[modwright]

I have been invited by Bob Levi, president of the LA and OC audio society, to present to the club on June 12th.

Location:

Sunday  June 12  Setup: 12-1pm  Event: 1-4pm.  Holiday Inn at 7000 Beach Blvd. and the 91 in Buena Park.  Guests most welcome. Light refreshments served.

We will be showing our SWL 9.0SE and our new Denon 3910 Universal Truth mods.  If you are in the L.A. area, please do stop in and check out our current offerings.

I want to give a special thanks to Bob Levi and the LA and OC Audio Society for giving us the opportunity.

Thanks and see you there!

Dan Wright
President, ModWright LLC

[Russtafarian]

I am looking forward to meeting you and hearing your gear first-hand.  I'm quite impressed with the sound of the 9000ES you did for tnewell.

[modwright]

Thanks, it will be a good time and I look forward to meeting the group as well.

Dan W.

[merc]

Dan,

I look forward to reading what others have thought of the modded 3910. I have found that the sound gets better as you approach 100 hours and according to others who have heard the unit, the Blackgates and the mod really needs at least 200 hours before it reaches full potential.

Hopefully, the unit you are using in this demo has more than 200 hours on it.

In the meantime, I did receive the Revelation Audio cord, but have not yet compared it to the original copper cable sent with my unit. Thanks again!

Does the unit you are demoing in Cali have the Clock upgrade or is it like my unit?

Regardless, I am sure it is gonna kick some Cali audio butt.

[woodsyi]

How did it go?

[Jon L]

How did it go?

All I know is some guy other than me walked away with the $2700 Kubala-Sosna interconnects     Time to give up LAOC raffles for me..

As usual with these things, critical listening comparisons were not possible, but great fun was had by all.

[John Casler]

I was there and have to say the Modwright 3910 was "noticably" better than the stock unit.

The song was "Rose in Spanish Harlem" which I have on a Burmiester Collection (sorry I don't remember the female artist) and it was played on the "stock" unit first, and then the "Modwright 3910".

While I generally don't make judgments "out of the sweet spot"  there were definitly, noticable differences.

1) The bass was deeper, more pronounced, clearer and a bit more robust

2) The female voice, was ever so slightly richer tonally with just a hint less sibilence on S's.

3) At one point a percusion instrument which I don't know the name of (but it generally is a box full of beads, or chains of beads wrapped around a barrel) comes in, and the clarity and detail of that sonic was much better.  And even out of the sweet seat, it had more 3-D depth to it.

The system consisted of the Denon 3910's, using $2700 Kubala-Sosna interconnects (on both) going into the ModWright SWL 9.0SE Preamp, some more Kubala-Sosna interconnects, to a pair of Manley Tubed MonoBlocs, then through some Kubala-Sosna Speaker Cables, to a pair of Reference 3A DiCappo Speakers.

[Russtafarian]

The brief a-b comparison between the stock and modded 3910s showed (to my ears) the superiority of Dan's work.  I would very much like to hear Dan's 3910 and Steve McCormack's UDP1 in a controlled comparison.  Now that would be fun!  Steve was, in fact, at the meeting, but didn't arrive in time to hear the a-b comparison.

Dan's mention of a usb dac project got my attention.  Now that I have my music server up and running, the next step is to start obsessing over how make it better.  Dan just threw gasoline on that fire.

[Jon L]

Dan's mention of a usb dac project got my attention.  Now that I have my music server up and running, the next step is to start obsessing over how make it better.  Dan just threw gasoline on that fire.

USB Dac?  I must have missed that part.  It's a great thing that we're getting more and more good companies offering USB DAC's, including Empirical, Red Wine Audio, and now ModWright, not to mention the Pro companies like Apogee.

Maybe Dan will be the first to figure out the optimal USB solution, such as isoynchronous USB transfer, I2S output off the chip, etc (wink, wink).

[Hajime Sato]

It's a bit late but I'd like to add my impressions.

First of all, I'd like to thank Dan on behalf of our members for coming all the way down to L.A. to our meeting, especially with some heavy equipment. It was an honor to have you, and we had a great time.

This meeting was really hand-made in a sense because the speakers, power amps and the stock 3910 for comparison were provided by members of the society, and I'm glad my contribution (the stock 3910) proved useful.

John has already provided the description of our set-up and how we conducted the A/B comparison. Here's my impression. In comparison to the stock unit:

1) the modded unit had deeper, and more fuller bass;
2) more luscious, liquid mid-range;
3) made the speakers sound bigger, and
4) resolved more details.

