Not Another NuForce thread......

I guess what I am wondering about is if a V2 Ref 9SE outperforms a V2 Ref 9, or if the differences are far less than in the pre-V2 era.

Drubin - If you read my "post script" to my review linked in the posting above at Postive Feedback, I suspect you will get your answer...

In short the Ref 9 V2 out performs the Ref 9 SE....

John

guidocorona i dont know it. but i am sure if you email jason at nuforce he will be glad to give you any info you require. here is a link.
For upgrade questions, email [email protected]

In short the Ref 9 V2 out performs the Ref 9 SE....

I get that, but I'm asking a different question. Does the Ref 9SE V2 outperform the Ref 9 V2? I assume yes, but my guess is not by much. Am I correct?

The Ref 9 SE V2 out performs the Ref 9 V2 by a significant margin, this whole thread was initiated after listing to the Ref 9 SE V2 (and reviewing the Ref 9 V2). While I was very very impressed with the Ref 9 V2...it was the SE V2 that compelled me to make the claims as I did.

John

Thanks, my bad. Am reading too many of thsee threads and getting confused. You postscript makes me want to send my 9SE's off for upgrade today!

Drubin - You MUST! But, I heard they are swamped with ordres and upgrades!

drubin go to the person your purchased your amp from, get a price make payment you will get a RA and be in line for the upgrade, like i said above the price for SE to v2 is much more reasonable than the first upgrade,

I got my notice to send mine in for upgrade. They are being sent tomorrow. As I said I am very happy with the sound of my 9SE's and can't wait to hear the V2 version. To my ears cables make less improvement to these then any other amps that I have owned. They are just so clean and clear without that "edge". One more point and that is these are the first amps that I have owned that I like just as much during the day as at late night. All other amps that I have owned could only be listened to late at night when the power supply was "less dirty"; that is to say if you wanted them to sound there best.

Someone in here mentioned the Parasound A21 bettering a Nuforce amp. I have a Parasound A21 and it runs my rear speakers for movies. It is like a Turbo Carrera racing a stock VW. Now, Linn Klouts bi-amped sound more real and involving compared to the Ref 9's. The Klouts have much more texture in the critical midrange and superb staging. More of an involving jump factor. There is not much you can do for the A21. Way too much grain. Very hard to believe somone mentioned an A21 to a Nuforce anything.

To JP1208 which version where you comparing the Klouts to?

The older Ref 9 were good but hardly the world class amplifiers they are now.

I would also agree with you that the A21 vs the Nuforce is silly. We have compared the Ref 9SE V2 to a $21,000.00 state of the art solid state amplifier that is rated as one of the best sounding solid state amplifiers in the world, and many of my customers prefer the Nuforce, yes they are that good!

I am quite familiar with the Klout as I used to work for one of the biggest Linn dealers in the country, and I liked the Klout so I am interested in the particulars of your comparison.

Audiooracle, Nuforce 9.02's. You have to bi-amp the Linn Klouts to match the Nuforce's depth. The Klouts have more of the midrange magic or realism. Both are extended on top and the Nuforce has deeper low end. It is the middle frequencies that separate the two the most. I am not going to explain the micro dynamics for the amps. Let’s just say both amps are very good. I have not heard the SE version and maybe I should have upgraded the 9.02's to SE and then to SEv2's. If the V2's extend more in the upper and lower frequencies and keep the delicacy on top with much more added weight or texture in the middle then I guess I would have to demo. I think there should be a little jump factor or a slight forwardness in the music and the Nuforce as good as it is did not have this. As you know, to each there own in what they feel gives them musicality. To me getting the most transparency you can get without losing all the middle is what I like. Vocals don't seem so real without the texture and weight in the middle. I will give up some transparency for texture any day. IT is funny how the adjectives can go on forever describing the sound you want or like. The better the system gets the more adjectives that are added. Anyone want to try and list all adjectives used for musicality? I like using texture because it seems to cover a lot. No texture and you just have a flat window. Some people like this but when I go to watch live music there is nothing flat about it.

