The Upgrade Company

Why Upgrade?

Humans cannot hear radio frequencies- you don’t hear radio stations bleeding through. Your Hifi & video equipment picks up radio frequency pulses which are constantly emitted by WiFi, radio & TV broadcasts, RF radiation from itself and other electronics in the room and in the building, all brands and all models regardless of claimed factory shielding constantly reproduce and amplify RF pulses billions of times per second every second of every minute ever day of the year 24/7 365 days a year. This RUINS performance and manufacturers are not stopping it whatsoever. It takes specialized parts, specialized measurement equipment, multi layers of adhesive wrappings of various materials over all wires inside, and other materials applied to each of the parts and circuit traces as well because they are also antennas collecting RFI & EMI.

You aren’t getting a proper return on your investment using stock factory “For Profit Built” internally buck naked non-Upgrade Company non-RFI EMI RIDDED HiFi & Video.

There are no other products or mods on the market that solve the problem of airborne Radio Frequency collection+reproduction+amplification

It is the root cause of less then perfect electronic reproduction.

Stock = Very poor sound quality & average video compared to our SE Upgrade

No returns in over 14 years!

What is electrical noise and how does it affect your DAC?

We’ve been here eleventy billion times before: the sound quality of a digital audio system doesn’t rely simply on the safe arrival of each and every bit but how accurately those bits are timed into the DAC chip. Any mis-timing is called jitter. Electrical noise – entering hi-fi components via the mains and via cables acting as antennae – can seriously disturb the timing accuracy of a DAC’s clock oscillators.

Not only. According to Garth Powell, Direct of Power/Engineering at AudioQuest, electrical noise will also make its way into the analogue section of a DAC to potentially mask the very low-level signal retrieval for which it was designed/purchased.

Powell’s extensive knowledge paints a worrying picture for those looking to extract the very maximum performance from their high-end audio hardware. A house in the woods isn’t a complete escape. It’s not all bad news. According to Powell, linear power supplies can be more effective than their switching counterparts in catching and killing some (but not all) electrical noise.

My 30-minute chat with this electrical noise expert goes a long way to explaining why we hear differences between network streamers, their external power supplies and interconnecting digital (and network) cables.

A problem with AC Power you may not have considered.

My posting is not about a stereo system but it is related to AC Power, from which all stereos draw power. Read on, I am sure you will find this interesting. I certainly did and it caused me to rethink and replan AC Power to my stereo.

At my real job as an electrical engineer, I manage a cross-disciplinary engineering team for a large energy company. We make large, residential green energy management systems, a size that borders between most large homes and utility companies. A few months back, we released a new product to the 230VAC single-phase market (Australia, Europe, etc.) and recently introduced the same product to the 240VAC split phase market (USA, Canada, etc.). In addition to a slew of UL, IEC, IEEE, CSA, TUV, and other safety codes, we also had to meet FCC Class B emissions (which all your digital audio equipment must also meet) and also meet FCC Susceptibility requirements (which digital audio does not have to meet, unfortunately).

Since the two products are almost identical, I thought we could leverage what we learned for the 230VAC unit onto the 240VAC unit. Well, this is where the impact of grid power to our stereos comes into our interest.

The emissions requirement is of two parts, of which you may be familiar. One is radiated emission, which is the noise the product broadcasts into the air. The second part is conducted emissions, which is the noise the product injects onto the power lines and runs throughout your house and probably into your neighbors as well.

The 230VAC unit passed emissions, which I expected as we did a lot of design work to make it pass. The conducted part was a concern, since that injected noise is from the equipment our vendor produces, not something we designed in house. Well, when the certified testing house tested conducted emissions, it failed. A couple of weeks of debug later, at 2K$ per day, the problem was solved when I suggested they test with the grid connection running through 8 feet of steel conduit, since all installations have at least 8 feet of conduit.

