North American Premiere
Jungson Audio JA-99D Integrated Amplifier
Producing a very high degree of audio truth.
Review By Todd Warnke 
Click here to e-mail reviewer.

  I love integrated amplifiers. When done right, they eliminate the need for one expensive interconnect and one expensive power cord. Plus, the designer doesn't have to guess what is going to sit either in front of his amplifier section or behind his pre-amplifier section, so he can pair them exactly as he sees fit. Lastly, in the hands of someone with a sense of beauty, the ability to put both parts in a single box can lead to some visually lovely designs. Speaking of which, let's wander over here and look at the Jungson JA99D integrated amplifier.

At 15.5 inches wide, 20.5 inches deep, 10 inches tall and 103 pounds, the 99D is one large hunk of metal, but it is beautifully crafted metal. The matte black aluminum finish helps it look smaller than it actually is and helps focus attention on the front fascia where, sitting in an inset panel are two old-school analog power meters, gently waving their red hands in a blue backlight. Just below the meters sits a blue LED readout, which shows the source number (1 through 4) and the volume setting (00 through 99), while under this and on the outer frame of the fascia are five silver control buttons, the larger center button for power and the two to the left for volume (up and down) and the two to the right to turn off the display (why anyone would do this is beyond me) and for source selection. Round back and at the top, the 99D has three high quality RCA inputs, a single balanced input, and an RCA line out connection.

The bottom of the rear plate has two pairs of speaker jacks and the IEC power jack. The rest of the 99 is very well machined and designed with an eye to aesthetics as well as function. On the inside this impressive case the 99 houses a class A, 100 watt (8 Ohms, 200 watt 4 Ohms) fully balanced design, using premium parts and a massive power supply. The only minor miss in the whole package is included remote control. While very functional and well made, it is finished in brushed aluminum and so looks slightly out of place. Still, at $4500, I can easily forgive the remote and enjoy the beauty of the 99D itself. Of course, a pretty face and $5 will get you a cup of coffee in audioland, where what matters is how you sound not how you look. So, if you'll lend me your ears, let's talk about music for a bit.

The Sound Of....?
Over the review period the 99D spent time with a broad selection of gear. Speakers used ranged from Merlin TSMs and my VSMs, to Silverline Audio Panatellas and Devore Gibbon Super 8s. Sources were my Assemblage DAC-2 and a Cary CD 303-200. Wiring was from Cardas, Acoustic Zen, Audio Magic and Stereovox, while power conditioning was by Shunyata Research. But enough of this and let's get to it.

As most of you know by now, I cannot go a review without spinning some Joni Mitchell, but that's only because I have a tough time going a week without Joni. So one of the first discs that saw time with the 99D after it was setup and broke in was Court and Spark [Asylum 1001-2], and I have to say that from the very opening piano notes of the title cut I was captivated. The keyboards that open this track were perfectly precise and accurate and yet harmonically rich and inviting. But not even that goodness prepared me for when Joni started to sing as the tonality of her voice was so perfectly rendered that I about wet myself. Truth is, it took about a half dozen times listening through the song, wrapped up the sound of Joni, before I was able to turn my attention to the rest of the musicians. Good thing I eventually did as they were as equally well served by the 99D. From John Guerin's subtle cymbals to Milt Holland's chimes the top end was clear, extended and tonally complex, while Larry Carlton's guitar was fluid, rich and precise just as the bass of Max Bennett was solid, vivid and oh so present. For an introduction, there is could have been no finer way to get to me.

Taking on a less established and yet still classic album, I next turned to In Rainbows by Radiohead [tbd 0001] and Weird Fishes/Arpeggi. For reasons I'm not sure of, this song speaks to me. The opening, skittering drum line precisely marks time, even as it unsettles the near romantic washes of sound that follow. Sound, by the way, that the 99D rendered not as sterile sonic experiments, but with an uncanny balance of the truthful distortions of the recording session and the warmth of the mind behind it. Yes I know, semi-mystical mumblings masquerading as a review. But the thing is the 99D was able to take this track and neatly reveal both the sound of the recording tape, warts and all, while also giving equal time to the harmonic richness that lays open the human element.

At the start of a different listening session I dropped in disc 4 from Keith Jarrett's At the Blue Note, The Complete Sessions [ECM 1578] and clicked to track 5, I Fall in Love too Easily/The Fire Within, and prepared to walk off for a bit while Keith and his trio worked through the opening tune to get the part I like, or at least that was my plan as within thirty seconds I was sitting and listening like I never had before. Why? Without adding more mumbo-jumbo to the review, the answer is hard to pin down in its entirety but has a lot to do with the melding of two ideas – accuracy and harmonic richness.