Audiooracle: Please name the $21,000 amp that the NuForce dusted. Otherwise, your post is just more useless hype.

Audiooracle, what's the name of your High End company? I'll be delighted to look up the $21K failed sacred cow by myself, if justifiably you feel shy about revealing the name of the poor old dame.

I would also like to know which amps did not make the grade compared to the 9SEV2's. Now that Nuforce has entered the 5k region it brings many more big names into the picture on the used market. When you buy used and the name is well known you can usually turn around and sell it for almost what you paid. The 9SEV2 better be in the same ballpark as the 10k plus new amps if they are going to sell new for 5k. I would also like to know how Nuforce stuck $1500 worth of upgrades into that chassis.

Guido, He was asked the same question on 7/9/07 in response to his post of 7/6/07. He didn't answer then either. Don't hold your breath.

You're dealing with a guy who uses the threads as an advertising tool. Why buy ads on Audiogon when you can do it here for free? All of his posts deal with either himself or one of his products. Have a few laughs and view it as entertainment.

Like everybody else.

So what's up "Doc"?

The 9SEV2 better be in the same ballpark as the 10k plus new amps if they are going to sell new for 5k

I don't follow that reasoning.

By the time you pay for all of the well-timed upgrades plus shipping you probably do have an amp that costs $10,000. Pretty clever marketing.

So, Mr. Audiooracle, why not go ahead and tell us? What's the harm? I mean, you're the one who brought this up. You had to know people would wonder. If you just got carried away and exaggerated a bit, that's OK, too. But a lot of us want to know. A bunch of us may decide to buy a NuForce amp for ourselves!

9rw's responses are very impressive. He starts out claiming how poorly these amps sound and yet all of his earlier responses clearly indicate to me that he's never listened to these amps.

Then there's his hyperbolic exaggerations on the frequency of upgrades and now his claims that after numerous upgrades one has now spent $10k on the amps.

What I find most impressive is his claim that time aligned and phase coherent speakers are some type of proper substitution for time-smeared ics and scs, lack of proper line conditioning, and lack of proper vibration control.

Impressive indeed.

-IMO

Stehno: OK. Enlighten me. After buying an amp -- like the original version -- and having all of the upgrades done, how much would a person have spent? Oh, and please include all of the shipping costs.

By the way, is the NuForce line still 50 or 60 points? Sweet. As for line conditioning, interconnects and speaker cables, I guess if it's not one of the few products you carry it's not any good.

9rw i dont know what stehno has paid but heres my cost. i originally bought ref 9 upgraded to se now my amps are in California being upgraded to v2, cost with shipping a lot less than the 5000 mentioned above. in my opinion a great way to do business. offer customers the option to upgrade or not. no one makes you upgrade. one other thing i like about it, you are not stuck with old technology, you have the choice to get the latest at a cost much less than if you had to sell the old and buy the new. outstanding customer service by my view.
how about the preamp upgrade or should i say preamp swap out, i got full retail cost for upgrading my p-8 to p-9. another winner. not only for my pocket book, but my ears got a deal also they love the sound.

9rw, let's start at the very beginning of this thread. From the beginning I've already asked you numerous times to provide specific about what you heard with the Nuforce amps and each time you refused to answer. So let's try this once again and hopefully everybody else will take note.

Please state when and where you heard these amplifiers, who loaned the amps to you and please also describe in detail what you heard.

Based on your responses to me (always ignoring the more generic version of that question) and your subsequent responses to others you've given every indication you've never heard these amps. Yet, you seem to have no problem defaming them with your imaginary claims along with your silly hyperbolic exaggerations.

Even if per chance you heard these amps, if you had issues in the highs as you claimed, the first question I would have asked you is what were you using for line conditioners.

But since you admit you care little about the sonic harm induced by time-smear in cables, improper or no line conditioning, and improper or no vibration mgmt because according to you your time-aligned and phase coherent speakers do an excellent job substituting for these otherwise unrelated deficiencies, that question would have been moot.

