I owned a pair of Rowland Model 201s (same amp modules as in the Concerto), and bought a very early model Nuforce Ref 8. The Ref 8 was horrible to listen to but somehow it seemed that underneath a nasty hardness to mids and treble there was something good happening. So I played around with the Ref 8 and more or less came up with the same mods as Nuforce did in the Ref 8.02. The sound was so good I sold the Rowlands and ordered a pair of Ref 9.02s. So if it was me, it would be the Nuforce not the Rowland. It is hard to describe but there is something that sounds more real, more truly transparent to the original event about the Nuforce. Both the Rowland and the Nuforce do similar things, but I reckon the Nuforce just does it better.
