China Grand Tour 2009
Jungson Audio
Report By Steven R. Rochlin

 Jungson Audio, a premiere Chinese high-end company, has over 50 patents from design to application that spans many years. They have earned many awards in the Asian review press over the years and are very careful about sharing their creative and innovative technology. As such, they were very welcoming to me yet also wanted to be very careful about how much access i was allowed to achieve. Jungson Audio manufactures everything from wall plugs to cable and of course active electronic components and speakers. An audiophile could easily build an entire music system using their components as they have over 100 products in total. 

Jungson Audio started in 1993 and only focuses on high-end, thus avoiding mid-fi type products as fond in other Chinese brands. While they have only 16 years as a company, relatively young by USA standards, they are quite a well-established and longstanding China high-end product manufacturer by this country's standards. Their philosophy is pure Class A fully balanced from input to output on certain models. In China, Jungson Audio is considered this country's McIntosh, Krell, Goldman, etc. They also focus on high value for the money/performance on many pieces, yet they do have many state-of-the-art items priced well over $10,000. As a proof of their success and popularity, in China alone they have over 100 dealers. While i are in their original facility, a new 120 acre location with 16 large buildings (four of them pictured above) will be operational in a few months. They also OEM for various other companies, which uses about 30 percent of their overall resources. They are very careful and choose who they OEM for and will not accept a contract from just any outside company.

 

Grant Fidelity CD1000 digital disc player and Rita-800 KT-88 stereo integrated tube amplifier as made by Jungson Audio.

 

RBS-1 stand-mounted reference bookshelf speaker. Grant Fidelity's version is different than the standard version by Jungson Audio as it has been added with various tweaks.

 

This is one of their listening rooms. The size and shape is actually quite good for analyzing sound. They also have a variety of other manufacturers' speakers and electronics so they can test various equipment to ensure it sounds well within a variety of systems.

 

They also have a home theater room, again properly sized and with acoustic treatment for testing in a real-world situation. This room also had very good acoustics and mimics a typical good room. It is great to know they take the time to check the actual real-world application of their products during testing.

 

While Jungson Audio was understandably very protective of the photos and information i was able to gather, seen here is them testing those sexy meters as used within their amplifier.

 

Seen here is the JA-99D amplifier's power supply. While it is hard to tell the actual size by this photo, rest assured it is truly very large and heavy! Note the quantity of power capacitors and the care taken to ensure there is plenty of steady current to feed the JA-99D's circuitry.

 

A nearly fully-built unit being given a once-over with close scrutiny during quality control.

 

Besides visual assurances, of course Jungson Audio employs test equipment to verify the unit is performing to specification. While i was able to observe their amplification assembly line, they also make high-end CD players, loudspeakers and so much more. i came away very impressed with Jungson Audio as was Enjoy the Music.com's Nels Ferre within his world premiere review of the Jungson JA-88D(09) Class A integrated amplifier (click here). Stay tuned as we will have another review of a Jungson Audio product within the December 2009 edition of Superior Audio. 

 

Website: www.hdlt.com

 

Click here for the main China 2009 tour page.