Certainly one of the more unbright statements I've heard in this forum.

But please don't even bother responding to the bottom half of this post if you won't respond to the first half.

-IMO

Audiofeil, Audiooracle is a dealer... cut the guy (or girl) some slack! Assuming he is also a dealer for the $21k amp, it would be very poor business to publicly "out" the more costly amp that the Nuforce beat. If I were a dealer, I wouldn't name names either.

>>cut the guy (or girl) some slack!<<
>>I wouldn't name names either.<<

Actually, the $21K amp(s) must be revealed for any reader to take his (or her) posts seriously.

A comparison is not credible and/or valid without the identity of each product.

Stehno: I'll answer your questions when you start answering mine. This is straight and simple: You're a dealer with a vested interest.

I told you that I use Audio Magic line conditioning and a dedicated 20-amp outlet. Also, please show me the white papers or other proof about my cables introducing time smear while the ones you sell don't. Your system is more fundamentally flawed than mine. I'm surprised you haven't already mentioned some of the line conditioners you sell. You must have done that a dozen times in other posts over the last few years.

Good luck with your business on the side. It's a great way to pay for this hobby, isn't it?

OK guys/girls, I can understand Audiooracle's shiness. No prob. If someone can tell me the URL of his business, I'll scout out the $21K poor old dame and will post her most probable identity here.

A little sleuthing leads me to believe Audioracle may be Audiodoctor of New Jersey. He carries a lot of lines.

Drubin: You might be right. It sure looks likely. I notice the Audiodoctor doesn't say who he is -- or introduce members of his team. It could be because there is no team. It could be because it's just plain old Mr. Audiooracle talking about "we" and "our approach." I think it's time to come clean, Mr. Audiooracle.

The we, 9rw, is myself and my staff, I have four people on staff, four showrooms, and two trucks, we have converted an 1880s Victorian home into showrooms and are working out of there, until the company grows large enough to move into a brownstone in downtown Jersey City.

Currently the display stock is close to $500,000.00 at retail pricing. We welcome any interested parties in for a demo. Your sleuthing is quite good, not that it would be hard to figure out.

I am the head of sales and currently there are no other salespeople, but considering there are others in the support staff, the we is correct.

As per the "mystery" amp being dusted as you have put by the Nuforce, I never said that, what I said is the Nuforce has been the amp of choice by certain customers having compared the Nuforce amplifiers to these other more expensive amplifiers one which costs four times the price of the Nuforce.

Amp selection is directly proportional to what speakers, cabling, preamplifier etc. Currently our reference Cary SLP 05 preamplifier is off line, so we are going direct from the Audio Aero Prestige into the amplifiers on test.

It may be that the Nuforce sound great this way and the other amplifiers do not sound as good.

I am reporting that setup with tubes somewhere in the front end, the Audio Aero does have tubes in it, the Nuforce rival and are competitive with these more expensive Class A and Class A/B amplifiers. Personally I think the combination of tubes in the front end or preamplifier driving the Nuforce is the winning combination. The amplifiers really do work wonderfully well with tubes.

Which is better will come down to taste and preference, I wouldn't carry those other amplifiers if I didn't think those products were superb in their own right.

Many people will not even consider a digital amplifier based on their own biases against this technology vs the warm fuzzy feelings that they get from tube amplifiers or from conventional amplifiers.

Audiooracle: Thank you very much for the response. I notice that you carry Acoustic Zen cables. Do they really introduce time smear, as part-time dealer Stehno claims?

The Acoustic Zen cables produce no time smear, in fact how would you quantify it if it existed in the first place?

I think they make a very fine cable, incidentally the Zen Power cords are extremely good.