Fast-forward six months to the 240VAC testing, which took place here in the USA. Surprisingly, the unit failed conducted emissions, even though we used the same 8 feet of steel conduit. Another week of debug, again at 2K$ per day, we stopped testing since it was clear a new design is needed to fix it. I designed a 50 Ampere Balanced LEMP Filter that had over 50-dBm isolation in the affected frequency range. Problem solved. So, why did 8 feet of conduit fix the problem one time and not the next? A good question.

I took the same 8 AWG THHN wire we used to connect the unit to the grid, ran it through the same 8 feet of 1 ½ inch steel conduit, and rented some high frequency test equipment. In the conduit we had two 8 AWG wires for Line 1 and Line 2, one 8 AWG wire for Neutral, and another 8 AWG for Earth ground. I ran a bandwidth test from Line 1 to Neutral and tied the conduit and Earth wire to earth, while the other Line wire floated. The test started at 60 Hz, which I referenced as 0 dBm and I ran the test all the way to 30 MHz. The generator produced 10Vrms, the level I checked at each step, and fed a 50-Ohm load. To my great surprise, I had a 2-dBm rise at 10 MHz where it began to roll off and was only 2 dBm down at 30 MHz, the limit of the test generator. In other words, that length of pipe and THHN wire had a bandwidth of +/- 1 dBm from 60 Hz to 30 MHz! Whoa! We are allowing a ton of injected noise into our systems!

To prove that, I grabbed the power supply from an analog stereo amplifier and fed the test signal through the cord, fuse, transformer, and measured the bandwidth on the secondary. In spite of a UL/CSA approved transformer, it was surprisingly transparent to the test signal. Throughout the test spectrum, it was never more than 6 dBm down and it peaked in a couple of areas, too.

Our homes usually don’t have grounded conduit, what most homes have is Romex wire. That stuff is transparent to radiated emissions and we live in a world of radiated emissions. Think cell phones, FM and AM radio, TV broadcasts, all the communication frequencies, plus who knows what we have for the dirty noise injected by electric motors. Think your fridge, your AC unit, your furnace, ceiling fans, light dimmers, electric vehicles (that is the reason they don’t usually come with an AM radio these days!), the list can go on for a long time.

For my stereo system here at the house, I built a smaller version of the LEMP filter, added additional suppression, along with 20,000 Amps of surge protection. I am also installing a dedicated earth ground as well. However, you don’t have to home brew – you can purchase equipment that meets the local safety codes and is LAB certified to meet multiple suppression standards. These units have strong filters in them to clean up line power. There are replacement AC line cords on the market that contain RF suppression. I don’t suggest you get a new mortgage just to buy AC noise suppression equipment or new line cords, but I do suggest you do something to kill those RF demons.

Look for equipment that has at least 30 dB of suppression from 100 KHz to 15 or 20 MHz. Thirty to forty dB is the range where most emission problems fade away, so that is a good starting point. Some equipment has lightening suppression as well; look for an IEEE spec stated in joules of energy, the more the better with a test pulse of 8/20 microseconds. Don’t be afraid to stack some of the equipment in series.

The lighting in your listening room can also matter a great deal. Stick with plain, old school incandescent bulbs; avoid the CFL’s, LED’s, neon’s, light dimmers, and other lights that require power supplies to run. Incandescent bulbs are very quiet, which is why they appear regularly in emission anechoic chambers. Although digital equipment is less sensitive than analog equipment, it is not immune to susceptibility. Vacuum tube equipment usually has an edge over solid state, too.

I hope what I wrote is of help to you in your quest for improved sound.

Robert

See the tan colored edge? It’s El cheapo bottom line PCB material and design unshielded as pictured found in Marantz, all models. It’s most of the reason why Marantz sounds fuzzy imprecise veiled etc weak sound vs the most expensive PCB type called glass epoxy multilayered which McIntosh uses, night vs day once parts in the boards and wiring to/from the boards attenuated, dissipated, dampened & shielded with our RFI EMI RIDDANCE.