To start with it's not that the 99D has the most accurate sound I've had in my home, as I've on rare occasion had components that sounded even more "accurate". Nor is that the 99D the most harmonically rich and dense component I've had at the Warnke Mountain Casa de Sound, though again the pieces of gear that have been richer are only one or two. Rather, it is that the 99D sits near the very top of both these sonic approaches and then weaves them seamlessly together. This combination of superb accuracy across the frequency spectrum, harmonic richness that is in every way the exact compliment of its accuracy (which is coupled to a stage that is clear, fleshed out and lively) is a very rare combination, and this engaged me as if the music was live. Perhaps, dare I say it, even better than live at times.

Ok, time for details, even if they inevitably fail to describe the whole story. Starting at the bottom, the 99D has bass extension that was flat well into the mid 30 cycle range – and where it does begin to roll off, it does so slowly. At the top the treble is that enviable combination of silky smoothness with tonal accuracy and clear definition, all while reaching out as far as my speakers can. The mids were cut from the same cloth – harmonically full, yet precise, accurate, quick and with the complete tonal palette to work with. If there is a frequency issue anywhere besides the very gentle deep bass roll off, it is that the 99D seemed to have a very subtle lift to the lower mids that gave the male voice a very slight added bite.

As for the staging, the 99D did not render things in that immense slightly over the top way that some gear does, rather it tended to the intimate side by just a tad. Personally, I find this approach wears better over time. That nit aside, images on the stage were dense, unwavering and harmonically solid, giving the stage a full-blooded, 3-D presence. As you would guess from this, inner resolution and decay into the soundstage was near perfect as well.

Problems In Paradise?
So then, what exists on the debit side of this ledger? Nearly nothing. There's that remote that could be black. As I just said, the stage could be a bit wider. Aside from that it starts to get tough to find things, but being a reviewer I kept looking and got a bit unfair in doing so. I did that by placing my full reference set in place – Blue Circle BC6 power amplifier and First Sound Presence Deluxe II pre-amplifier, a combo that is three times the price of the 99D. Yet, in a way, this comparison has some validity as the Blue Circle is a class A amp, though with only 30 watts to the 99Ds 100, but as such shares the class A sonic signature – fast, rich, clean, full. It's on the front end, where the monster, four-chassis First Sound makes things a bit unfair, but that's never stopped me before.

Fortunately, the 99D had very little to fear. My reference setup did have slightly deeper and oh so slightly better controlled bass (almost entirely from the pre-amp side of the equation), and a touch more lively top end, though perhaps just a bit less accurate as well (probably due to the tubed input stage on the Blue Circle). The stage was wider, and images just the smallest bit more stable. As for harmonic accuracy, it was a near draw with the 99D having a slightly richer mid-bass (perhaps a smidgeon too much so) and my setup being ever so better in the mids and lower treble. In short, my reference setup did better the 99D, but at well over 12k more in cost (including cables).

So here's where the comparison gets interesting – was the difference enough for me to be comfortable with the investment in my gear as opposed to the value offered by the 99D? Well, if I was giving advice to a friend with a total audio budget of under 10k, obviously I'd say get the 99D, some excellent speakers and a source and be done with it. At 20k, I'd say the same thing. Someone would need to spend well over 25k before I'd even suggest moving past the JA99D. That is, I think you'd need to have at least 20k invested in loudspeakers, sources and cabling before the 99D would become the weak link in the system. It's really that good.

Summation
It seems to me that those who embark on audio pursuits can be defined as falling into one of two camps – those who value truth over all, and those who place beauty before everything. The truthseekers are willing to tolerate (and perhaps even secretly embrace) the sonic warts in recordings as well as in their playback systems so that they can uncover those minute details, the subtle tonal contrasts and the smallest of harmonic changes that allow them to feel they have found the "reality" of the recording. While those who search for beauty push absolute perfection aside in the search for the emotional content, harmonic richness and rhythmic power that connects them with the "meaning" of the recording.