I sell Synergistic Cables as well as Audioquest. I do think that the powered cable technology has some real advantages over non active cables.

having visited Audiooracle's web site -- audiodoctor.com -- I now have reasons to summize that the $21K solid state amp that David (Audiooracle) has been cross-listening with NuForce may be an Edge Electronics model. Since then, I have exchanged a courtesy call with David, which has cleared a lot of ground on this issue. David is the first one to state that, rather than NuForce being an absolute best -- under certain configurations and for certain users -- like when being directly driven by a AA Prestige CD/SACD player, the NuForce may be found by some to be competitive in some ways with the Edge. While Edge yields indisputably superior silkiness and musicality and subtle warmth, NuForce may be found to yield a perhaps more open sound, three dimensionality extension and detail, at perhaps some expense of ultimate smoothness and 'musicality'. David further conceeds that different users will have differing opinions. Sounds fair to me. I further discovered that in 2004 and 2005 David was my patient, kind and knowledgeable host at Sound By Singer, and was the one who unwittingly caused me to fall in love with--and eventually 'wed'--Esoteric X-01, while he was singing the praise of the admittedly highly seductive sound of the Bel Canto PL-1A. . . and how is that for an ultimate paranymph 'malgrais lui'?

are we talking Dave Lalin? i've met him a number of times at Singer over the years (not in the past 5 though since i moved west) and he absolutely knows his stuff (Matt was my salesman many years ago--i think back at Innovative now)

btw, Nuforce is the real deal. i would never pay up for huge SS amps again. i've also had the BAT VK 75SE up against it...its closer than you might expect. not quite the liquidity/mids of the BAT, but the bass is more ballsy and the highs are outstanding. the bat is better depending on your needs---i just don't listen to tons of music anymore, so ended up selling my tube gear. i'm more of a sports junkie these days.

KR

>>Personally I think the combination of tubes in the front end or preamplifier driving the Nuforce is the winning combination. The amplifiers really do work wonderfully well with tubes.<<

David, I agree 100% with your findings. I am a member of our local audio club and we listened to my Nuforce Ref. 9s (before upgrading them to V2) with superb electronics and speakers (Resolution Audio CD-player/pre-amp with Great Northern Sound mods) along with Gamut L-3s (BTW... these are amazing speakers!) and I wasn't impressed with the sound. Others in attendance were, but I wasn't. Just wasn't my taste.

However, in my system with my digital front-end - an APL Denon 3910 which has a tube output stage and a built-in attenuator, it's a completely different story. I am running my front-end directly into my Nuforce amps and the combination sounds magical... much different than the RA/Gamut combination.

So system synergy is very important with these amps (in particular) in my experience.

GCIL,
I have a resolution Audio Opus 21 and I briefly tried to drive my NF ref9SE v2 into my Gallos ref 3 II directely through the output of the Opus 21: I only kept it for 15 minutes and then inserted a Minimax tube preamp. The difference was absolutely night and day.
I have had the Opus for a couple of years and tried it with a lot of associated gear. It is my favourite CDP but in my experience (and many others') the line stage is absolutelly terrible: I always found that there is a real big increase in quality using the DIN output (which bypasses the volume control) compared to the DIN and the XLR.
So if you have heard the Nuforce directely driven by the Opus 21, I am not surprised that you didn't like them

i used a marsh p2000t with some tube rolling and isolation, preferred it over a nuforce p-8 preamp. i realize marsh is not in the top tier of tubed preamps. though it has received some good reviews. in the end it could not contend with my p-9.
i had been studying the use of tubed preamps with nuforce amps and it seems a lot of people like that combo.
thats why we can choose what appeals to our liking from so much great gear available. its a buyers market.

Viclondon,
Interesting. Thanks for the info... I'll pass this along to the owner of the Opus 21 player.

I agree, the player itself is an excellent sounding CDP.

My experience is with the integrated. I owned the original 50 watt v1, then upgraded to 100 watt v2, then upgraded to v2. I think the v2 is cleaner, clearer sounding, and more extended on top; possibly more extended on bottom not sure. Overall it is very noticable and I cannot hear any sonic downside to the upgrade.

Oddly the unit seems to get hotter on top than it used to. I read some place that with v2 on the integrated, the heat is redirected to the top of the unit instead of the bottom, for easier dissapation. I ran the unit 48 hours at substantial volume to break in some Thiel 1.6's and it got pretty warm. Not too hot to touch, but noticable. I do agree that venting the heat on top is better. I am surprised that a class D or class T or whatever would get so warm (It's not class A, right?). Anyway, I don't know if the monoblocks will have the same characteristic or not.

