[Mad DOg]

tvad,

it's good to see that you were very thorough in your experimentation w/ the amps. i have read some of your posts on A-gon so i should've known that you didn't just insert the NuForce amps into your system without trying a variety of different combos.

I'm not the only one in this discussion who heard these qualities.

you are correct. compared to the Rowland Model 10, i also had some issues with the HF. i mentioned it wasn't as refined overall. but better than most amps i've heard at its pricepoint. then again, i had the NF amps plugged into the Audience adeptResponse power conditioner w/ shielded AQ NRG-5 PCs and haven't been able to try them plugged straight into the wall w/ unshielded PCs as NF recommends. and i've yet to hear the D-100s in my system so i don't know how the NuForce amps compare to Dusty's creations.

[Mad DOg]

That's cool.. everyone has their own preferences.  I've heard the Nuforce amps in 2 different setups and although they are good amps, they won't be displacing what I currently use and own.

What does appeal to me is how quickly this technology has improved and will continue to improve over the next few years.  Good times are ahead of us...

Right on!  

BTW, how's the DCC2 coming along? Any chance you'll be outta town for a few weeks so that i'll be able to borrow it?

[Jon L]

"Reference amp is VAC Phi 110/110 w/ Sylvania 6NS7 GTA "Chrome Top" driver tubes"

Glad to see a fellow VAC user (I use VAC Ren 30).  Aside from NuForce discussion, do you use Sylvania chrome domes for all your 6SN7 slots?  In my VAC, chrome domes were pretty much some of my least favorite 6SN7 tubes...  In fact, with VAC's own stock 300B tubes, I preferred VAC's stock Chinese 6SN7's over chrome domes.

[shokunin]

BTW, how's the DCC2 coming along? Any chance you'll be outta town for a few weeks so that i'll be able to borrow it?

I hate to admit to the hype, but the EMM labs gear is quite musical and down right smoooooth.  Just toe tapping music, rhythm just flows and sounds very natural,  It sounds better than the Dodson 218 fed via a modded SCD-777es that it replaced.  

My Teres is delayed yet again, need to borrow my phono stage?

[zybar]

BTW, how's the DCC2 coming along? Any chance you'll be outta town for a few weeks so that i'll be able to borrow it?

I hate to admit to the hype, but the EMM labs gear is quite musical and down right smoooooth.  Just toe tapping music, rhythm just flows and sounds very natural,  It sounds better than the Dodson 218 fed via a modded SCD-777es that it replaced.  

My Teres is delayed yet again, need to borrow my phono stage?

I heard the full blown EMM Labs gear feading VAC PHI 220 Mono amps which were powering Vandy 5A's and it was downright magical.  A few well recorded tracks actually gave me goosebumps and made me feel like a "newbie".

Wish I could swing such a killer digital front end.  Oh well, guess I will have to "suffer" with the TacT + EA Sony S-7700...

George

[Ric Schultz]

I believe tvad4 listened to the 75 watt versions with stock power cords....correct?  The 75 watter has a different power supply, which would make the sound different (since all parts in a switching supply will affect the sound the same as a linear supply).  Also the main board is slightly different with mostly the same parts but one part in particular stands out as something that would make the 75 watter not as good.  This might account for the difference noticed by some in highs along with using the stock power cords.  I would never call the stock 100 watters bright or edgy....however, I never listened to the stock power cords.  Of course, then you have the modded 100 watters as the third variety and I will shortly have level 2.  It is really kind of funny that we are comparing a $1600 list product with $10,000 tube amps and $7500 Roland amps.   It seems to me the difference mentioned by the Roland amp user sounds less than how I would describe level one mods difference.  I have the feeling the level one modded Nuforce would be as good if not better than the Roland.  This is exciting stuff.  I cannot wait to do level 2 to see how much more can be achieved.   For those waiting for amps, Nuforce just emailed me that they won't be shipping till the 25th now.

[Jon L]

BTW, how's the DCC2 coming along? Any chance you'll be outta town for a few weeks so that i'll be able to borrow it?

I hate to admit to the hype, but the EMM labs gear is quite musical and down right smoooooth.  Just toe tapping music, rhythm just flows and sounds very natural,  It sounds better than the Dodson 218 fed via a modded SCD-777es that it replaced.  

My Teres is delayed yet again, need to borrow my phono stage?

Did you ever get the Meitnerized transport in? I'm curious how much redbook sound changes between the super-upsampled signal from Meitnerized transport vs. unupsampled "regular" transport.