And while all audio components, at least those of recent vintage and that truly reach for audiophile status, combine both of these attributes, it is the rare piece that balances these two seeming opposites in perfect symmetry. In my audio travels I have encountered only a small handful that pull that delicate act off, but I have also found dozens that come close enough to be very valuable in assembling an audio system. For example, the Blue Circle BC6 power amplifier that has been my long term reference offers up many audio truths, just about as many as any component I've had the privilege to spend time with, but even with that skill, its emotionally expressive side is just so overwhelmingly perfect that it slides slightly out of balance. But couple it with the unfailingly neutral First Sound Reference preamplifier that has been a long term reference and you have a combination that is balanced exactly. This balance is exactly what the $4500 Jungson JA99D pulls off as well, but in one box and at very slightly lower level (and at a third of the cost). First, it extracts a very high degree of audio truth out a recording and then pairs it to an exactly equal amount of musical truth and delivers a perfectly balanced, incredibly captivating result. It's a shame it has to leave.

Specifications
Type: Stereo solid-state integrated amplifier
Features
Class A fully symmetric non-negative feedback balanced output design
High-Class 500,000 uF filter capacitors (Japan), 22uF couple capacitors (Japan)
Sanken semiconductors - 12 pairs (Japan), and Jensen cabling (Denmark)
Blue LED front meters that can be turned on/off as you wish
Stepped high bandwidth volume control with multi function remote control
Power Output: 100 wpc stereo @ 8 Ohms (200 @ 4 Ohms)
THD:< 0.05% (1 kHz/1W)
S/N Ratio: > 100 dB
Frequency Response: 20 Hz to 20 kHz (± 0.5dB)
Input Impedance: 100k Ohms
Color: Black aluminum casing + Black aluminum front panel
Size: 18.5 x 16.9 x 7.5 (DxWxH in inches)
Weight: 104 lbs.
Price: $4500

Company Information
Jungson Audio
Japan
Website: www.jungson.com

North American Distributor
Grant Fidelity
Calgary, Alberta
Canada

Introduction

Please forgive this very long preamble, but something has happened here and I think you need to follow me down the journey...

12 years ago I made a major shift in my listening in that I sold my Naim amps and crossed the Rubicon into the world of valves with an Audion pre/power combination. In a way perhaps that wasn't the huge change. I'd swapped a 40 Watt transistor amp for a 30 Watt EL34 PP which seemed equally happy driving the speakers I had at the time, my home-built IPL transmission lines. To be brutally honest the swap was as motivated by the desire to own such beautiful things, and that valves were 'serious' as to any great improvement in sound quality. That said the Audions did sound magic at the time, their colour (not colouration) beguiling after the 'flatter' sounding Naims.

I had a brief dalliance with high-power transistor amps in the hulking shape of the Korato pairing I reviewed for TNT. Although the preamp was valve based the power-amp was classic, brute-force tranny class 'A' and the sheer grip it had on the low bass of those IPL's made me very tempted to buy them – the Audions had it in the midband, but boy that bass!

Any then of course the goalposts moved to the next stadium with an infatuation with a pair of single-driver, full-range horns in the shape of the Loth-X Polaris. These broke the bank, but it was that or break my heart so they then became my main speaker. Of course as well as sounding wonderful they were designed specifically for low-power valve amps and most importantly the 'holy Grail' of the Single-Ended, Direct-Heated triode...

And trust me guys, SE amps, if done properly are very, very special indeed. The adjective 'open-window' was made for them. But all this sent me further up the 'lunatic fringe' path as my main system became an Audionote Pre/Power running 300b's and producing a mighty 8 watts to fill my 7x5 m, well-damped living room with music to die for.

Which was great but had the effect of pushing my reviewing down a pretty narrow cul-de-sac of very low power amps and high efficiency speakers. Of course that's fine too, but after reviewing half a dozen 300b amps I wonder if the reader gets a bit bored. Of course the idea of removing the magic from my living room was unthinkable, so the obvious answer was to build a new room for reviewing purposes:-) Well actually it's not quite that simple because one of our barns turned into a library/listening room, with a mezzanine above were my children could play their guitars and drums and even have friends to sleep over – every teenagers dream and how to be a really cool Dad:-)

So far so good but it meant that the resultant listening room ended up as a big volume to fill with music! It was also an echoing barn of a place and my first ventures into reviewing in it ended in disaster – no way, I couldn't even bear to spend much time in there listening myself... So there followed a lot of building the likes of bass traps, huge damping panels etc to tame it all down, and to a certain extent it was successful – though the living room was still a big step ahead.