Art

I wonder if V2 is less efficient.

I've heard that the heat "issue", is just do to where they place the components inside the chasis on the V2. Which, I guess, is slightly different than where they were on the V1.

I plan to have my Ref 9's upgraded to V2 when they reduce the backlog. But I'm wondering if I should try a tube pre first?

Right now, I run my digitally modded SB3 into a Lite DAC AM and then straight to the amps.

Speakers are Vandersteen 3A's. I've never heard any amp control them like the Ref 9's

Wait 'till the reference 10 comes out, as early as 1/08, and you will then all believe in travel in time and in wormholes!

Well all i have my upgraded ref 9se V2 amps back. The new included bag is a nice touch. The crisp stamped V2 on the front panel is nicely done. After getting them wired and playing cds i was struck by the detail and air in the upper end. I play vinyl when in the sweet spot. My cd player is not in the same league as my analog gear. This is the best i have heard cds sound in my system. It was quite pleasing.
The time came for vinyl and again a step up in what 9se could deliver. The noise floor is bottomless. The attack of notes is crisp and precise, decay is surly well defined. Bass is strong, present, and tight. Sound stage is deep and wide, and imaging is spot on. Being that my ref 9se amps were well broke in, out of the box i am quite pleased. The addition of V2 to already fine amps is a real plus.
Speaking on vinyl gear a few posts above were discussing nuforce with tubed equipment. I have a ear 834p modded and tube rolled, its a good match with my nuforce gear. It now is a back up though.
My tom evens groove plus srx is as good a phono amp around.
IMHO

Anyone compared Nuforce to Audiosector Patek chip amps? I have the Pateks (running them XLR bridged), and have found them quite pleasing, with many of the attributes I am reading about in this thread (they are the SS amps 6Moons likes)

Aponter4: I believe! And in 6/08 the Ref 10v2 will be yet another order of magnitude better!

Yea cant wait, for just a few more dollars i again will have the latest and best nuforce amps, my warranty will start over again. The best part for those who dont want to upgrade, they wont have to! i will though.

Me too can't wait for version 10, 11 and 12 to come out. I will skip 13 though as it is an unnlucky number, but then will get 14 and 15 at the same time.
Nuforce gives the chance to keep up whit a fast growing technology at almost no cost, which is great. Also it is the best way to keep upgraditeis under control

9rw that's great news! Can you give us some insight into the kind of improvements the 10 will bring.

Aponter4: Well, you're the one who broke the news about the Ref 10. I'll defer to you, but we can only imagine what kind of improvements the v2 will offer. Dynamics to die for, silky highs, rock-solid bass and a tube-like midrange. It will make all other amps even more obsolete.

9rw for a dollar you can contact audiooracle, being he is a nuforce dealer. Get a pair for in home audition for a month. You may have to wait a bit its my understanding nuforce cant keep ref 9se v2 in stock. Then if your ears can describe the words you used above great. If not then all of those other amps out there are for your calling. If you are happy with what you already have thats great to.
viclondon what you said above is so true, you dont have to upgrade at all thats your call. After a few days under my amps belt i am glad i went with v2 upgrade, a no brainer for sure.
No matter what gear i am using, i listen to the music not the system, its the music i love.

Stltrains,

>>After a few days under my amps belt i am glad i went with v2 upgrade, a no brainer for sure.<<

I second that!! I don't have the SEs, I have the Ref 9s, and they are wonderful sounding amps. The upgrade was indeed a NO BRAINER. While everyone else is debating about the merits of Class D amps and Nuforce's continuous upgrades, I am enjoying music like never before!

I personally believe that any company who rests on their laurels and stops innovating is dead in the water. The name of the game for any technology company is "Innovate Or Die". And the fact that Nuforce is offering its customers an upgrade path to their latest innovations is a tremendous service.