Edge M8M vs NuForce

Bill. Earlier this year I had owned the Edge M8M with a pair of Wilson Sophia's and the Nuforce 9.02's . The Edge is a sonically pure amp (after lot's of warmup) and worked well with a bevy of Linestages that I sampled such as the ARC Ref2 , the Lamm Ll2 , Sonic Frontiers Line 3 and the remarkable Music First Passive . The Edge always had me wanting to turn up the volume , so clean was it's presentation ...never offensive .

I had use of a pair of Nuforce 9.02's with the option to buy and were extensively used with the Music First Passive . The amps took some time to warm up (24 hours) and I left them on full time . With the Wilson's and the ARC CD7 as a source , the depth , soundstage width and bass was nothing less then stellar . There was a see through quality and a sense of layering I had not experienced before .

The amps are user friendly , 7 lbs of WAF , run cool and can be run in Balanced mode . A word of caution , these are extremely power cord sensitive . With the wrong ones in place , the amps can sound hard and take on a digital glare . I used ESP , Audience and settled on the Marigo Ultra Ref 2 . The IC's I used were the Cardas Golden Ref in XLR's .

I am of the old school , big is better and it took me about a week to settle them into the system . I'd take them out of the boxes , put them in for an hour , put them back in their boxes . It took lending out my Edge for a week to really give these amps a try and I was glad I did . Bang for the buck , they are remarkable .

I would have kept these amps but the arrival of a pair of Genesis 501's precluded that . According to the manual , these are not to be used in a biamp situation in which the sub(s) amps signal is derived from the Nuforce speaker leads such as the REL or Genesis . Apparently this will create havoc and I do not know why nor understand this .

Different amps , different sound . You will probably be able to sell The Edge for around what you will have to pay for the Nuforce's . Cabling and sourcing may be a little more trying than with the Edge . One thing for sure , your first impressions will be nothing less than jaw dropping , the bass is something else .

Hope this helps and good luck .

Dbtrucks, wait until you hear the Nuforce SEs before and especially after burn-in.

As good as the bass and treble are with the Ref 9s (among the very best), the SEs are significantly better and in a big way. With proper line conditioning installed it's almost like removing the last bottleneck in a given system.

6moons just released a review on the SEs and waxed accolades labeling the SE amps as at the top of the heap with only a handful of other amps regardless of price. However, I think 6moons concluding comments more appropriately reflect the performance of the Ref 9s because I think it's entirely possible that the SEs may be without equal.

Bill, in case you don't know Nuforce offers you a 30-day eval period. But my recommendation is to go for the full monty in the SEs.

Oh, yeah, I stopped being just an enthusiast immediately after evaluating the Nuforce Ref 9 amps last year and became a dealer for Nuforce. So please take my comments with a grain of salt.

-IMO

I owned a pair of the NuForce 9.02, and I just listened to a pair of the new SE versions of those amps at the HES show in LA a few days ago.

I sold the NuForce 9.02s after comparing them to the KR Audio monoblocks which I still have. I found the Nuforce to be a bit dry sounding compared to my KRs, and there was also a mid-base hump or emphasis which I found unwelcome. A fellow audiophile also confirmed this effect, and also noted that the KRs had better decay of notes. Overall, I found the KR amps gave me a shiver-down-my-spine thrill which elluded the Nuforce amps.

That said, I only tried the stock power cords and FIM gold power cords (and others have said power cord choice is important), and I did not have the Nuforce amps turned on for extended periods, and the previous poster suggests that this is very important. Still, I compared the amps under identical circumstances, and the Nuforce 9.02 didn't quite do it for me. The SE amps I listened to at HES did sound very good though, but then it's hard to really isolat what I heard, given the other electronics in the chain and different listening environment.

Best advice I can give is to listen for yourself, and trust your ears. I bought the Nuforce based on all the hype I heard, and the hype didn't quite match my own personal impressions.

Happy listening!

Just wanted to congratulate dbtrucks on a most informative, balanced and thoughtful answer to OP's question. These are rare enough to warrant recognition.

I would like to thank all of you for your time and invaluable contributions. After listening to all of you and some personal, auditions, I think I will stay with the edge. IM just not convinced the NuForce is an amp that will endure. I was, at first, curious because of all the rumors about this new technology, and of course, the very attractive prices. True with most new products and marketing plans, the NuForce has risen to the cost level of many, many, good amplifiers, and if the hype continues, you will see prices rise even higher. I certainly don't reject new technology, however, as with the Gain Card, I don't think this new type of amplification is for me.