Marantz Denon Anthem cheap unshielded circuitboards are not so apparent in stock gear because the parts and wiring are fully saturated with RFI EMI anyway so not a big difference for the extra expense of glass epoxy multilayer shielded & grounded curcuitboards. However, once the parts and wiring are RFI EMI RIDDED, the expensive glass epoxy multilayered & shielded & grounded curcuitboards found in McIntosh make a BIG difference over Marantz Anthem Denon etc note the tan colored edge on this Marantz PM14 integrated amp, cheapest quality as can be:

In the industry full of exaggerating sales people and magazine reviewers hungry for ever more free gear to sell for $$$, forgive me for saying it's hard to believe. How in the world do you get midfi and discontinued models etc to outperform the latest Class A rated Editors choice Top Pick Recommended Components praised models?

Our "SE Upgrade+RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology" provides proven 100% guaranteed "State the Art" electronic reproduction.

Remember just 1 WiFi router alone emits a constant 2.4 billion RF pulses every second. Turn on your smart phone or tablet WiFi and note how many WiFi router options appear: each option is a steady 2.4 billion RF pulses per second soaking into your gear and cables every millisecond dramatically robbing power supplies everywhere billions of times faster then the actual signal content pulses. However the airwaves all around us are constantly filled with trillions of RF pulses each and every millisecond, with a million or more per second produced by most modern digital devices in and of themselves from onboard RF generators and RF generating switching type power supplies.

We recommend starting your Upgrade Co journey with either power delivery or a source component. This is where it starts. Perhaps a Furutech NCF duplex wall outlet & Furutech 105D cover plate, fed by isolated ground shielded stranded Romex in the wall from the breaker panel itself. Then plug in an SE Upgraded+RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology fitted large capacity power storing device that stores a large amount of power in a magnetic field, a Richard Gray Power Company Model 400, 600, 1200 fitted with Furutech NCF outlets and a 20A Furutech NCF IEC inlet fed from the wall and exited by a TimePortal Cables RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology fitted Signature power cord feeding your power conditioner that’s been SE Upgraded+RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology fitted also with Furutech NCF plugs. Doing just this will elevate the system dramatically, far more so if TimePortal power cords feed each component as they contain far more RFI EMI RIDDING material then any stock power conditioner or other brand of power cord other then Stage lll.

Inside the equipment, all brands, all types, exist naked wiring and naked signal conductors which must be wrapped with our RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology which is a 4 part engineering breakthrough comprised of shielding, dissipation, attenuation, & dampening. RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology in and of itself elevates all brands and models to above stock State of the Art, Class A, Editors Choice cost is no object performance because RFI EMI collection distribution & amplification is the number 1 most widespread most pervasive obstacle to perfect fidelity, period. It is not the brand of parts nor circuit design. By reducing the number of RF & EM pulses outside the signal content, it is akin to freeing up readily available power supply by a factor of 100. Said another way, in all stock gear, due to its buck naked non attenuated factory mass produced condition, each make and model would need a minimum of a 100 times larger power supply to achieve the highly saturated at all times power delivery one of our RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology fitted models has. We’ve proven that midfi AV receivers that’ve received our SE upgrade and RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology far far outperform stock cost of no object seperates at the highest price levels when used within a system that has the same RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology installed in the power conditioning power cords and interconnects.

Remember that any electronic system is only as good as its noisiest link in the chain from power delivery to the loudspeakers, chipsets and parts must be shielded/attenuated/dissipated/dampened and all wiring must be wrapped with our RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology which is a 4 part engineering breakthrough comprised of various materials for shielding, dissipation, attenuation, & dampening.

Our RFI EMI RIDDANCE Technology in and of itself elevates all brands and models to above stock State of the Art, Class A, Editors Choice.

Your investment is 100% GUARANTEED ZERO risk to discover that you're missing out RFI EMI RIDDANCE TECHNOLOGY that makes everything else sound dull, flat, fuzzy & boring.

Try us out today!

A+ BBB rated & 30 Day In-System 100% Refund Period

Yours in music, David J. Schulte / President

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / 269.352.7609

The Upgrade Company LLC

we offer a full 30 day in-system trial period to find out for yourself, backed up by our 5 year parts & labor warranty.

