The Upgrade Company

Unsolicited Testimonialssent to David J. Schulte of The Upgrade Company LLC

Every client has paid The Upgrade Company LLC in full.   No kickbacks, no commissions, no fees of any kind for recommending our products and services.

I contacted The Upgrade Company to purchase a new upgraded Oppo 95.  Once home with about 48 hrs of running in on repeat I found it to be leaps and bounds above my very well burned in NuForce NX-93 player. I did not expect this level of improvement.  Prior to the NuForce I had a stock McIntosh MVP-861 and I've demo'd my share of high end CD/SACD players in my system.  None of these players are even in the same ballpark with the Upgrade Co. Oppo 95.  Enough said.

After hearing what Upgrade Co. did with the Oppo 95, my skepticism was gone.  I called them back up to discuss the rest of my system, to see what they could offer.  Upgrade Co. advised me to take the plunge to upgrade my $12,000 Linn Kisto surround preamp and my $7,000 Nuforce MCH 300-SE top of their line  amplifier. David explained how the final sound is only as good as the worst sounding component, never the best. Think of a fire hose: if you run it through a garden hose, the amount of water will be reduced. This is what happens when you run an Upgrade Co. maxxed-out upgraded player through stock electronics: half the upgrade or better is gone.  The stock equipment simply cannot keep up.  Sounded convincing, but both the Kisto and NuForce amp were already sounding great I thought. However after hearing what they did to the Oppo 95 I took the plunge and had my Linn Kisto and top of the line NuForce MCH-300SE amplifier upgraded. 

I got both back in about 2 weeks.  Hooked them up, let the system run for an hour or so while I did some work.  Entering the room I could hear immediately:  the sound quality had been transformed.  I sat down in the middle seat...My jaw literally hit the floor!

There's so much more bass weight & slam. Backgrounds are now a deep black.  There's dead silence between notes with far greater musicality and dynamics, higher resolution, the highs are sweeter than grandma's apple pie, and most important the midrange finally has that "live" presence.

Prior to having the Kisto and NuForce MCH-300SE upgraded, I was ready to dump my Martin Logan Ascent speakers:  the sound was always too forward and shy in the bass and highs, and spatially flat, despite lots of burn-in: probably well in excess of 1,000hrs.  I've never heard any Martin Logan's sound like this at the stores.  The sound stage my Ascent's throw is now wide open and deep.  They now have a strong low and extended top end, and good depth, not so forward at all. 

The new stock preamps, prepro's and amps I've demo'd barely made a difference. 

The Upgrade Co. "SE" upgrade is truly "Night and Day" superior. 

Doing business with The Upgrade Company is a no brainer. 

Oneil B.
Chicago, Illinois

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LINN UNIDISC SC "Signature Edition" Upgrade

Hello David,

A few months later...

Well, burn-in period is now over... and for the best I may sum up the end result of the upgrade as follows :

• High frequencies : Higher, more detailed, sweeter, with a very noticeable difference
• Mids : more open and more detailed
• Lower end : deeper but much more "tight" or detailed
• Overall : tonal signature all the same, but with deeper layers of the soundstage, more "air", and much less "noise" !!!

In one word : A great achievement especially when it comes to the pleasure of listening .

All my thanks again David

Sincerely,
T.D.
Belgium

Linn CD-12 24bit CD player "Signature Edition" upgrade -

I just got my Linn CD12 back from being upgraded by David Schulte of The Upgrade Company and thought I would quickly share my experience. Right out of the box, without any burn-in time, I am simply ecstatic with the outcome. All aspects of the CD12’s performance have been significantly improved, and I mean significantly. In fact, I have aborted my plan to buy a new SOTA CD Redbook player.

I have to admit I was a major skeptic about this whole “upgrade thing”. I was concerned that the process might improve some aspects of performance at the sacrifice of others. Or worse yet, that I would get the unit back and it wouldn’t work. But after reading about other Audiogoners experience, I decided to take the plunge.

The Linn CD12 is a CD Redbook only player and was introduced in 1999. It is no longer in production although Linn has a stockpile of parts to service their installed base indefinitely. Mine is the latest 24 bit model and I have had it for over three years. On a scale of “literal versus lyrical”, the CD12 is strongly biased in the lyrical direction and for many years was a reference in CD Redbook playback. The CD12 has brought me countless hours of sonic bliss.

However, in recent years new players have emerged that matched much of the CD12’s musicality while improving upon it in terms of resolution and dynamics. In my opinion, the CD12 has always been a touch laid back in those areas. And so many audiophiles have moved on to newer players, particularly those that wanted CD Redbook and SACD/DVD-A capability in one unit. Being at that cross roads myself, I began an intensive review of all the current reference level SOTA CD Redbook players. As I have a Linn Unidisk v1.1 that I use for SACD/DVD-A my focus was only on CD Redbook which comprises the majority of my CD collection anyway.

Well, as we all know, there is no shortage of great choices out there to chose from at all price points and that’s great for us as consumers. But the new SOTA units I auditioned, while improving on the CD12 in some areas, were just not enough of a “slam dunk” to get me to switch. So, being at a bit of an impasse, I ultimately decided to take the “upgrade plunge”.