Eventually reviewing started there and of course first up were huge, high-efficiency horn speakers designed for SE amps:-) The Opera M15's did pretty well, and had no problem filling the volume. In deference to the space involved I used the SQF Son-of-Pharoa amp – a substantial and expensive amp producing 40 watts from eight EL-34's and with a lot of current for a valve amp. The result was a warm big and blowsy sound, but I was constantly making allowance for the poor acoustics of the room – a not satisfactory situation and one that made me a little unhappy with the result, both sonically and in how I had judged the speakers. In the end I was only happy with their bass performance having dragged them into my living room to really check them out...

The crunch came a few months ago with the arrival of the Acuhorns – once again I'd ended up reviewing a speaker that I could have done in my living room system! Old habits die hard it seems. But space limitations and the belief that my wife was starting to get fed up with me ripping apart the living room system every couple of weeks consigned them to the new 'listening room'

The result was a disaster. I really didn't like them – flat undynamic, bandwidth limited. They were utterly lost in the barn-like room and acoustic. Then as often happens when things are going badly, they got worse as a fault developed in the amp... Losing patience I rigged up the Lehmann Stamp digital amp to fill the hole. As this produces 20 Watts it's hardly a powerhouse, but I thought that as it was a decent amp at least I could get on with the review and get it out of the way. Imagine my surprise when I found that the speakers sounded better driven by this little digital amp rather than 8000 Euros worth of valve amp. I still didn't like them, but they were considerably more palatable thus driven and this got me thinking. Just because they were full-range horns had made me go into a Pavlovian response and go 'valves'. A look at the Acuhorn website revealed that there was more than a hint that these 96 dbl efficient horn were best with transistors.

The Lehmann was hardly typical transistors and I had nothing suitable, but Grant Fidelity had just sent me some of the 300b 'black bottle' valves for test (review to follow!). I knew they distributed some rather meaty class 'A' amps from China under the Jungson brand. Shamelessly I cadged one with the promise of a review – the result being a monster Jungson JA-99D 100 Watt class 'A' integrated dropped on the doorstep and with a lot of grunting and straining was lugged into the listening room and wired up... Thanks are very much due to Grant Fidelity who have been extremely helpful and tolerant of a pushy reviewer...

The result you can read in the Acuhorn review, suffice to say the speakers gave an even better performance, still not quite my cup-of-tea, but certainly something worth while.

Of course, that out of the way it was payback time and I had to do the review of the Jungson JA-99D...

Which is why a few weeks ago I plugged a massive black box into the Opera M15's – speakers designed for SE amps:-)

Design/construction.

As you can see from the pics here we have a classic hunk of Class 'A' naughtiness. Lifting it is best done with two people (40 kgs...), the plates that make up the chassis are battleship armour thick and the finish beyond reproach. If you buy Hi-Fi by the pound then this is a bargain. On the front plate are set a pair of VU meters that although very '70's really make the aesthetics for me – I'm a sucker for twitching needles no matter how pointless, and this makes up for the lack of glowing tubes... Apart from that there is an on/off button, a stepped volume controlled by two buttons and a mute and input selector – that's it. A remote duplicates these functions, in my case the supplied remote was a full 'system' device not the one shown on their website which is now replaced.

Connections are comprehensive and top quality. 3 phono inputs, a balanced input, a set of 'line-out' and two pairs of speaker terminals. The remote controls volume and input, and these are thankfully reproduced on the neat front panel.

Opening the lid revealed a lot of very shiny components (gosh aren't transistor amps complicated!) which must add up to a lot of the cost, not least the 800VA transformer, banks of storage capacitors and 12 pairs of Sanken power transistors. For technical details see the website, but it all looked very neat and well put together to me and though the case is huge there didn't seem to be a square inch wasted. The amp ran pretty hot, which is a sure sign that the bias is heavily towards Class 'A' – many 'Pure Class A' amps only provide a handful of real 'A' Watts before switching to AB, this is an amp you could use to keep your take-away warm...

So – beautifully made, easy to use, good looking in a Stealth Bomber way, certainly it ticks all the boxes in this particular category...

Sound

Which of course drags me back to my rambling preamble. Oh yes I remember – I'd just plugged the sucker into the squat forms of the M15's.

Nothing that had gone before prepared me for what happened next, but for the first time my listening room became a place of real music. All the bloom and wallowing disappeared to be replaced by a tight punchy bass which allowed the rest of the spectrum to breath in the space it so obviously lacked before. The M15's were obviously capable of filling the room, but powered by the (excellent) valve amp they didn't have the capacity to control the room. The Jungson JA-99D seemed to just grab hold of the music and punch it into the room – not letting a molecule of air vibrate out of turn.

