Nuforce

Tvad, your statements are especially disappointing because as an owner of the APL 3910, you have experienced and/or witnessed many revisions to your ucdp but without apparent protest from you. Was APL giving you the best he could in his in his first revision? Perhaps it was the best he could reasonably and cost effectively do at that time. What about APL’s latest revision? And what about the next revision?

There is some similarity here, however, NuForce's revisions are corrections to problems as far as I can ascertain from their own posts on Audocircle, whereas Alex's revisions are improvements based on new DACs, and other new design breakthroughs, not fixes to problems. Downtime is annoying, and it applies to the APL, too.

But just because these companies come out with an upgrade does not mean we have to jump on it. And if you feel cheated somehow, get over it. You obviously thought the product was worth the money when you bought it. So it’s only in your own head if you feel cheated that the mfg’er has now improved on it.

C'mon. You can't be serious? Get over it? If someone purchases a NuForce amp, and two months later there is a revision, and the owner feels cheated he/she should get over it? NuForce should pay for round trip shipping to have the amp upgraded, IMO.

By your reckless and rather silly reasoning you repeatedly attempt to put Nuforce on the hook and you won’t let them off.

Sorry, Stenho, I disagree with your characterization. Potential NuForce owners should be aware of the upgrade chain. Clearly, no NuForce owner is going to want their amps to be a revision behind because they're not getting the best sound NuForce has to offer, and the re-sale of their amps is taking a big hit by not being current. This applies to any audio product.

I certainly haven't said NuForce should remain stagnant. On the contrary, they should continue to develop and improve their products like any other company. Hey, it's up to potential owners to decide if they want to deal with possible downtime due to upgrades, but they should be aware of the possibility.

In fact, I’d be surprised if there exists an amp under the $10k price that could go toe-to-toe with these beautiful little guys.

I'll put my $10k VAC amp up against the NuForce any day of the week. Furthermore, in three years of ownership, I haven't one day of downtime due to the VAC.

NuForce is getting great reviews, and lots of them. They are probably well deserved. However, if I was considering buying a NuForce amplifier, I'd want to know what I was getting into...in all respects, including any potential downside to ownership. System downtime due to continual upgrades is a downside to ownership of any audio product.

NuForce performance better than almost anything up to $10K?

I would love to hear someone A/B the H2oAudio Signature mono's ($5,500 retail) with either the 9.02 or the 9 SE, or next months 9.1 SE...

Tvad, I think you do potentially err in your presupposition.

You seem to insinuate that other mfg’ers upgrades are for reasons different than Nuforce’s.

Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Nuforce is just a bit more honest than other mfg’ers? I’m not saying they are or are not. But did you ever stop to consider this?

For example, I am aware of a component mfg’er whose distributor performed a wholesale sell off of his entire inventory of the pricey component, thus rendering the product worthless in the marketplace.

To salvage the product and perhaps the company, it is my understanding the mfg’er announced a new and improved version of the product but there were supposedly no changes except cosmetic.

The product was salvaged. But the point being is that neither you, I nor anybody else really have any idea why any company truly announces a new revision.

Whether that story is true or not, we’ll never know. But if it is true, there is just one deceptive reason for a mfg’er’s revision.

That is why I think your’s and other’s comments regarding this particular mfg’er are irresponsible, non-sensical, and potentially damaging.

Because you and others pretend you do know the real motivation for Nuforce performing a number of revisions. Shoot, for all we know maybe they don’t even know why. And that is where I think you and others are potentially deceiving the reader into thinking you are in the know. When the fact of the matter is you and others are just as much in the dark as anybody else.

Perhaps it’s your speaking as fact and authoritative rather than guessing or hypothesizing that I find troubling.

-IMO

You seem to insinuate that other mfg’ers upgrades are for reasons different than Nuforce’s.

No, I never insinuated any such thing. I specifically mentioned NuForce's history of releasing upgrades to correct issues and/or problems with their amps...RFI interference for example. I'd be happy to provide a list of references if your require them. They are well documented by NuForce representatives in NuForce's own discussion forums on AudioCircle. The only other manufacturer I mentioned was APL, and I previously explained the differences between the APL and NuForce upgrades.

NuForce can release a revision every week if they like. My one point...and only point...is the system downtime, inconvenience and expense to the NuForce owner of boxing up and shipping the amps to Nuforce for updating. It's a pattern of which potential buyers should be aware. Yes, Ref 8 or 9 owners have the option to keep their older versions, but I doubt many will choose to do so.

Finally, one by-product of new technology development is the owner-as-beta-tester. Many owners of new technology seem to accept this as a part of ownership. Most NuForce owners certainly do, since they view the NuForce upgrades as a positive aspect of ownership.

Perhaps this is a new paradigm to which I must grow accustomed.

We made the changes in version 9.02 to fix overheat protection and sonic performance improvement.
We had a debate at that time whether to release it or not.
The advises that I (yes, I personally is responsible for this decision) received from dealers is that we should just follow what many manufactures do in the industry. Track the chances internally with the serial number and don't announce it. Ship new products with the upgrade quietly. If customers have problem, we quietly replace it for them. Then nobody is going to complain that we have to many revisions (after all the upgrades for Ref 8, we should avoid doing that).

My biggest problem with this decision is that I will leave all my previous customers in the dark and deny them of an improvement. We want to build a company with superior product and customer satisfaction. So I decided that we should bite the bullet and not compromise our integrity. I told my guys that we'll take the heat and just try our best to explain our philosophy. Someday people will understand. Having said that, there is no more upgrades for Ref 9. version 9.02 is the last one. We beat the design to death. Ref 9 SE is a higher end product costing a lot more. But keeping our strategy of offering the best as an option to Ref 9 customers, Ref 9 can be upgraded to the SE.

All Nuforce Reference series products can be upgraded with new circuit board or power supply when new technology becomes available.