"the upgrade company" <component mods> - Page 5  

Originally Posted by Leviathan.jk

denon a1xva: Was the TUC upgraded Oppo player a SE version or the normal version?

Because the comparison is a little off if it was a SE version. A non-upgraded SE version should beat a stock Oppo 83 without any upgrade. You cannot know if the TUC upgrade made the difference or not .

Originally Posted by denon a1xva

Today we did a little test between a TUC (The upgrade Company) upgraded Oppo 83 SE (signature Edition) and a stock Oppo.

I have to tell you that i´ve never heard a stock Oppo before and ordered one directly from The upgrade company, so i could not tell the difference.


The upgraded version did run a 100 hours, according to David Schulte the burn in period is a little longer.

We connected the Oppo signature edition only analog 7.1.

We played sacd, cd´s, and we tested a blu ray music disc from ´Sting´ live.


The big differences we´ve noticed were that the midrange was better and the voices were much more clearer than the stock edition.

We played from Jazz to Soul.. the Oppo sounded great and didn´t have any problems.. playing any kind of music.

The owner of the stock Oppo was really impressed with the Signature edition and we both agreed that it was worth the extra money.

On PQ there was no difference between the Signature and the stock but that will also improve in time when the videoboard will be used.

The test was done with stock cables (speaker cable, power ).

I also own a Denon A1XVA dvd player but i really think the Signature Oppo sounded better analog.


In February next year when my new house will be finished, i will be connecting the Oppo signature edition to my Denon AVC A1HDA amp and the rest of my setup and then i can really compare it with my old setup.

It´s a shame you guys live on the other side of the ocean ;-) or else i would have passed by with this Signature Edition to do a little shootout test.





For the people who read this first and got a little confused:

On the moment we have:

Oppo BDP 83
Oppo BDP 83 SE (Special edition)
Oppo BDP 83 SE (Signature edition from The upgrade company)
Oppo BDP 83 SE Nuforce edition

Thanks for reading

Originally Posted by Leviathan.jk

denon a1xva: Was the TUC upgraded Oppo player a SE version or the normal version?

Because the comparison is a little off if it was a SE version. A non-upgraded SE version should beat a stock Oppo 83 without any upgrade. You cannot know if the TUC upgrade made the difference or not .

Originally Posted by welwynnick

Would anybody be interested to hear about my experience with The Upgrade Company?

Originally Posted by classba

I wouldn't spend another dime with that company regardless what he can or cannot do but thats me now after the whole drama. Wait until it goes pear shape and you will see the result of it all just like my experience.

You guys will die if I post here the exchanged e mails when he was caught out by me/ Emm Labs lying about my new parts which by the way, he is still holding.

He blab on about high end companies using cheap components in their players so why not design one from ground up himself if he is so dame cleaver and it will sell bucket loads worldwide?????

Originally Posted by WilliamZX11

In a sighted test, without level matching, we will never know if the TUC upgrade made a difference.

They expected to hear a difference, and they did. What a shocker.

Originally Posted by welwynnick

Hi All,

I don't post here very often these days for one reason or another, but neither am I a newbie. I studied HiFi during my physics and electronics university course; I worked at a high-end audio dealer; and have participated in a number of blind AV shoot-outs at a leading dealer here in the UK, with pretty much all the best AV kit at our disposal.

During the course of this year I've had a stock SC885, Arcam AV9, Lexicon MC12 and a Proceed AVP-2, amongst others, in my system for several months at a time.

In July I bought an upgraded Onkyo SC885 from the Upgrade Company WITHOUT having heard it beforehand. This was quite a leap of faith at the time, as you can imagine, and I'm sure David Schulte would agree that my dithering and indecision was protracted and frustrating.

Would anybody be interested to hear about my experience with The Upgrade Company?

regards, Nick

Originally Posted by rno63

Level matching? At least I will know not to trust your review on equipment now!

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Chu Gai

Well, does he provide measurements before and after performing the work so that the consumer can see the changes and be assured that the modified unit has not had a parlor trick applied to it or that it's performance metrics are now worse than before?

Does he provide a list of equipment he has in order to test and verifty problems and changes that he makes? Are there photographs and in this age of YouTube, what about a video walk-through of his facility which appears to be nothing more than a private home next to a golf course?

Does he do nothing more than swap out non-critical and inexpensive parts with parts that have an audiophile moniker and a price tag to boot?

