo amplifier as “still very much a Curl design,” with a J-FET input stage, a MOSFET driver stage and a bipolar output stage. Today the reference line includes the JC 5 stereo amplifier, the A23+ and the JC 3+ phono preamplifier, the company says.

Below Halo sit other families. NewClassic was “unveiled in 2005 as the replacement to our traditional product line,” the 2006 website said; the current site says it carries Parasound’s design standards but not the dedicated JC circuitry. Zcustom — “Z because they are often used for multiple zones” — makes compact amplifiers for custom installation, and Zonemaster amplifiers are sold for whole-home and outdoor audio. In the mid-2000s Parasound also sold C-series in-wall and ceiling speakers.

The company quotes its reviews generously. In February 2025 it reported that the Halo A21+ had been named best stereo power amplifier in the Best of 2024 awards of SECRETS of Home Theater and High-Fidelity. It also says its products have appeared in Stereophile’s Class A recommendations for 15 consecutive years, which we have not checked year by year.

American hi-fi and documentation.

Beside the names that defined American high-end audio sits a second tier of smaller companies, most started by one designer or one family. Where they differ most is ownership.

Some are still led by their founders. Bel Canto Design says John Stronczer founded it in Minneapolis in 1991 and that its products are built there. Zu Audio, founded by Sean Casey, says its products are made in Ogden, Utah. Dan D’Agostino co-founded Krell in 1980 with Rondi D’Agostino, English Wikipedia says, and left it in 2009; his own company says it was founded in 2011 and builds by hand at Cave Creek, Arizona.

Others are family businesses. VTL traces itself to David Manley’s amplifiers of the early 1980s; in 1993 father and son parted, Luke Manley kept VTL, and it says all its products are made in Chino, California. Von Schweikert dates itself to 1975; its founder, Albert Von Schweikert, died in 2020, and his son Damon is listed as co-founder and CEO, with cabinets made in California, the company says.

Two have changed hands. Parasound, founded in San Francisco in 1981 by Richard Schram, was sold to David Sheriff in December 2022, the company says; its website now gives Las Vegas as its location. GoldenEar, launched by Sandy Gross in 2010, was sold by The Quest Group to PML Sound International, joining Paradigm, Anthem and MartinLogan from January 2025, GoldenEar announced.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A founder’s sale and a new address.

Ownership changed in December 2022, when Schram sold Parasound to David Sheriff, according to the company’s February 2023 release, which added that Parasound “remains a privately-owned U.S. company.” The company describes Sheriff as a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and a former A-10 pilot who spent thirty years working with American manufacturers on supply chains and distribution. His first major hire, in February 2023, was Darren Myers as vice president of research and development; Myers had been senior analog design engineer at PS Audio and earlier worked for Classé Audio and Bowers & Wilkins, the release said. Sheriff said then that Curl had “more great ideas for new products and product upgrades than he had time to fulfill.”

The address has since changed. Parasound’s website now gives Las Vegas, Nevada, and its support pages say warranty work is done in California or Nevada; we did not find when the move took place. Under Sheriff the website has become a shop as much as a catalogue, with a programme for buying used Parasound equipment and downloadable “education packs” for older models.

For a design guide, Parasound shows how a brand built on value can borrow prestige from one designer’s name without abandoning its price logic. Compare Mark Levinson, where Curl’s JC-2 began, and PS Audio, where Parasound found its new head of research. For this guide we use black, brushed silver and a signal blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Parasound’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.