In short, here's what's going on with all stock audio or video equipment even at the highest prices:

Manufacturers don't want you knowing about the "For Profit" mass produced planned obsolescense build quality. Cheap parts & wiring, lack of any internal shielding, attenuation or dampening of radio frequencies & electromagnetic noises, both airborne & already in the cable conduction. Naked wiring, naked parts, naked circuit boards. All metal attracts & collects radio frequencies ruining performance in all brands of Hi-Fi & Video. Try a piece of fish string or kite line for an antenna - it won't work at all. All of the wiring, circuit traces and circuit chips and electronic parts inside all brands are collecting & reproducing millions of radio frequency pulses times per second ruining performance.

Unless the housing of a consumer electronics device can be successfully submerged in a tub of water without any water leaking into the interior of the enclosure it is likewise not keeping airwaves out, RFI wavelengths are pouring into the interior through the same locations water poured into the interior. No consumer electronics are hermetically sealed. Therefore, they are constantly collecting radio frequencies through the air. A single home WiFi router emits roughly 2.4 billion radio frequency pulses per second. But your neighbors WiFi routers are also broadcasting RFI radiation into your home. Now add each 2.4ghz & 900mghz cordless home telephone. Now count the clock RF generators inside of your HDTV's, your game consoles, your Bluray/DVD/CD disc players, your networking receivers, your home theater surround receiver/prepro, your two channel preamplifier transport DAC switching mode power supply power amplifiers, finally add the clock frequencies up inside your smartphone/tablet.

The average net sum total in today's home environment is billions of RF pulses bombarding your consumer electronics gear through the air entering every type of consumer electronic make & model regardless of cost or magazine reviewer hype through ventilation slots and empty holes in the underside of the chassis and RF goes right through plastic as if it weren't there at all.

These airborne RF pulses become immediately mixed in with actual signal content and reproduced and amplified throughout the entire unit and passed downstream to all of the other electronic components on the system wasting most of their power supply storage and ruining signal integrity. Video appears grainy and washed out in comparison to the exact same model we have upgraded with our RFI EMI RIDDANCE technology. Audio in all stock gear when directly compared to the same model which had been upgraded with our RFI EMI RIDDANCE technology sounds dull flat hazy grainy forward hard small spatially flat electronic mechanical sounding weak bass obscured focus versus State of the Art once it's been rebuilt by us.

Stock mass-produced audio or video equipment at the very highest price levels and magazine hype, never satisfies long term because it is contaminated with radio frequencies and low frequency electro magnetic radiation from itself and right out of the airwaves that are all around us, severely, not just subtly, damaging the signal content and overall performance. Read our client testimonials published here on the website.

The Upgrade Company provides it's clients with satisfying performance that will keep you happy for years.

You can get off the merry-go-round of buying and selling equipment and finally achieve nirvana.

Our level of electronic parts, wiring, RFI & EMI shielding/dissipation/attenuation, and dampening FAR exceeds that of ANY manufacturer. Don't waste money on manufacturer upgrades: they still do not utilize expensive parts/wiring nor is any manufacturer installing adequate (if any at all) RFI & EMI shielding/dissipation/attenuation/dampening. Shielding is but one of the 4 stages necessary to rid RFI & EMI from power supply energy and from actual signal content.

The end resulting performance of any HiFi system or component can never exceed it's worst performing parts & wiring. Basic logic dictates that.

Manufacturer "upgrades" and new models end up amounting to little more then a sideways move or slight increase more often then not. The Upgrade Company's all-encompassing approach of having everything done correctly to the best technology affords gives a HUGE bang for the buck in every upgrade all the way to State of the Art for many models.

In order for manufacturers to survive they MUST adopt a "For Profit Built" let's "save some for future improved models" mentality and business model to succeed.

Every electronic part and wire in the signal path can be thought of as an interconnect, and every electronic part and wire in the power supply can be thought of as a power cord. Our upgrades essentially replace a high number of interconnects and power cords within your components. The effects are remarkable. Far greater then replacing the interconnects and power cords OUTSIDE the components.

