First Listen: NuForce Reference 9 V3 Special Edition Monoblock Amplifiers

Posted by: Chris Martens at 4:04 pm, December 4th, 2009

·    Upper Mids/Highs: I’m still forming impressions. Straight out of their cartons, the amps struck me as sounding quite dry/bright, but things seem to be smoothing out nicely with additional playing time. I wouldn’t say the R9V3SE has achieved the promised treble “sweetness” just yet, but I’ll give it some time and see where we are 50 or so hours from now.

·    One insight: while these certainly aren’t “wiry” or “metallic-sounding” amps, they are very revealing—so that I would say they are not particularly tolerant or forgiving of less than excellent program materials. But with really good records… they’re already pretty impressive.

Stay tuned for more comments over time and possibly a full-length review later on.

In the meantime, let me pass on one tip from NuForce VP Casey Ng for those of you conducting your own listening experiments with these amps. Casey suggests trying the amps with NuForce’s new “Focused Field” speaker cables (which is what I am doing). The cables are designed for general-purpose use with any type or brand of amplifier and speakers, but they do have a special shielding topology that the NuForce amps can (and Casey concedes that this is a more or less undocumented feature) leverage to achieve “a more three-dimensional and cleaner sound.” Interesting, no?