[nuforce]

Upgrade policy:
We continue to make improvement in our amps either within the same version or through the introduction of new products (like Ref 9). There are two upgrade path:
1. Trade in for higher end or higher power products. Yes, you can do that but until we introduce the new products, we can't decide on the trade in price. Many of you have experience interacting with us and can guess that we will offer good value for the money for trade in. We won't try to charge you arm and leg. But we also need to price it such that your dealers and us can make some decent profit too. The cost of the electronics might be low, but high end audio's volume is low and need a lot of R&D.
2. Circuit board replacement for the same version. 2006 version of Ref 8 will be better than 2005 version of Ref 8 for sure. As mention, we want to keep improving on our technology instead of selling the same old stuff. We plan to charge $200 per unit for complete circuit board replacement (labor included).  We make minor improvement from time to time and when we feel that there is significant different between older version versus newer version, we'll make announcement.

So, enjoy your NuForce and don't go chase after every minor upgrade.

There were some 70W units that are in circulation but they should have the same circuit board as the 100W version.

HF issue. Some of you have the ear to pick up very high freq noise and NuForce has bandwidth into 50Khz at +/- 1db.  HF is not as clean as we like. We will be announcing a patch next week to address this issue and significantly reduce RFI problem. For those of you with very sensitive ear or listen to FM at home, check out NuForce support section next Friday (May 28). We'll work with your dealer to provide the fix for free.

Unlike some other manufacturers , we own the technology and have control of everything so you can count on us to keep innovating and provide upgrade for your products.

I hope this address some of the recent concerns or questions.
Jason

[WerTicus]

looks like good news to me

[guest1632]

Upgrade policy:
We continue to make improvement in our amps either within the same version or through the introduction of new products (like Ref 9). There are two upgrade path:
1. Trade in for higher end or higher power products. Yes, you can do that but until we introduce the new products, we can't decide on the trade in price. Many of you have experience interacting with us and can guess that we will offer good value for the money for trade in. We won't try to charge you arm and leg. But we also need to ...

Hi Jason,

I suggest you guys get in touch with Rick Schultz. If his mods to your amps are as significant as he says, it would be to your benefit for the both of you to partner and thus make a better product. If you don't then you guys would be loosing out.

Ray Bronk

[Jon L]

Hi Jason,

I suggest you guys get in touch with Rick Schultz. If his mods to your amps are as significant as he says, it would be to your benefit for the both of you to partner and thus make a better product. If you don't then you guys would be loosing out.

Ray Bronk

Cough, cough..  Uh, I'm all for good mods, but it may be a bit um, impolite to suggest a manufacturer's finished product 'needs' mods by a third party, especially before comparing both..

Now, since Rick is in CA, if he wants to send us (that would be us SoCal Rage geeks) his modded Nuforce to say Cryotweaks (who has stock NuForce) or Mad Dog (who has a pair of Nuforce stock) and allow us to listen to both, we could know a little bit more..

[Mad DOg]

...if he wants to send us (that would be us SoCal Rage geeks) his modded Nuforce to say Cryotweaks (who has stock NuForce) or Mad Dog (who has a pair of Nuforce stock) and allow us to listen to both, we could know a little bit more...

good suggestion, Jon L.

as long as both Nuforce and Rick Schultz are not oppposed to this comparison, i'd be willing to host a listening session for members of the SoCalAudio Rage to compare the two and report back here w/ the differences.

[guest1632]

Cough, cough..  Uh, I'm all for good mods, but it may be a bit um, impolite to suggest a manufacturer's finished product 'needs' mods by a third party, especially before comparing both..

Now, since Rick is in CA, if he wants to send us (that would be us SoCal Rage geeks) his modded Nuforce to say Cryotweaks (who has stock NuForce) or Mad Dog (who has a pair of Nuforce stock) and allow us to listen to both, we could know a little bit more..

Hi, Well, I'm not the one saying that with the mods they'd be better. I just figured if they are truly better, than stock, that Nuforce ought to take an interest in it and maybe Rick and company could work together. Say a Level8 Plus.