The finest most expensive medical, military, aerospace and commercial telecom equipment and space satellites are extensively shielded inside to preserve and maintain absolute signal fidelity and not waste power supply energy. However consumer electronics have NEVER been fully shielded until The Upgrade Company pioneered this technology in consumer electronics back in 1980, more then 33 years ago.

Take a look inside any brand of consumer electronics, irregardless of cost or magazine hype. Note the wiring, circuitry, and all chipsets including DAC's, video scalers, op-amps, diode bridges, DSP chips, RAM memory chips, etc. all left the manufacturer naked and unshielded in consumer electronics until The Upgrade Company pioneered and incorporated the use of specialized parts and shielding techniques to both shield chipsets to rid RFI & EMI from becoming a part of both signal content and power supplies. Until The Upgrade Company came along, high end audio and video equipment left the factory fully naked and exposed to both it's own internal as well as external radio frequency and electromagnetic contamination, right out of the airwaves from both inside the unit itself and collected externally through slots and holes in the chassis. RFI can pass full strength through a single hole the size of a pencil tip causing your DAC and Video scaler and op-amps to spend MORE time reproducing the radio frequency radiation right along the actual music or video itself. Even worse, the clocks controlling the audio and video are often located just millimeters-centimeters away from the actual digital-to-analog conversion (DAC) chipsets and the actual video generating chipsets, literally bombarding them with extraneous energies which become reproduced right along with the music and video.

Simply do the math:

Music pulses from approx 20 cycles per second to 30,000 pulses per second, arguably averaging only 2,000-6,000 pulses per second with most music. Contrast that vs. total RFI radiation of 300,000 + pulses per second given off from the numerous clocks inside all brands of Hi-Fi and Video.

So let's do the math: 3,000 pulses per second on average for a song versus 300,000 RFI pulses per second being collected and reproduced right along with the music. Therefore RF radiation is being reproduced 100 times more then the music is. Power supply energy and time spent reproducing RFI contamination! Said another way, RF contamination depletes power supplies 100 times faster then the music itself, again which averages only 2,000-6,000 cycles or pulses per second. Non Upgrade Company upgraded HiFi spends more time spent reproducing RF radiation then actual music signals. The RFI pulses emitted by just a single 30khz clock inside your gear is still TEN times the pulse/cycle rate of the music on average. Also bear in mind that the typical amplitude (volume) of music is below 1 volt, close to the same volume of the RF contamination spewed spherically by the various clocks inside the unit. Much of the music in the analog & digital domains is in the millivolt range, millionths to hundredths of a volt. About the same volume as RFI. Just 2 volts of volume from a digital source or preamplifier is enough to drive power amplifiers into full maximum output.

Salespeople, the majority of whom know next to nothing about engineering, often claim that RFI is not an issue with vinyl analog playback nor the older supposedly all analog pre and power amplifiers. Dead wrong. The entire LP chain from the cantilever to the cartridge coils and metal parts to the cartridge leads, sharp edges on cartridge lead pin clips, tonearm leads, phono preamplifier or step-up coil, all of these contain metal which attracts RFI like a sponge right out of the airwaves that are all around us constantly. This has the effect of greatly diminishing performance in every sonic parameter.

RFI collection inside Hi-Fi can be measured easily with the proper equipment and has been found to contain a multitude of radio frequencies collected right out of the airwaves which are then passed right along to other components in the signal path to become amplified along with the music, causing prematurely depleted power supplies (10-1000 times the pulse rate of the music or video) and squashed dead dull flat one dimensional thin peaked sound quality versus the same unit that has been upgraded by The Upgrade Company.

