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Small MiraclesTM
If every new amplifier with a slight difference is proclaimed as a breakthrough, how are you supposed to know when a genuine breakthrough comes along?
Perhaps this will help.
The technology at the heart of amplifiers is between fifty and eighty years old. For those past eighty years, through the tube era and then solid state, amplifiers have improved only in tiny increments. Each tweak, each little refinement has been hailed as an important advance.
In the absence of anything more substantial, small improvements were welcome. But in truth, this inching progress has been less about real advances and more about living with the constraints and flaws of available technology.
Today, even the best audio amplifiers are a tribute to the ability of engineers to refine and disguise inherent limitations. Some of these limitations are described a little later.
Recent technological developments have made it possible to leave small improvements behind, and take a true leap forward.
Nuforce is built on new science for a new era of what is possible. It is designed from the ground up, using revolutionary Switching Amplifier technology, implemented in a new way with high-performance analog modulation, and protected by multiple patents.
Now forget this description. Forget labels and preconceptions, because this is real change, not simply another variation on an old theme.
If you have an open mind and open ears, prepare to be exhilarated.
What you will hear.
Your first and immediate impression will be a striking sense of purity and effortlessness.
You will instantly hear the absence of subtle distortions that are inherent in conventional amplifiers.
These distortions have been part of everyone’s listening experience for so long that we often fail to recognize them for what they are, or where they are coming from. Their presence is why so many people find it necessary to “tune” their system through the careful selection of components that lessen the subtle irritations.
In everyday life, low-level background noise is often noticed only when it stops, followed by a sense of relief. You will feel a similar and immediate sense of relief with Nuforce amps.
Sounds will simply be in the room, free from any mechanical emphasis. You will relax into the music, physically and emotionally. The leading edges of notes will have clarity and definition, with a startling absence of grit or artificial brightness. The soundstage will be wide, deep and open, without the “crowding” that typically happens when music becomes complex. You will not only hear precisely where the performers are on the soundstage. You will also hear and sense the spaces around them.
The midrange will be pristine and intensely present, equal to the best tube amplifiers, but with bass control they cannot equal. The size of the musical event will be realistic, and the rhythm and drive will be propulsive.
But above all, you will respond to a sense of naturalness and ease that allows you to feel the music, not simply hear it.
It’s as if a fine haze has been removed between you and the performance. As if your music has been set free.
Because it has.
This is how.
First, tubes. Then solid state.
Now, Nuforce Analog Switching ModeTM.
Conventional amplifiers, even the best of them, are typically a compromise of strengths and weaknesses. Good designers do their best to balance and disguise them, but they are constrained by the limitations of the underlying technology. Even though these limitations may not be consciously audible, their effect is a large part of that never-quite-satisfied feeling.
Nuforce employs highly advanced technology to achieve the previously unachievable.
There is an art to designing a great amplifier, but before art, there is science. To faithfully reproduce music, science demands that an amplifier must have all (not just some) of the following capabilities.
Many amplifiers are good in one or two areas, but good is a long way from perfect. So instead of inventing elaborate compromises to deal with old problems, Nuforce has developed entirely new technology that simply eliminates them.
Here is what Nuforce has been able to achieve:
Four important advances.
1. High bandwidth. Truly faithful music reproduction of music demands bandwidth, and plenty of it. Insufficient bandwidth damages delicate and crucially important spatial information, and strips away tonal complexities.
Nuforce amplifiers deliver high bandwidth, with a ruler-flat response from 20 to 50,000Hz. Only a very few, very expensive high-end linear amplifiers can achieve that.
This high bandwidth allows Nuforce to amplify complex music with faithfulness far beyond the capability of conventional amps, with a vast soundstage that most music lovers have never experienced, because all the spatial information is now completely reproduced.
2. An extremely high damping factor. Damping factor is simply a measure of an amplifier’s ability to drive and control a speaker. The higher the number, the better. An excellent tube amplifier might have a damping factor between 10 and 100. A very high quality Class-A amplifier might reach 200. A Nuforce amplifier has a damping factor greater than 4,000! And unlike conventional amps, Nuforce’s damping factor is totally unaffected by changes in audio frequencies.
In plain English, this means Nuforce will deliver wide, lightning-fast dynamics with any speaker.
3. Ultra-low distortion and noise. In conventional amplifiers, there is no such thing as a fixed specification for distortion or noise. Manufacturers invariably choose to quote the most flattering number, typically measured at 1 watt. But in reality, when power demands increase, so does distortion and noise.
Nuforce employs unique, patent-pending technologies that actively cancel out the distortion at every cycle of operation. As a result, Nuforce amplifiers have the same low distortion characteristics regardless of output level or audio frequency.
4. No phase shift. Many amplifiers use output filters, and these filters cause phase shifts. When there are phase shifts, spatial information cannot be accurate. Most amps have a phase shift over 45 degrees at 20kHz, going quickly towards 90 degrees as frequencies go up.
