Nuforce

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.

How about price comparison between H2O and Nuforce 9SE? Maybe more apples to apples here. This would be a good fly wieght chmpionship battle. My money would go on the 9SE just because of his quickness and punch. Although we have to wait for the 9SE to mature a bit. Maybe we give the 9.02's the first title shot and see what happens before big brother arrives.

I just received my pair of Nuforce SEs two days ago.

They are really something, even right out of the box with significant improvements within the first 35 hours.

JTKTTA (Just to keep this thread alive)

Stehno - thanks for updating this thread. Maybe we can catch the "Preamp deal of the century" thread!

I've had my 9.02's for about three months now and continue to be amazed and impressed. I will be sending mine in for the SE upgrade, though I frankly don't see how they could be much improved. Guess it will be one of theose "don't know it til you hear it" things.

BTW - are the SE's your first NuForce? If you upgraded, I would love to hear what areas you heard the most improvements in.

Also, while I have totally seperate, dedicated lines (20 amp) for the NuForces, I have been wondering lately if a power conditioner might further improve the sound. Anyone out there experiment with p. conditioners on the NuForces??

Stehno, congrats on your SE's. Let me know at the 150 hour mark. By the way I am using 3' speaker cables, what a difference that made. Put some nice thick jumper wires between the amps and speakers would probably improve more.
Denf, Stehno had the 9.02's before and I think 8.02's.
Let us 9.02 owners know how much different they are in % better in your system.
Thanks again Stehno!