In addition, supposedly all-analog gear from names like Ayre, Bryston, Classe, Krell, Audio Research etc, contain 1 or more digital clocks to operate. These clocks are properly termed "Radio frequency generators". Each clock radiates it's performance robbing RFI out into the air inside the unit which is then collected immediately by every electronic part and every wire becoming mixed in with the actual signals and power supply storage. All brands are guilty of this unless The Upgrade Company has upgraded it. All brands are severely compromised and exhibit poor signal integrity due to their naked digital as well as analog chipsets and power supplies to spend a minimum of 10 times the amount of time spent reproducing the intended signal content itself. RFI is constantly collected from the internal clocks as well as RFI that travels in along interconnects and power cords, which also act as antenna's constantly collecting RFI & EMI. It all adds up to hundreds of thousands of pulses per second, up to 100 times the energy and time is spent reproducing RFI over the actual music or video content. Because RFI collection and contamination occurs at ten times or more the pulses per second the music or video content contains, your gear spends FAR MORE time reproducing RFI then it does the actual audio or video signal content. Bear in mind that humans cannot hear radio frequencies so you do not notice this, other then the poor performance you hear & see versus the live unrecorded unreproduced event. Because DAC chips and op-amps and video scaling chips are but a few examples of chipsets and electronic parts which contain metal just like antenna's do. Then we have all of the metal circuit board traces and all of the wiring which are in fact also constantly collecting all of the radio frequencies generated by the numerous clocks inside the unit as well as millions of frequencies of RFI which are in the airwaves all around us. Typically well over 100ft of antenna inside the typical consumer audio or video unit when you add up all the signal traces, wiring, transformer wiring, length of traces embedded within the chipsets etc. It is no wonder the promise of digital has never lived up to the best analog. The best analog playback devices still fall short of the live original event. Remember that phono cartridges and analog microphone and phono preamplifiers collect and amplify and inject RFI into your music signal content just as digital does.

Stock consumer electronic equipment is constantly bombarded with high amplitude radio frequency contamination constantly, millions of times per second, right out of the airwaves which are all around us, and up to 8 internal "clocks" inside many brands and models. Additional sources of noise are switch mode power supplies and a clock used to operate a logarithmic volume control in a supposedly all analog preamplifier. Any disc player or transport has at least 1 clock, more typically 5-6 clocks in a universal player, which each emit radio frequency radiation millions of times per second inside the unit into everything that is metallic: circuitry, parts, wiring, power supplies etc. This high dose of radiation gets picked up right out of the air inside the unit by anything metallic. Doubt this? Try hooking up a piece of string, fish line or anything non-metallic to your tuner's antenna input. It won't work. Only wire and metal collect radio frequency radiation. This includes all of the in/out leads on parts such as capacitors, resistors, diodes, op-amps, all SMD parts, DSP chips, DAC's, video scalers, all power supply wiring, all signal conductors, all circuit traces, literally anything that has metal in it. Low frequency electromagnetic radiation given off by power supplies, transformers, relays and higher voltage circuit traces and higher voltage wiring running near low voltage wiring also contaminates. DAC chips, video scaling chips and op-amps are all especially prone to RFI & EMI contamination.

The TRANSFORMATION by shielding/attenuation/dissipation/dampening we provide is HUGE.

RFI & EMI contamination is both measurable and audible. Symptoms are:

1 - Weak bass by constantly draining power supplies. Washed out not properly graduated blacks in video.

2- Grainy video, whites that glow, unnatural appearance, not like looking through the directors camera lens.

3- Sound quality that in comparison sounds very veiled, grungy, gritty, hard, forward, not live and fun to crank up.

4- Overall thin small spatially flat, dynamically flat, hazy & irritating sound versus the same model SE upgraded. Nowhere the sound of the live performance.

5- Chipsets and power supplies run much hotter then the same unit shielded due to constant feedback of RFI and EMI energies right out of the airwaves within the unit.

It is little wonder why stock digital equipment has never reached or surpassed the performance of an excellent LP vinyl playback setup. It's very contaminated with RFI & EMI, and full of cheap parts, hundreds of them in some high priced digital models produced today.

The "out of band" radio frequency noise being emitted from numerous clocks & collected out of the airwaves from all around us places extra heavy demand on both the audio (DSP's DAC's) and video scaling & processing chipsets, the transport servos, DSP chipsets, HDMI circuitry, DAC's, and analog audio and video amplifying devices including op-amps in both audio and video circuits. All sections must work overtime reproducing the radio frequency noise a minimum of thousands up to millions of times per second right along with the actual audio & video signals. This dramatically harms any brand or model's ability to faithfully reproduce the actual audio and video signals, regardless of cost or prestige.

