Nuforce

No need for me to listen to a 10k tube amp or any other 10k amp. Give me another $2500 set up that you think is better and I would auditon it. It would have to be considerably better for me to even think about it. I feel the tube guys are defending themselves here because they know that Nuforce is the real deal$$$$. Some people who heard the 9.02 at CES said they sounded lean or thin. It was not the amps they were hearing. Put the right cabling and a highly upgraded cdp on these and the richness comes out with imaging that I did not think I would ever achieve unless I put 50k into a system. The only piece I am missing is there p8 pre amp. Plugging the 9.02's into dedicated lines also helped.

Plato, Woodburger, Jp1208, and Fiddler. Your common-sense postings are a breath of fresh air and are appreciated.

Who woulda' thunk there'd be such a resistence to these very dynamic and refined sounding little 7 lbs. cool looking and cool running $1250 amplifiers that are being competitively compared to $35k amps by professionals in the industry and confirmed by some to many enthusiasts?

And yes, (of course depending on the rest of the system as always) I too would have no problem letting these little guys go toe-to-toe with perhaps any amp out there regardless of cost. I only put the ficticious $10k cap in an earlier post so as not to further incite the crazed resistence.

You are correct, Fiddler, the customer is not always right. Especially when one is not a customer and perhaps never intends to become a customer.

The individual customer can be as right or wrong as anybody but I can certainly see where the collective customer as a whole is always right. This certainly is not the case here.

-IMO

Well, Stehno, so far Woodburger stands alone among the people's comments I've read, who have preferred the Nuforce against the admittedly more expensive H2O Sigs. Woodburger graciously pointed that out he knows of two who clearly preferred the H2O. I am anxious to hear the Nuforcem and H2O in a championship ring fight.

For any dealer, or owner in the N Cal area, I throw down the gauntlet.

System matching is key to how an amp will sound. I have incrementally improved my system's sound by relearning what makes my amps happy. I am simply amazed how much of all other component choices gravely effect the signal. There is a lot of grunge inherent in most wires, preamps, and front ends.

I imagine Nuforce owners are finding that out for themselves.

You guys don't appear to me to understand what is being said in terms of 'the customer being always right'. This is not saying the customer is right about the facts (if you read my post you will see I said just that). It is saying as a business, competition is for the customer, and the only source of wealth for a firm is due to the customer paying across money. The decision by the customer to part with money is based on that customers' view of reality at the time, and noone else's. Therefore that is the only version of reality that matters to the firm. The firm ought to work hard to affect the customers' view of reality, but the customers' actual view is the only relevant reality. Is this too existentialist for you? Yes, by the way, I have three successful businesses right now.

Haven't heard the H2O as they are not distributed/supported in my country (the Nuforce are). But for whatever reason I hear more potential in the Nuforce design than the IcePower design (have owned and played with both. This view appears to me to be borne out by others, eg, Ric Schultz reports his modified Nuforce amps beat out his modified IcePower amps.

But there is no doubt H2O have had more time, and have spent much more refining the H2O than Nuforce has on their Ref 9.02s. I would strongly suspect that putting a large (and expensive) conventional power supply on and Ice module would probably make it sound better than a (inexpensive) SMPS supply on a Nu module. So I suspect the view the H2O is better than the Ref 9.02 may well be correct. I guess it depends on your point of view as to whether the comparison is apples/apples or apples/oranges.