Since fiddling with the innards of most equipment voids the manufacturer's warranty will he, after modifying your unit, honor the full warranty even if a problem develops that is not due to whatever modification he performed?

Since he has made mention of the BBB (of which he is not a member) and the state Attorney General as indicators that he has a spotless record, does he tell each and every customer where and how they can contact either of them if they are unsatisfied?

Just wondering folks.

Originally Posted by Chu Gai

Well, does he provide measurements before and after performing the work so that the consumer can see the changes and be assured that the modified unit has not had a parlor trick applied to it or that it's performance metrics are now worse than before?

Does he provide a list of equipment he has in order to test and verifty problems and changes that he makes? Are there photographs and in this age of YouTube, what about a video walk-through of his facility which appears to be nothing more than a private home next to a golf course?

Does he do nothing more than swap out non-critical and inexpensive parts with parts that have an audiophile moniker and a price tag to boot?

Since fiddling with the innards of most equipment voids the manufacturer's warranty will he, after modifying your unit, honor the full warranty even if a problem develops that is not due to whatever modification he performed?

Since he has made mention of the BBB (of which he is not a member) and the state Attorney General as indicators that he has a spotless record, does he tell each and every customer where and how they can contact either of them if they are unsatisfied?

Just wondering folks.

Originally Posted by welwynnick

There are some pertinent questions coming up there, and there are answers to be had. I'm snowed with end-of-year work, so have little time to post. Briefly, I can see that the big issue with TUC is the non-disclosure of the mods. I understand TUC's reasons for this, its not going to change, and expect it will make it a hard sell.

Its been discussed over and over again, and always returns to the non-disclosure issue. Thats just an obstacle that prospective customers will have to overcome. I DID cross that particular barrier, and I admit that it was indeed difficult.

As far as support is concerned, I did have an issue with an upgrade, and I could describe what happened if people are prepared to listen without prejudice. If everyone is determined that their minds are already made up, then I shall keep to myself all the answers that you would like to know.

I'm not an AVS regular these days for good reason. I believe I can help to answer a lot of question, but I have no wish to climb into another bear-pit.

regards, Nick

Originally Posted by welwynnick

Briefly, I can see that the big issue with TUC is the non-disclosure of the mods

Originally Posted by welwynnick

During the course of this year I've had a stock SC885.

In July I bought an upgraded Onkyo SC885 from the Upgrade Company WITHOUT having heard it beforehand.

Originally Posted by RUR

... Personally, I wouldn't go near TUC with a ten foot cattle prod.

Originally Posted by welwynnick

As far as support is concerned, I did have an issue with an upgrade, and I could describe what happened if people are prepared to listen without prejudice. If everyone is determined that their minds are already made up, then I shall keep to myself all the answers that you would like to know.

Originally Posted by RUR

That's an important issue Nick, but there are others. Fairly transparent shilling on the interweb is a huge turnoff for me, and Mr. Schulte's demeanor seals the deal. Personally, I wouldn't go near TUC with a ten foot cattle prod.

Originally Posted by welwynnick

I'm part of an enthusiastic AV community in SE England that organises meets at dealers and homes, to play music and films. Face-to-face get-togethers aren't easy to organise, even on a small island like ours, but they're much better and more enjoyable than keyboard bashing. They give everyone the chance to meet like-minded people and listen to other equipment, rather than rely on unreliable published pro- and user-reviews. We also buy, sell, loan and swap equipment extensively. During this year I tried a Pioneer BDP-09, Denon 2500 & 3800, Onkyo SC885, Arcam AV9, Lexicon MC-12B, Proceed AVP-2, Denon AVP-A1HD, and many receivers and power amps.

The Onkyo 885 was quite good in comparison with receivers, but fell some way behind the better processors. Everyone knows its poor with analogue inputs, but the surprise was how much better the AV9 was with CD or DVD audio over SPDIF. Another surprise was just how much better the Proceed was than even the Arcam. Hoping that a TUC upgrade to the Onkyo might bring it up to the level of the others, I contacted several previous customers, and tried to validate the testimonials that you see on the TUC web-site. On the basis of their recommendations, I bought an upgraded SC885 - yes without having heard it before. I suppose it was some risk in this, and I was quite apprehensive.