In addition, in both analog and digital gear, the power supplies get drained reproducing ens of thousands up to millions of pulses of RF collection per second. This places extra heavy demands on both the main and local power supplies, draining the power storage capacitors very fast, leaving greatly reduced power on tap to reproduce the actual audio and video content.

Surprisingly, analog tubed and solid state power amplifiers & tubed & solid state preamplifiers exhibit tremendously improved performance on both measurements and in comparison tests. RFI & EMI contamination is not limited to digital units. Radio frequencies are in the airwaves all around us. All internal tubed circuit wiring & parts collect RFI & EMI constantly, thousands to millions of pulses per second causing weak loose bass, ill-defined hazy soft veiled mids and highs in tubed gear. Also external power cords and interconnect cables collect RFI & EMI right out of the airwaves thousands to millions of times per second. This all gets piled on top of the RFI & EMI the digital units generate and pass downstream to the preamplifier and amplifiers.

Shielding the wiring, chipsets, parts, circuit boards, has been a "Trade Secret" which was pioneered in consumer electronics by David J. Schulte back in 1980.

We are 100% sure the client will reach the same conclusion during his or her own comparisons. Our returns rate has been under .01% for many years now.

We would not be selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of our SE upgraded gear and continue to maintain a 100% Buy Back Guarantee and national A+ Better Business Bureau algorythm rating otherwise.

There is no manufacturer that can approach our "Signature Edition" upgrade: not in measurements, not in sound quality, not in video quality, not in digital output quality due to their total lack of RFI & EMI shielding/attenuation/dissipation/dampening and the cheap parts and wiring used at all price levels. This is why The Upgrade Company is one of the very few retailers with a 100% satisfaction guarantee in writing. Parts-only modification approaches just do not come close to the performance of our "Signature Edition upgrade" approach. With good reason.

Our "Signature Edition upgrade" includes extensive RFI & EMI shielding, dampening, parts, wiring, new grounded IEC powerline entry module, and more, 18 hours in labor alone....

If you could witness both the stock and Signature Edition upgraded versions of any make or model side by side, you'd immediately notice how the stock version sounds:

1 -Small hazy flat irritating grainy thin dull & very artificial sounding due to the unit spending 100 times more time and energy reproducing radio frequency and electromagnetic radiation instead of just the actual signal content.

2- Weak bass response, sucked out lower midrange making voices sound thin and artificial and forward. Power supplies are drained 100 times faster by the radio frequency and electromagnetic radiation collected by the circuitry & chipsets instead of just the music or video all by itself. Constant RFI & EMI back-fed contamination overheats chipsets and drains power supplies rapidly.

3- Fuzzy grainy mids and highs, highs that ring, irritating, peaked forward midrange presentation. Not pristine over a jet black background

4- Soundstage is small & shallow. Performers are not in your room nor does it feel like you are "in the movie" with action taking place all around you.

The stock "For Profit Built" unshielded version totally lacks the highly liquid live huge lush soundstage, jet black background, thunderous bass and overall ease and musicality of the upgraded version.

By now you should have an understanding of how RFI & EMI contamination is the leading cause of less then perfect signal reproduction and why stock equipment is so very compromised.

Even our SE upgraded AV Controllers will sound as good or better then the finest stereo only vaccum tube or solid state 2ch preamps on the market. This is because they lack the best parts & wiring throughout and mainly due to missing and/or ineffective RFI & EMI shielding. Further, our modern SE upgraded AV Controllers have Audyssey Room Correction, which corrects the peaks and dips in the frequency response of the room, using the supplied calibrated Audessey microphone during initial setup.

Audessey Room Correction is like buying a new very expensive set of loudspeakers, the improvement in both clarity and frequency response is huge.

