[nature boy]

Gordy stopped by for a listen to my system this afternoon.  It was great to meet another Audio Circle member and swap stories on audio equipment adventures. We may not constitute a regional circle yet, hopefully we'll do this again in a couple months and Jazz Jeff will join us for the next Dela-Rave.

We had a lot of fun listening to and comparing the Nuforce Reference 8 mono's, Gordy's "home brew" battery powered UCD mono's and my faithful DNA LA-100 solid state amplifier.  I'll offer some thoughts later, perhaps after Gordy shares some observations.

I was mightly impressed with Gordy's "home brew" amplifier.  It sounded great in combination with the Eastern Electric Minimax tube preamp.  I'll let him share the details on his amp.  We listened to a lot of good vinyl on my Nottingham turntable - there is just something special when the tubes on the Minimax warm up and you spin some vinyl.

Happy listening.

NB

[lonewolfny42]

Glad to see you guy's got together....I'll be watching for your comments on the NuForce amps, the Don Nance amp  and Gordy's Ucd homebrew amp. Thanks !!!

[nature boy]

Well here are my impressions - although they are brief:

Nuforce amp: well designed, light as a feather but they simply did not mate well with my system.  Not sure if it was the 4M interconnect run between my  preamp & sources or it did not get along well with the EE Minimax preamp, but there was an extremely high level of noise.  The amplifiers did have plenty of bass and mid-bass energy, but vocals did not suit my taste.  Threw a wide soundstage but not very deep.

The amps were used in conjunction with zsleeve power cords and an outlet box w/ bybees provided Mike at TweekGeek.  Due to placement of my source equipment/preamp and amp I could not hook up all my equipment to the outlet box as Mike suggested.  

I also used TweekGeek CT Silver Reference mk. II silver and  CT Isolated Shield Design Silver Reference mk. II interconnects, the latter being an AC enhanced design.  These both elevated the sound quality of my system with extremely realistic vocals, palpable imaging, and no etched treble I have found from other silver IC's.  However, I did encounter some RFI problems with the Shield Design - go figure.

Gordy's Home Brew UCD:  what do big grey boxes with 25 lbs. of batteries and a UCD card equal - a very nice sounding amplifier in my opinion.  Gordy advised me that the UCD modules were added to a commercial back-up battery power supply, some RCA inputs and speaker terminals.  A very low noise floor, excellent imaging, and very musical amplifier was the result.  

I understand from Gordy the amps can hold a charge for 12 hours of continuous use.  The UCD modules only had a few hours on them, some slight hardening piano notes and vocals but barely noticable to my ears. I would expect things to gel after 100 hours or so of burn in.  Plenty of time before our next Dela-Rave.  

DNA-LA100:  I am not planning to change the amplifier out of my system anytime soon.  I would have to give a slight edge in dynamics to this amplifer in comparison to the other two  It's the closest a solid state amp has come to achieving a tube like mid-range and natural sounding live recordings.  The addition of oil impregnated V-Cap capacitors and cryogenically treated PULSAR wiring internally just keeps my toes tapping.

I may add a tube amp (for swapping purposes only) at some time when I hit the lottery, but the DNA is a keeper.

My thanks to Mike at TweekGeek for the opportunity to demo the CT reference interconnects and Nuforce amplifier.  I am glad that Gordy could come by for a visit - thanks for bringing the great test CD's they sounded awesome.  What were they again??

NB

[Gordy]

Hello Roger,

Thank you for having me over on Sunday, finally to meet another AC'er and hear another system, it was wonderful!  I've already done my part and threatened JeffJazz with abuse unless he shows up next time!

Don't know how I missed you're post last night  ... Yes I do, I've a one track mind   Sorry.

Roger has a dedicated listening room installed downstairs which is extensively treated with 8th Nerve products to very good effect and I'm guessing the room to be about 13' x 16' (?) with a tightly installed drop ceiling, a dense carpet and cement flooring.  What a silent retreat, much different than comparitively noisy apartment!

All the equipment we listened to was new to me, including my own amp, so I'm not comfortable commenting too much.  I think Roger summed up my impressions pretty well as the Nance DNA was the top dog (this time ).  It's a very well balanced amp with a wide stage, excellent imaging and nice depth as well.  Sweet.  Roger's Vandy 2xx (sorry) speakers are so different from my NC Borealis speakers that I can't say much about other aspects.

I was a nervous wreak most of the day, with the UcD's being heard for the first time by somebody "in the know"!  Adding to that, I had just finished rewiring the new inboard version the night before...  and they survived our fine Delaware roads!!!  Taking into account my bias, the UcD's held their own pretty darn well and are deadly quiet.  They are still a tad hard at times and hopefully that's due to having only 40-50 hrs. on the modules and not due to their lacking the 8620 buffers

The Nuforces...  the more I think about it, the more I'm prone to think something was out of spec.  They were simply too far  away from how others have described them!

As far as Cd's go, I brought a stack of 'em and we only listened to 3!!!  What's a Rave, even if it was a Micro Rave, without at least one NYR approved disc?  So, Black Light Syndrome's Duende it was.  For female vocal I had to hear Azam Ali's Lasse Pour Quoi from Portals Of Grace.  We also listened to California Guitar Trio's Rocks The West and Natalie MacMaster's Live.  Then Roger spun up the Nottingham and broke out the vinyl and that was that  

Thank you again Roger, I'm eagerly waiting for the next time!!!

[nature boy]

Hey Gordy,

I look forward to our next Dela-Rave, maybe we'll invite some of the NYC crowd down next time.  Your amps aquitted themselves very nicely and I look forward to a listen after they settle in.

The speakers were Vandersteen 2CE signatures, fyi.  Thanks for the CD information, I ordered a couple.

NB