Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
Almost everyone who developed original NuForce products, and are responsible for NuForce reputation, are still with NuForce. Only one original member of NuForce is not with Optoma and he was let go from NuForce way before the acquisition.
Jyri - NuForce/Optoma
I do not have any personal interest in either. Just done a lot of reading about their products in a last few years as I was interested in getting an integrated amp. Then I discovered other products by both brands: dacs and headphone amps... At the end I did not purchase from either any went with other brands.
But the part I am concerned now is that we lost you as a customer. May I ask which dacs and amps you bought? :)
And thank you for the feedback!
The NuPrime unit that I considered after I discovered that brand was NuPrime IDA-8 that gets stellar feedback on Audiophile boards and scores very high in reviews. I almost pulled the trigger on that one, but at the end few reasons made me go with another brand. First, I was slightly puzzled by their explanation how their technology works. Second, limited dealer availability in USA...
At the end I purchased a well reviewed unit from a well known MidFi-HiFi brand.
Then I researched the small headphone Dacs and again I got interested in NuForce uDAC3. Very similar story here. Good reviews, but not stellar. As far as NuPrime goes they got a similar unit for a little more money - NuPrime uDSD. Stellar reviews all over. A good example would be a very credible The Hans Beekhuyzen Channel on Youtube that reviewed both units. Reading the reviews it clearly seems that NuPrime unit is superior to NuForce unit. The only negative thing for me personally about NuPrime unit is the input on the side of the DAC which is just bizarre design to me.
I also did read quite a lot about the unit that is now on Massdroop - NuForce Icon HDP DAC/Amp. Lots of positive, but also a good amount on negative feedback. For the money there are many other units that score much higher. In my opinion based on my research it is not worth the retail price or the Massdrop price at this point and time. I love the aesthetics, but question the technology as it is quite few years old. At the price point there are other units that have better sampling rates and things like visual display and other features which at $449 retail is reasonable to expect.
I hope you understand that I have no negative agenda towards NuForce and actually interested in some of your products. Like right now I am in the market for quality IEM headphones and I really like NuForce IEM headphones visually, but there seems to be many better options based on reviews...
If you want to prove me wrong and make me a believer you can contact me privately...
And finally, yes I would like to make you a believer. Could you give me your email address please?
Jyri, you can contact me at zha2zha@outlook.com...
I will send you an email.
My first purchase in "audiophile equipment" was the original NuForce uDAC. Blew my mind away the first time I heard the sound quality difference. Since then I have been loyal to the NuForce brand, having purchased several uDAC variants as well as the NuForce ICON-DAC (not HDP). You could say I was a NuForce fanboy.
I was recently in the market for an integrated DAC/AMP, just like ld100 I was looking at DDA-100/DDA-120. I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the DDA-120 (through World Wide Stereo on Amazon). Box arrived and first impression was this unit was repackaged and resold to me as new (damaged packaging, hand prints on the unit itself, etc.). Attempts to contact Optoma about the issue went unanswered. I decided to set it up anyway to see how it performed.
The audio quality of the DDA-120 seemed very good. The mids were much more pronounced than my previous setup (Yamaha RV1600). I was driving it via MacMini and toslink. When I switch to the USB DAC I had many issues with the DDA-120, audio would work for 5-10 seconds then just cut out. Having alot of experience with previous NuForce USB DACs I debugged as much as I could. Again attempts to contact Optoma went unanswered.
At the end of the day I unfortunately returned the DDA-120. In the past NuForce customer support was *superb*. Emails would be returned usually within 30-45 minutes. I have no doubt that the quality of the NuForce product line has remained mostly unchanged. When it worked the DDA-120 sounded awesome, however lack of customer support left me in the lurch and forced to move to a different brand.
I bought the ICON-DAC new for $299 back in 2014. If the HDP variant is anything like the ICON-DAC the current Massdrop price tag seems a bit steep to me. I cannot find much in comparison between the ICON-DAC and HDP other than the HDP includes an optical input. A price tag of $229-249 may be more appropriate.
Once again, my deepest apologies for this very unfortunate experience.
I do appreciate this feedback and we will take actions to improve our customer service.
-Jyri