Ray

[nuforce]

To mod or not to mod .
No deny about it, NuForce Ref 8 is a first generation product, and there're areas for improvement.  I heard about various mods and Ric have discussed with me about some of his ideas. Keep in mind that none of the people out there have access to the circuit diagram or understand the how it works. Therefore any mod is limited to replacing parts or add more shielding. Those are temporary fixes.
We prefer to make fundamental improvement in the circuit and layout.
And when we hit the limit of what our technology can do, then we can look into squeezing the last bit of performance. We're no where near that point yet .
NuForce amp has incredibly high damping factor of 4000 at all frequencies and zero phase shift. We can't improve any further in this area. We pretty much reached the Holy Grail of damping factor and phase shift.
But there's a lot more we can do to reduce overall THD, especially at higher freq. And obviously do a much better job at reducing noise and RFI.  We can also reduce some of the unwanted harmonics.  To do all of that require circuit and layout changes.

We also need to make sure that we don't mess up the sound. All enhancements have to be incremental and carefully tested not only by us, but also by a few selected dealers and reviewers who will have early peak into what we are doing.

For now, we have to address the RFI problem that we're very embarassed about    Even though we have already found a fix with the use of a common mode choke, we're trying to determine if a simpler solution can be found. We'll do more testing on Monday and will be ready to announce the patch by middle of the week.

Jason

[nuforce]

Well, it turns out that by reducing the RFI, we also slightly reduce THD+N by 0.01% (eg. THD reduced from 0.05% to 0.04% at 1khz, 40W into 8ohm).  Your dealers should be receiving the parts by early next week and the "enhancement" is posted on NuForce website.

Jason

[WerTicus]

are models shipping from the factory incorporating this choke on the outputs from now on or have you changed the boards for future revisions?

[nuforce]

Yes, units shipped after May 23 have the particular choke installed. Eventually the choke will be relocated to the PCB. We tested that whether the choke is located right on the PCB or at the backplane speaker terminals doesn't make any difference.  From THD measurement, this choke actually helped to reduce distortion (can anyone tell the diff between 0.04% and 0.05%)  but that's more of a side benefit. The main reason for the choke is to reduce 80 to 130 MHz high freq noise which affect FM reception.

[guest1632]

Nahh Ray I'm not laughing at you.  I'm just saying what you said was funny b/c it might be the WORST thing they could do to their credibility as a high-end player.

Well, you're right if that is what they are doing. You go in to these stores and see receivers with a 2 grand price tag; and people plunk down the bucks. The purpose here is to get these amps out to the masses while there is still time to do so. I think we are unfortunately coming to a time in this nation when a $800 piece of gear will be a lot for most people. Look at the economy. That's a whole different thread.

I would strictly market these amps as a midFi level piece. I'd predict they could not keep them in stock. A lot of companies will make a piece that provides them with bread and butter, and then they have the capital to produce more goods. That's why I suggested the stereo version. If I had $1600, would probably get that or maybe the CI. Don't know. My system is sorta modest at the present time.

Ray

[Rocket]

Hi,

I don't mean to start a 'flame war' but why would they want to market the amps as midfi?  They certainly don't sound midfi to my ears.  I'm not saying they are the best amps available but they do beat my well reviewed ps audio hca - 2 (stock version) hands down.  The hca - 2 sold for about $1700us originally.

Regards

Rod

[nuforce]

We have plan to go after high, mid and even low end products as we are vertically integrated with technology than can scale from IC to high power systems. But that will take time.

High end system is expensive because audiophiles demand a lot. The electronics are cheap but we have to invest in a lot of R&D. Every slight change in design and EVEN manufacturing or components selection affect the sound quality. Even a lose or lower quality connector increase the distortion. It is not realistic to expect that we can mass produce high end audio system at dirt cheap consumer prices. But we can narrow the gap.
Cost is relative. For NuForce Ref series, we have to use expensive parts and $1 here, $1 there and eventually they all add up.

Keep in mind that high end customer expects a lot of service and your poor dealer need to make a living. They have to set up listening room, let people borrow equipment home, spend a lot of time with you to mix and match equipment.

Power requirement is also a huge factor in determining the cost of the amplifier.  It is very costly to produce a 2.5 lb, 100W rms (144W peak) at 8 ohm amp!  This is the smallest and lightest and one of the best sounding amplifiers on the market. Check out the retail price of a 48V SMPS.  Ref 9 will probably be weighing around 3 lb with 350Wrms and 900W peak. It is a monster amp in a tiny package and generate little heat.  Ref 9 comes with a 60V 350W SMPS.

Supply and demand is obviously another determining factor.  Either you make $100 to $500 product and hope to sell in huge quality (with little margin), or $2000 product where it is still affordable to more affluent consumers and provide sufficient profit for manufacturer and dealers to stay in business.  Between $500 and $1500, it is a very tough area where the price is too high to attract enough demand, but too low to provide the margin needed to stay in business!

Jason