That an amplifier can control a room as well as a speaker is obviously rubbish – what must have been happening was that the Jungson JA-99D was simply controlling the 15" drivers far better and so reducing all their misbehaviour re resonance and damping. But the subjective effect was one of total control.

I'm not over exaggerating this effect. Remember that my 'reviewing' room had been a huge disappointment with several speakers and that despite some pretty drastic room treatment I'd almost come to the conclusion that as a venue for comparing high-quality Hi-Fi it was a complete write-off. More importantly it wasn't somewhere where I particularly liked listening to music!

The transformation is so complete that it's hard to now try to get down to the actual characteristics of the amp, as their low/mid and upper bass control and speed opens up the midband so much it's hard to judge it's quality in isolation. Having said that, the fact that the mid is now so much more audible does expose it to serious scrutiny and as a comfirmed valve nut you'd expect me to be hyper sensitive to this (and I am:-)...

For all it's attributes, a failing here would still damn the amp for me – but the midband is just gorgeous. It reminds me very strongly of my old Audion EL34 monoblocks, slightly warm, devoid of harshness but very open with it, call it grace if you like, though grace with an iron fist. Dragging the Jungson JA-99D into my living room to be plugged into my Loth-x Polaris (a case of a sledgehammer to crack a nut if there ever was one!) put this in perspective. Facing a pre-power pairing many times it's cost, running the 300b's in single-ended mode, still showed the sheer magic that SE amps have over all comers. Nothing in my experience is as transparent in the midband, and here the Jungson JA-99D just sounded like you'd taken a step back from the music. This was totally expected, and the truth was that the JA-99D did better in this missmatch than I'd expected and still gave that EL-34 effect which was more than pleasant to listen to – but it's a test like putting something under an electron microscope. If you run 100+ dbl horns you need SE amps to get the best out of them – end of story.

Satisfied, and with the aid of my son (what you have kids for) I lugged the Jungson JA-99D back to it's natural home and got back to more reasonable and serious reviewing.

Which brings me to tonight. Michael Jackson died today, my son came back from school and said "Dad, let's listen to all your Michael Jackson' records tonight".

So here I am listening to Thriller – side two (the better of the two) and 'Billy Jean' (the best on the album).

Whether you like Jackson or not, if you don't hear this quirky power-pop-soul ballad about a paternity suit as pure genius then there's something seriously wrong... The producer Quincy Jones, a man who's middle name is 'Delight' – was half that genius and his contribution manifests itself in the whipcrack fast kickdrum and doubled, pedal bass that dominates the track. I have never heard leading edges on a kickdrum like this. The amp just fires those 'pro' 15" drivers out, stops them and drags them back in a millisecond – probably a synthesised drum sound but no less impressive for that. And because it's all so fast and dry the rest of the mix has so much more space around it, the lyrics are more intelligible, the timing so much better – the syth keyboard's bell-like overtones more to the fore.

Detail is no problem – multitracked vocals particularly well handled. The tinkly bits clear, sharp and well defined without being irritating (one big failing of many transistor designs).

It's unfair to review a component through one disc, and a heavily processed one at that, but the fact is that most of the characteristics that jump out at you are perfectly illustrated in this way. Of course lots of other music got played (and is being played as I write) – Michel Shocked at this precise instant... Overall the character of control and grace combine with with speed and power – it's a formidable combination. On some - Joe Jackson's 'Night and Day' for example – the amp pulled imaging capabilities well beyond anything else in this room, again mainly due to the control of that bass area allowing an acoustic to form naturally. In the living-room system again the SE amps 'open-window' gave even more space, but as those amps were a non-starter in the review room it was a pyrrhic victory...

What can I say? Two months ago I had a beautiful reviewing room that frankly wasn't fit-for-purpose. A week ago I had the new SME V12 arm arrive for review – I guess I'm the first reviewer in the world to get one as a stand-alone review - previously that arm would have had to go to the living room system for evaluation. Right now it's mounted on my Opera LP 5 turntable and blasting out 'Beat-it' in the reviewing system – Eddie Van Halen's virtuoso solo impossibly crisp and fast. The transformation is totally down to the JA-99, to undertake such an important review in this room would have been inconceivable prior to the 99's arrival. Changing the arm cable from my own to the supplied SME item showed a huge difference – far more open and detailed – the Jungson laid this bare, this sort of insight is a gain a tribute to the midband openness of the design. It's certainly no one-trick-poney...