Nuforce amps are able to take the signal after the output filter, at the speaker terminals, to cancel all these distortions. This unique close-loop design results in zero phase shift across all frequencies.
Repeat, zero.
Many conventional linear amplifiers, whether they are solid state or tube, are able to excel at one or two of these vital factors. Nuforce’s achievement is the ability to excel in all these critical areas of amplifier design, without the old compromises.
But even all this is only part of the story.
Power corrupts.
The heart of every amplifier is its power supply. In conventional “linear” amplifiers, it is also the source of many problems that, with considerable effort and expense, can be lessened but never eliminated.
For example, traditional power supplies are slow. After a dynamic peak, even massive transformers cannot recover fast enough to avoid damaging the music signal. The simple truth is that even the best traditional “heavy iron” power supplies are bulky and inefficient. Their shortcomings can be expensively disguised but never eliminated.
Nuforce uses a fundamentally different kind of power supply that is dramatically smaller, vastly more efficient, and thousands of times faster than any conventional 50/60Hz linear power supply. It provides the instantaneous power required by high-performance music reproduction.
One more important fact you should know: in traditional amplifiers, even very high-end Class-A amps with huge cans of filter capacitors and highly regulated output, there is measurable 100/120Hz ripple voltage, which generates noise.
There is also transformer haze, and the electronic “grit” caused by the pushing and pulling of conductive devices.
Nuforce provides unequalled, fully regulated output without this ripple voltage, and without the noise. With this electronic smog gone, music emerges from a pristine black background, with delicate details and nuances intact. Purity has a sound, and it is beautiful.
Nuforce is not a Switching Digital Amplifier.
Switching Digital Amplifiers (commonly known as Class-D) were introduced some years ago. Right from the start, Class-D had enormous potential but some significant shortcomings. For example, they have limited usable bandwidth, and they use a fixed sawtooth waveform to modulate an audio signal. This is a source of audio pollution, because the waveform causes inevitable jittering that can mask or corrupt low-level music signals.
Instead of a sawtooth digital signal, Nuforce has developed and patented a naturally occurring analog modulating signal that flows with the music and adds no noise or jitter into the system.
Rather than using imperfect off-the-shelf solutions, Nuforce has developed and patented a series of breakthrough advances that have unlocked the huge potential of switching amplifiers, without the problems that pure digital switching amplifiers have been unable to solve.
In other words, the best of both worlds.
Goodbye, heat. Goodbye, hernias.
Heat and bulk used to be the badge of amplifier status.
Today, it is the badge of old technology.
Nuforce amplifiers switch at 500,000Hz – more than twice the highest CD sampling rate. At these higher frequencies, transformers and capacitors work far more efficiently and can be much smaller. In conjunction with a switch mode power supply, the entire Nuforce package is shockingly small and hugely capable.
Traditional linear power supplies are not just massive and heavy. They are also highly inefficient. Class-A amplifiers typically utilize little more than 15% of the power they draw, with the rest wasted as heat. High operating temperatures also shorten the useful life of the electrolytic capacitors used in abundance in these amplifiers.
The comparison with Nuforce amplifiers is stark.
A Nuforce amp is small enough to sit on the palm of your hand, and is highly efficient. Typically, 85% of the power is utilized, which means it runs very cool, barely warm to the touch, even when driven hard for long periods.
Put it all together, and …
Even if you are a highly analytical listener, time and again you will find yourself ceasing to evaluate the sound and, instead, realize that you have been drawn into the heart of the music.
There will be majesty and power, with an almost creamy purity. There will be bite and texture, but without fatigue or edginess. Your subconscious will no longer be distracted by tiny distortions that are absent in live performances, and absent with this new technology.
Nuforce will have you re-evaluating recordings you have previously found disappointing. A poor recording won’t magically become great, but it will be surprisingly listenable. A good recording will be as glorious as the rest of your system will allow. Better yet, many of the niggling little “problems” in the sound of your system may well simply disappear because they have been eliminated at their source.
Finally, here is one more difference between Nuforce and the high-performance amps you should be comparing it to, and it shows how fundamentally the audio world is changing. You won’t have to spend an obscene amount to enjoy this level of performance. Quite frankly, nosebleed prices are another badge of old technology.
After years of bigger, heavier, and more expensive, you can get off the road to nearly-but-not-quite.
Suddenly, hi-fi is exciting again.
You’ll reclaim a lot of real estate, stop causing neighborhood brownouts, and set your music free.
No promises. Instead, a guarantee.
Thank you for reading this far. It’s possible that you think we are over-promising.
Only fools make promises they cannot keep.
Everything you have read here is not a promise. It is a guarantee, backed by a 30-day money-back trial period, and it applies to the entire, growing family of Nuforce components.
Obviously, we love this technical stuff, but not for its own sake. We employ it in the service of two things above all.
Music. And magic.
So extend your hand and imagine a small, 3lb. box resting on your palm. If you are ready to hear what a huge advance sounds like, this small box will rock your world.
After eighty years, it’s time.
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