Just a few observations to throw into this. I had a pair of Rowland Model 201s, and bought a very early pair of Nuforce Ref 8, the 70W version. The Nuforce was almost impossible to listen to, being hard from the upper midband up. I then opened them up to discover Nuforce obviously had no idea of how to implement an audio design. Not surprising. It is a rare firm that can do the fundamental design and the commercial design too. So I started modding the heck out of it. In some cases all that was required was an improvement in a cap or a resistor quality level (such as they had a poyester cap as the input CD blocking cap - how could they?!!!). Everything else really came down to the fact the design was ultra-wideband, presumably because the theory says this will give you perfect phase response. But in the real world ultra-wideband meant noise in the system, and users would experience different noise issues depending on their situation and particularly in terms of cabling. It took a lot of experimenting to figure out the best ways to reduce the RFI without screwing with the sound but the biggest bang for the buck was putting a choke on the speaker output. Essentially I had to figure out how to eliminate noise getting in through the power cord, the interconnect and the speaker wires. After a lot of hours of 'fun', and very few dollars of playing around, these babies sound utterly glorious with a natural sweetness and delicacy, tied with a vice-like grip to the swing and flow of the music. The 70W version has no problems driving my Verity speakers. The Rowlands have been sold. I am hoping to get a pair of Ref9.02s to do a quick comparison soon. I suspect Nuforce has been doing mainly what I have been doing - implementing the original, and obviously excellent, design properly.