Downsides

This'll be short... The buttons on the review sample had slightly confusing silk-screen logos on two buttons – 'mode' instead of 'input' and 'display' which though if you hold it down does cut the lightshow, in fact acts as a more useful 'mute' when pressed – Big deal... The amp runs hot, not scarily so – this an inevitable result of being so heavily biased to class A but a point nevertheless. It's too big and heavy for most Hi-Fi stands so needs to be sited on something very substantial – like the floor... Lastly the amp doesn''t help some of the more clattery modern studio recordings, they can be wearing but it's hardly the fault of the amp.

Er... That's all Folks...

Conclusion

Yea I know – you're all saying "he'd have got the same with any high-current amp – the clot just been playing with valves too long". But then that misses the point – the reason I abandoned transistors was primarily that I found their midband compromised and grey, and all to often the top-end blighted with grain. As my valve adventure progressed this gap widened to a point where I really has ceased to consider transistors for my own use. But the Jungson JA-99D grafts the grunt and control of a big class 'A' amp onto the ease and flow of a good EL-34 amp, that it does this without a valve in the signal path is a surprise, and a very pleasant one.

Is this the end of my love-affair with valves? No. In the right circumstances, room and correct matching speakers nothing comes close in their purest form. Rather it's made me a bit more tolerant of those who champion transistor amps and see where they are coming from, because the JA-99 is simply a really good amp regardless of situation, partnering equipment or room, it'll drive just about anything, anywhere. All-rounder can be a rather back-handed compliment, but in this case it's entirely appropriate...

Which of course leaves me up a creek without a paddle... How on earth am I going to keep he review room working when it's gone...

Distributor's comment

About the manufacturer: Jungson Audio is today China's premier high fidelity audio manufacturer and is best known for its Class A design. Jungson Audio was started by two audiophiles in 1993 in a small town in southern China, Taishan, where 90% of the families there have ties with North America through their ancestors who went to North America to build the rail roads starting from 1860s. The two founders, one were then teaching electronics at a college, the other one was his student, started the business out of their passion to audio and music. Their start-up stage is like many stories we heard in the western world - self financing, limited space and no brand recognition. They took their first product - 30kg+ solid state amplifier, on the train and went to Guangzhou (it's China's Hi-Fi capital) to look for interested customers. Just while they were exhausted by lugging such a heavy amp without a vehicle (in 1990s, majority of China is still on two wheels - bicycle) from shop to shop but no one paid attention to them, and they were about to return home, a foresighted vendor welcomed them into the shop for a demonstration. Not to mention that the store owner is so impressed by the product and decided to carry the product. From then on, Jungson started to prosper. The real take-off of Jungson happened when China's national radio station took on one of their amps for studio monitoring. Since then, Jungson has been continuously bringing out excellent products, from mighty power 200W monoblocks to smaller integrated amps. Jungson Audio is also one of the handful manfuacturers in the world who makes full line of audio components, from wall out to the ears. Today, as we speak, Jungson is building their now premise in Taishan with 6 buildings on 15 acres of land. The down-to-earth owners told me: "Many audio companies choose to located in major cities but we decide to stay in Taishan. We like where we started and we would like to stay focused on making great audio, rather than be enticed by money and greed." I have personally visited Jungson twice in the past two years - they have a great team of designers, all young in their 20s and 30s, except the owners are in their 40s, plus a dedicated production team who are mostly from Taishan. 

Grant Fidelity teamed up with Jungson Audio in 2007 starting with distributing Jungson tube amplifier under Grant Fidelity brand, and today Grant Fidelity has earned the trust and faith from Jungson since then to now exclusively representing Jungson Audio in North America. Although distributing 'made-in-China' products involves many challenges especially gray market issues, both Jungson and Grant Fidelity are very optimistic in building up Jungson's reputation worldwide, because their products are simply too good to be missed by many music lovers and audiophiles worldwide. 

A sad news about one of the Jungson owners - Mr. Huang Shuxiang, who was the design brain for Jungson since inception, passed away in a car accident in March this year. I did a memory article on AudioKarma.org (an audio forum) about him. Here is a link: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=239540

The JA99D is one of his past works. Sad ending for such a talented life. May his legacy lives on through his creations.