The modded unit was such a clear winner that the audience broke into a spontaneous applause!

The caveats are:
1) we only heard one song;
2) we did not match the volume very carefully and I suspect that the modded unit may have had a very slightly higher output; and
3) the stock unit used a stock power cord while the modded unit had a beefy one.

Later on, we tried to do more comparisons with different songs and attempted to match the volume more carefully. Although the room was quite noisy then, we could still detect the key differences listed above. I only wish we had more time for comparison, but this brief session clearly proved the superiority of Dan's mod over the stock unit to my ears.

As someone suggested to me, I wish I could have asked Dan to take my unit home right there and then. And I would have if I were not under a tight budget imposed by the Minister of Finance (aka my wife)!

I also have to say that Dan's new preamp sounded great. Although we didn't have a reference to compare it to, it did not show any signs of congestion, noise or veiling and worked flawlessly throughout.

Dan, thanks again for your generosity, and congratulations on your great products. I hope I will be able to save up and call you for an order in a not-so-distant future!

[gongos]

I want to know more about the possible future USB DAC.

[jswallac]

Just a quick follow-up on Hajime's comments.

The setting was far less than ideal for a true shootout of the stock versus modded 3910s.  Dan did do his best to give each an honest chance, but we did only hear one song.  In addition, we heard the modded unit second.  Finally, I believe the modded unit had a little more gain.

As demonstrated, Dan's modded unit was a clear winner, as noted in previous posts.  In fact, to my ears, the difference was not subtle.  That said, Hajime and I later tried to "level the field" a bit.  Whenever you hear something a second time you naturally pick up things you missed the first.  These "improvements" are typically attributed to the unit that you hear last.  To do a fairer shootout you need to do an A-B-A test, rather than a simple A-B test.  We did this is far from ideal conditions, as the room was quite loud with chatter all around.  We also attempted to better volume match things.  Under these revised testing conditions the differences remained, but to a much lesser degree (again, to my ears).  I would still say that the modded unit sounded a little fuller, but not by nearly as much.

I will say that I am surprised that any noticable difference could be detected given the rest of the system.  We were using a very nice tubed preamp and amp.  My guess is that with solid state equipment, the tube modification would be more dramatic.

[modwright]

First of all, I want to sincerely thank the LAOCAS for the opportunity to present to them.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.  I also had the extreme pleasure of meeting EveAnna Manley of Manley, Steve McCormack and Bruce Edgar of Edgar Horns.  

I had met Bruce on prior occasions and had passed Eveanna at shows, but had never had the opportunity to speak with her.  She is a truly fun and interesting person and I am glad to see that we have such knowledgeable and enthusiastic women in this business also.

Meeting Steve McCormack was a real pleasure as I feel that ModWright's business thus far has followed a similar path as McCormack's, starting with the Mod Squad company.

The system that was assembled at the show sounded very good I thought, with Manley amps, Kubola Sosna(sp?) cabling, Reference 3A DaCapo(sp?) speakers and our preamp and source.  It is always an unknown as to how a system will sound when assembled in an unknown room with hardly a time or opportunity to optimize.  Having said that, I believe that most will agree that we enjoyed very good sound and I think that all of the manufacturers should take that as a complement .

Of interesting note, our preamp was pushing 30 ft. of Sosna's single-ended interconnects, to the Manley Neo Classics with NO PROBLEMS.  This says to me that the Sosna cables are truly exceptional and our preamp has good drive capability (but I already knew that...).

The 'shootout' was brief and educational.  As previously mentioned, it was far from perfect and while we tried to level the playing field as much as possible, it wasn't perfect.

It was my intent to simply show that our mods DO make a marked and significant improvement, compared to the stock unit.  The fact that this was obvious to all who listened, within a matter of seconds, clearly satisfied me.

Again, thank you to all those who were present and if you weren't there, you missed a good time.

Bob Levi was a very gracious MC and host to those who presented and I want to thank him personally as well for his hospitality.

Take care,

Dan W.

[Danny Kaey]

Dan,

great seeing you again!!!

Your products are exceptional and the difference of the modified 3910 compared to the stock was nothing short of staggering, at least from the front row where I was sitting...

Keep up the phenomenal work,

Danny

[modwright]

Thanks Danny, it was my pleasure.

Dan W.

[modwright]

USB DAC IS in the works for this year.  I am working on a phono stage and a USB DAC and I expect the  phono stage to be available first.  Both are intended to be optionally integrated into our preamp.

Dan