While I know there are many excellent, well regarded equipment upgraders in the market, I decided to go with David Schulte of The Upgrade Company because: (1) he had lots of very positive references, (2) he had successfully upgraded lots of other high end CD players  (3) he had upgraded CD12's previously and had a clear plan of what needed to be done.

David’s approach is not to modify the unit’s original circuit designs, but rather to upgrade selected components that offer superior sonic performance versus the stock components. Further, he has other tricks up his sleeve to deal with the deleterious effects of resonance/vibration and EMI/RFI. But, he rightly keeps all of that to himself, as I would if I were him as that is his intellectual property and competitive advantage.

David was an absolute pleasure to deal with. As I wanted to minimize downtime, he called me when he was ready to operate on my unit. I overnighted the CD12 to him and he got to work. He explained the spectrum of upgrades he offers and the pricing and I ultimately decided for the “full monty” wanting to push the CD12’s performance as far forward as possible. I found David to be a no-nonsense guy. He knows from 20+ years experience what is worth doing and what isn’t and I never felt he was trying to push fluff on me. We talked several times by phone and exchanged several e-mails throughout the process to let me know how it was going. At certain stages of the modifications he would listen to the player to see how its performance was changing.

So today I got the unit back, plugged it in and let her rip. After I got my chin up off the floor, wiped the big grin off my face and listened for about an hour I got on the phone to let him now how pleased I was. As I mentioned at the outset, every aspect of performance has been improved immensely. The inherent musicality of the CD12 is fully intact, but the noise floor has been lowered significantly which is allowing new detail to emerge that was previously masked; resolution throughout the range has increased dramatically (particularly at the low end) and micro and macro dynamics have improved immensely as well. And David tells me that the Blackgate capacitors (which were part of the upgrade) improve with burn-in, so performance should only get better from here.

One of the things he told me is that most of his modified CD Redbook players outperform SACD recordings. I said okay when he told me that, but didn't really believe it. Well, I just listened to Patricia Barber's Modern Cool which I have on SACD and Redbook. And, well, he was right, the Redbook version sounds better. I'm not saying that will be the case on ALL recordings, but it was a revelation for me that Redbook could sound that good. In fact, the CD12 performance has now reached a point where vinyl will probably go by the way side for me. I'm sure SOTA vinyl is still better than what I have now, but what I have is sufficiently good at this point that I will skip the hassle of vinyl.

Well, I’m now a converted skeptic and next week I’m sending David my Unidisk 1.1 universal player for the upgrade treatment.

Bottom line, upgrading components is probably not for everyone, but based on my experience the price/performance ratio of upgrading versus buying new is compelling, particularly in the area of digital.

Happy Listening,
David McQuillin, MA

LINN IKEMI CD Player "Signature Edition" upgrade

David,

I was able to get the Ikemi plugged in and running with the burn in CD at around 2:00 Friday afternoon, and got back to hook it up to the amp around 8:00 last night.

First impression INCREDIBLE! ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE!

It is organic.  I can't think of a better word to describe the sound.  It is smooth, yet extremely detailed.

No smearing at all, very well balanced from top to bottom, and voices, oh the voices!! They hang eerily in the air from a jet black background.  I have never heard the human voice sound so texturally right, so intimate, so REAL!

It is as if I can reach out and touch the singer. I am absolutely blown away. I can in no way detect my speakers existence from my listening position. No right or left just music.

The transport is smooth and quiet and I actually find the Ikemi very attractive. It looks much better in person than in the pics I have seen.

Thank you so much for suggesting this unit and for the modifications that you have performed. With only a few hours on it, the organic presence in general and on human voice in particular the Ikemi already blows away by a large margin every player I have ever heard, even over 2 other tubed modified players I owned.

P.S. - As I am typing this my 17 year old son who plays jazz and blues piano in his own band is playing right out side my office door, so I have the real thing right here for reference. The Ikemi has taken my system much closer to live music. Thank you.

All the best,
Russ Garrett

Linn Unidisk 1.1 "Signature Edition" upgrade

Dave,

Again you amaze me with the sonic and video upgrades that are so apparent verses stock units. As you know I am an authorized Linn dealer, and when I received the upgrade company upgraded Linn Unidisk 1.1, I was very anxious to see what could be improved. The Unidisk 1.1 comes very close to the amazing CD-12, so I did not think there was much room for improvement. I placed the stock 1.1 next to the signature upgraded one. I used the same Linn silver interconnects and went through the Linn Kisto preamplifier/processer. We used a new Fujitsu 63" plasma monitor and Activ Linn Komri speakers with Klimax series quad amped. Both the audio and video differences with your 1.1 upgraded unit were clearly apparent. I even compared the video to a Blu-ray source, and the Linn 1.1 upgraded was visually better. Hard to believe because the stock 1.1 did not show this. Sonically, the upgraded 1.1 even surpassed my beloved Linn CD-12. What can I say. You are a master of the trade.

I plan to introduce you to the R & D people at Linn. That is how impressed I am with your talent.

Dave,
Keep up the great work.

Sincerely,
Dr. Fred Cohen