 I picked up this amp for review last week and have been listening to it pretty much non-stop for the last 3 days or so.
After spending many hours down in my music room, I came upstairs and my wife asked me "how's the new amp?". My reply was "there's something wrong with this amp". After her seeing me being disappointed or underwhelmed with more than a few items, her response was "oh no.....". Then I laughed and said "yeah, there's no way a 650 dollar amp can sound THIS good".
The Jungson is what they call an "affordable audiophile" amplifier, selling new for between 650 and 800 bucks. Part of cheap price of admission is undoubtedly attributed to the fact that it is manufactured in China. Don't let the Chi-fi label cause you much concern, though. This is an exceptionally well built piece of audio gear. It is rather light for an intergrated (around 22 lbs), but has a nice solid chassis, and a thick milled, metal faceplate. The dual purpose volume and source selector control has a nice feel to it. As far as connections go, the back panel has 4 RCA inputs, and two RCA pre-amp outputs. Interestingly, the output connections seem to be of better quality than the RCA inputs. The amp also has one set of XLR inputs as well. Pretty rare at this price point.
Now to the important part - how does this amp sound? I have to say, for an amp at this price point, it sounds spectacular. The biggest strength of this amp is it's imaging. It simply images like crazy. My speakers weren't even in the room any more. It also has a nice, easy going, almost tube quality to it. I wouldn't call it rolled off on the top end, but it's certainly an amp that I could spend many hours listening to.
As a point of reference, the amp I've been listening to for the past few months before the JA-88E is the Cambridge Audio 840A. Costing less than half of the 840A, the Jungson certainly was not a disappointment. In fact, in a lot of ways, it held it's own. The 840A had a lot more air in the top end (cymbal splashes especially seem to decay endlessly with the 840A), but the JA-88A actually seemed to image better. Not just a bit, but a lot.
This amp rates a solid A on the scale, and not just as "this price". Even at 1K I think this amp would be bargain. The only reason I wouldn't give it an A+ is that the digital volume does not have granular enough steps when adjusting volume. Listening at night with the kids in bed, the volume at 7 was just a little too quiet, and volume at 8 was just a bit too loud. Other than that, I had no complaints at all.
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