I dutifully burnt it in for a few weeks, and then started comparing it to the other processors. I compared audio and video sources, SD and HD audio; analogue and digital connections; compressed, lossless and linear coding; and player and processor decoding. I carefully level-matched everything to +/- 0.25 dB, which turned out to be very important with the different codecs, and dodged the usual bass-management and DRC prat-falls. I got friends and family to help with driving and listening. Processors are complicated to get right, and I even developed a lengthy check-list to avoid connection and setting errors. I used a range of speakers, and very different rooms, with room-equalisation on and off where applicable. All comparisons were subjective of course, and were a mixture of sighted and single-blind tests.

So, anybody want to hear whether the upgrade made any difference?

Nick

Originally Posted by King George II

I stumbled on to a discussion on blu-ray.com's forum a few months ago, where some posters were giving absurdly rave reviews of some audiostuff modded by the Upgrade Company....

Originally Posted by welwynnick

I did a levels sensitivity test, by setting the Proceed or Lexicon 1.0 dB higher and repeating the test. With everything I did, sometimes with a small margin and sometimes large, the Onkyo was the best.

Originally Posted by jtm55

why would anyone spend money to upgrade equipment?

Originally Posted by welwynnick

The modifications do indeed improve the sound quality, but that is not enough to justify the cost, risk and inconvenience of having the mods done.
BR, Nick

Originally Posted by jtm55

Hi All

Without stepping on anyones toes , why would anyone spend money to upgrade equipment? If the person isn't satisfied , why not just buy something better? I really don't get it.

Originally Posted by welwynnick

The first thing to explain is that I haven't done a direct comparison between stock and modified Onkyo, though it could be arranged. There's probably not much point going any further unless its understood why that wouldn't serve much purpose. The modifications do indeed improve the sound quality, but that is not enough to justify the cost, risk and inconvenience of having the mods done. I wanted to evaluate HOW MUCH improvement there was against a subjective scale of established benchmarks, and try to gauge how far up the scale the Onkyo went - how much value was added if you like. Did the upgrade add more performance than it did to the cost?

The stock Onkyo is a nice performer with bitstream inputs from a BD player, but in other areas it is weak. The Arcam is rather better with SPDIF, and a lot better with analogue audio inputs - as long as it's set to analogue pass-through. All the processors suffer from noticeable degradation when the analogue inputs are digitised (though the Lexicon was better than the others). The Lexicon and Proceed were a smaller step-up compared with the Arcam - slightly more transparent with analogue, more bandwidth, a bigger window if you like. They were significantly better with spdif, which was slightly surprising considering what I had read.

The Proceed and Lexicon were easy enough to distinguish, but difficult to chose. The AVP-2 was a bit more serious and analytical, the Lexicon warmer and lighter on its feet. I thought the Proceed was best overall, but one friend preferred the Lexicon, and I have to say I'd be happy with one of those. The difference between the Onkyo and the Proceed is large, its not a subtle golden ears type of thing. It changes the way you set-up your system and causes dissatisfaction with everything that you used to be happy with. I thought the Proceed was everything that Zissou said it was, though I do think the Lexicon is very close, and better than many people make out. I've also spent quite a bit of time listening to a Denon AVP-A1HD this year, and although its better than the stock Onkyo, none of us were ever impressed with it. I doubt it's as good as the AV9 with analogue inputs, and the Lexicon MC-12B (and presumably MC-12HD) seemed significantly better.

Now onto to the upgraded Onkyo, and I'll start with the things that are wrong, because that won't take long. Its big and ugly. I found it difficult to configure. It also won't make a poor source sound great. When I tried playing a CD on my LG BD player over HDMI, the best you could say was that it was neutral and refined. It wasn't transparent though, the soundstage was shallow, and it needed a better source to work well.

That apart, the upgraded Onkyo was better than all of them at everything. I tried everything I could think of to upset the comparison. I compared audio and video sources, SD and HD audio; analogue and digital connections; compressed, lossless and linear coding; and player and processor decoding. I carefully level-matched everything to +/- 0.25 dB, which turned out to be very important with the different codecs, and I dodged the usual bass-management and DRC prat-falls. I did a levels sensitivity test, by setting the Proceed or Lexicon 1.0 dB higher and repeating the test. With everything I did, sometimes with a small margin and sometimes large, the Onkyo was the best. The one exception to this is when I accidentally used a power lead with the hot and cold wires crossed over. In that case, the Proceed did have better transparency and detail, but when I returned to the correct cable, the balance was restored.

I have to go do some work now, but I'll come back later with something more descriptive and less procedural

BR, Nick