Anyone using the Transistor Research LabsM 225's

Since my D-225 is for sale, I wasn't going to post here. I didn't want it to look like I was promoting my ad. But since Tvad already mentioned it, I'll throw in my opinion.

I owned NuForce Ref 9's & Ref 9 V2's for about 1 1/2 years. I really enjoyed them, the detail and especially the bass, was better than anything I had previously heard. And for the money, they were a bargain. The only downside (for me), they weren't the most "musical" amps.

After the NuForce amps, I bought a Belles 150A Reference. Again, I really liked this amp. Not quite the bass of the NuForce, but more musically involving. This was going to be my last amp and I was hoping to buy a second and use them as monoblocks. Then the I saw the TRL D-225 for sale.

Enter the TRL D-225. Whole new world! As someone else wrote, all of the typical audiophile adjectives fail to do justice to what I heard. It just sounds like music. Unmatched low-end control of my Vandersteen 3a Signatures and absolutely, positively dead quiet. Crazy quiet. Paul recently contacted me and offered to upgrade mine to the new power supply, which according to him, will make it quieter yet.

I have no inside knowledge and I haven't opened mine up, but for what it's worth, the D-225 does not sound like a digital amp to me.

Grannyring and Ecruz if either of you ever hear the SE version of the Nuforce Reference 9V2 I would be very interested in a comparison to what you are hearing with the TRL products. I recently acquired the SE version and they sound quite musical to me, not cold or warm, more like neutral. Chris Martens, reviewer for Absolute Sound, for example, has followed the evolution of Nuforce and reports Dec 2008 that with the V2 SE, Nuforce finally reached a "high level of sweetness that is intimate focused and pure".

I did not hear the SE version.

I have heard the latest D225 stereo amp compared to the Samson mono's. As good as the D225 is, trust me when I say the Samsons are a step forward. The main reason is the new power supply. Also, each mono amp has the same sized transformer as used in the one stereo amp. There is also more room to work inside the monos making for better layout etc.

I did not hear the SE version of the Nuforce amps, but it seems Ecruz thinks even the D225 amp surpassed it. My old ST225 integrated TRL amp bested the combination of Canary CA339 monoblock tube amps ($14,000) and a fully loaded Audio Horizons 2.1 tube preamp ($3200). My old ST225 integrated is not nearly as good as the Samson and Dude!

I wish I had tried the Nuforce SE's so I could have more first hand experience with those amps.

12-22-08: Grannyring

I did not hear the SE version of the Nuforce amps, but it seems Ecruz thinks even the D225 amp surpassed it.

Ecruz stated he did not hear the SE version of the NuForce Ref9V2, so any judgement he made was regarding the non-SE version.

It's important in these discussions to keep model numbers and iterations correct, since listeners hear definite differences among them.