[wippich]

Jason, Casey,

I have to say, Nuforce is on the right track in many areas in terms of its products.  I presently own the following:

MCH-300SE-C7
7 XLR terminated IC-700 Interconnect Cables
Icon HDP (for my computer based office system)
and various other Nuforce products…

I have carefully built an excellent sounding main system that has many constraints.  Of which, I will save you all the details and get to the main point.  The system has most importantly been designed/optimized for 5.1 home theater and 2-channel listening with a leaning towards the latter.

I presently bi-amp my front 2-channels of my 5.1 system with the MCH-300SE-C7 (using 4 of it’s channels for the 2 front L&R speakers) to get more dynamic range out of my system.  The system sounds fantastic and I want ‘more’ of this Nuforce sound.  I am use to much more power than this and want to put my vote in for a higher power version of a REFERENCE 18 or equivalent for the future.  I realize that your current products deliver enough power for many people in the marketplace.  That said, driving a less efficient full-range speaker to dynamic levels takes lots of power.
 
What are your thoughts in terms of an amplifier product with this increased power level?  The type of speakers I am looking to acquire in the future will require a minimum of over 500 watts at 8 ohms and doubling in power all the way down to 2 ohms (I really want 1000 watts at 8 ohms and doubling in power all the way down to 2 ohms). Is this theoretically/practically possible with your current amplifier design or am I barking up the wrong tree?  If so, is it something on your road-map?

Regards

[worldcat]

Yeh i hear ya!  My speakers need more power as well.  More control with Nuforce sound would be really nice.

[Sparky14]

A 2000 wpc tube amp would be nice   

[Caar]

+1.
Minimum 500 W RMS/channel into 8ohm.
Love my McIntosh MC1,2kW.
Would love my NuForce 1000kW even more than I love my Ref9 SE V3, if that is possible.

[worldcat]

Nuforce amp will never be 1000watts in my opinion.   It will take years to achieve that.   I feel the same as you I wanted amps with more power (ref18) but they didn't or couldn't do it.   Jason mentioned ref 20 in the future but who knows how long that will be.  I would guess that the 20s will be in the neighborhood of 500watts into 4 ohms.  The 18s will have to have more on demand power with the larger caps.  I still love the sound of mine.

[wippich]

Looking forward to hearing from Jason and Casey as well.   Nuforce has done such a great job with class-D amps up to 200 w/ch at 8 ohms.  It would be really interesting to see them access the 500 w/ch in to 8 ohms and up crowd, even if it takes some time and a bigger price tag. 

Logic would say, since the amps run so efficient, higher powers with great sound should be achievable with solid engineering.

Who else feels this way?  Give Nuforce some marketing feedback...

[rustydoglim]

There is real RMS power, and there is short term power, and then there is peak power.
There is just too much confusion out there about actual power you need.  We have looked hard but can't really justify the need for 500W power per amp, unless it is used to drive some very exotic speaker.

The instantaneous power that you need are supplied by the capacitor board.
Power is the voltage x current.
Most speakers are reasonably efficient that requires only a few amps of current at most!
Typical listening power is 20 to 30W.  If you don't believe me, connect a Watt Usage Meter (available for about $25 on Amazon.com) to your amp and see how much power it consumes at various volume level.
Try turning up the volume until your ear hurts and see how much power it consumes.

If we designed the amp to REALLY take 500 RMS power, then there is a trade off somewhere.
It will have a higher noise floor, sound quality could suffer, price will go up.  We will then make the 0.5% of the customer happy but turn away 99.5% people.

We will also have to put in a power supply > 60V, and that is  big problem for certification worldwide.
The cost will be prohibitive.  And that's when we ended up with a $15,000 mono amp that sells a few units per year. It doesn't make good business sense to do that.

[rustydoglim]

I believe what most people need for high power is really MORE CURRENT.
That can be addressed without raising the noise floor of the amp, and changing of power supply.
This is what we want to address in Ref 20. Significantly increase the current supply, moderately increase the voltage, and modifying the amp stages.

For future V4 (which will go into Ref 18 series and Ref 9 series), refinement is not going to be enough. There has to be some fundamental change and break through in amp features. V2 to V3 took 2 years. I think V3 to V4 will take 3 to 4 years. Or we might get stuck and never release V4.

[wippich]

Thanks for the detail. No doubt there are many reference audio systems that do not get pushed too hard driving moderately efficient or highly efficient speakers. And therefore, do not require much continuous or near continuous RMS power. 

That said, there is just no substitute for having enough power and current to drive reference levels of dynamic Jazz & Rock and the like when needed into full range speakers (going relatively flat down to 20 Hz) without having to carve out the low-end by sending it off to a reference subwoofer, which degrades the sound.

Agreed, having a higher noise-floor, increasing the system costs for compliance design, compliance testing, for world-wide distribution is definitely not desirable.

For comparisons purposes with Nuforce amp designs, how do I compare my MCH-300SE-C7 running 4 channels (2,3,5,6) for 2 channel audio in Bi-amp setup to the way you spec out the Ref 18?  The 2 ohm power is not specified on the Nuforce website nor is the ‘20 msec hold times’ for the MCH-300SE-C7.

Power Output Per Ch:
175W@8ohm
  335W@4ohm   ?@2ohm

Power
Output Per Ch (20 msec hold time):   ?W@8ohm   ?W@4ohm   ?@2ohm


I look forward to see how far the Nuforce engineering team can push the Ref 20 and V4. For the Ref 20, a significantly increase in the current supply, a moderate increase the voltage, a modification to the amp stages, all without increasing the noise floor could be very interesting.  Any updates along these lines are much appreciated.

[edmond]

I believe what most people need for high power is really MORE CURRENT.
That can be addressed without raising the noise floor of the amp, and changing of power supply.
This is what we want to address in Ref 20. Significantly increase the current supply, moderately increase the voltage, and modifying the amp stages.

For future V4 (which will go into Ref 18 series and Ref 9 series), refinement is not going to be enough. There has to be some fundamental change and break through in amp features. V2 to V3 took 2 years. I think V3 to V4 will take 3 to 4 years. Or we might get stuck and never release V4.

Hi Jason,

Some manufacturers will state the maximum current of their amplifiers, e.g. 25 amperes.  In general, the higher the max. current, the better the ability of driving speakers....

So, may I know about the max. current of nuforce amp?

[David C]

Jason
A couple of questions if I may. Any news on the CMA board for 9V3Se or do I have to bite the bullet and upgrade. I too would be interested in the question on current from the amps

thanks

[David C]

Jason
I just saw on Audio gon a pair 9V3SEs that indicated they were upgraded with "new filters" to a version of labled 3.01. Is this an upgrade????? I had my V2SEs upgrade to V3 but was not aware of a further upgrade

[David C]

Jason.... oh Jason

[David C]

Casey oh Casey

[rustydoglim]

The 3.01 label on V3 is to indicate a change of Zobel filter values.  We discovered that for some high freq super tweeters, the original V3 can get into oscillation mode and over heated, possibly damage the tweeter.

We do have the intention to offer CMA cap array for the 9V3SE upgrade (at very reasonable cost). But our teams have been too busy (just look at the products that we come out every year).  Hopefully it will be out by June.

[David C]

JAson
thanks and it does look like you have been a busy bunch. Still loving my P9 and 9V3Ses. Looking forward to the DAC will soon be buying the Oppo 93. Welcome back and keep up the great work

[wippich]

Still waiting for an update to my power questions...

Thanks in advance...