The extensive RFI & EMI shielding/attenuation/dampening (not tin foil or copper foil - wrong) we install over all wiring and conductors and many chipsets, maintains signal integrity through out the unit. Without RFI shielding, radio frequencies from the numerous internal clocks (6 of them) inside the typical AV Controller or Oppo etc universal player contaminate both audio and video signals in both the digital and analog domains. This RF interference put out into the air inside the unit by every audio or video clock, regardless of brand, makes its way into the power supplies, all of the wiring and internal "interconnects", and of course into all of the actual circuitry and chipsets themselves, right out of the airwaves.

Of course you do not hear a radio station, the clock beat frequencies are in the Khz or MgHz domains. This radiation and distortion is constantly radiated into all of the wiring/circuits/electronic parts & chipsets in all brands regardless of cost or prestige. All electronic devices collect the radio frequency energies radiated outward 360 degrees from the clocks on the crcuit boards which are often just a few millimeters away from the actual audio & video processing chipsets/circuitry/parts. Every player and every prepro, and many amps and preamps, have 1-6 digital clocks inside which degrade performance unless our trade-secret and patented shielding technology has been installed. RFI & EMI damages signal integrity of both digital and analog signals. The amplitude of RF 7 EM interference in most instances approaches the level of the actual signals being reproduced, which are only millivolt range during normal use.

Remember, power amplifiers will reach full power output with as little as 2 volts of input. The signals in a preamp, player or processor are mainly in the millivolt range, millionths of a volt in the typical listenuing range. The background RFI and EMI radiation is just as high as the signal in most instances.

In addition to internally generated RFI & EMI, all electronic equipment, power cords, interconnects collect radio frequencies out of the airwaves from TV/radio stations, cell phones and cordless home telephones, I-Phones, I-Pads, computing equipment, digital alarm clocks, background RF from many other sources, anything that operates digitally gives off radio frequency radiation that is collected by all analog, digital and video circuitry.

Our SE upgrade performance after burn in periiod is completed is so good that we can offer a 100% Buy Back Guarantee and it doesn't come back. Our approach far surpasses the performance of all other modification approaches which leave bare naked unshielded wiring, video & digital chipsets, and bare naked conductors which are all collecting the RF beat frequencies from the large number of clocks in any digital device like players and prepro's but often seemingly all-analog 2ch stereo preamps have a clock to control the volume and front display. This clock is spewing heavy doses of RF contamination into all metallic circuit traces and into all chips and voltage regulators. This constant noise from within each component (not to mention the heavy RFI that travels in along interconnects and power cords, corrupts the video, digital and analog signals with high amplitude RF noise that gets reproduced right along with the video, digital and analog signals. This ruins performance. The Upgrade Company's upgrade/mod approach is truly "Night and Day" superior to anything else on the market, regardless of price. RFI & EMI is the true cause of less then perfect reproduction.

All of our upgrades come with our world famous "14 Day In Home Trial" & "100% Buy Back Guarantee" Even when we upgrade your equipment. We'll either replace it with the same exact stock model and refund the upgrade fee or buy your used unit back including refunding your upgrade fee, if you're not 100% satisfied. To date, The Upgrade Company has never had to replace a unit with a stock version. Ever. Obviously we provide you what you'd expect.

We're A+ rated by the nationwide Better Business Bureau. We have received hundreds of client endorsements, with more new client testimonials arriving every month. Several courageous magazine reviewers have endorsed our upgrades as well.

There is no specification or measurement set that has been devised anywhere in the world that can indicate wether or not a product will sound good. If there was a measurement for "good sound", magazine reviewers would simply take and publish these measurements and rank the results in order of best to worst. The fact remains that Mid-Fi measures the same as Hi-Fi. Hence the need for reviewers to opine on what sounds good. It's what drove Stereo Review magazine out of print years ago.

There is no specification for transparency. There is no specification for soundstage depth, height or width. There is no specification for bass speed, heft, or slam or tightness. There is no specification for how clean and defined the midrange and high end is. There is no specification for musicality. There is no specification for forwardness, or digital "irritation". There is no specification for resolution. Some of the worlds best stock digital uses ca. 1988 Philips TDA1541S1 dac's with just 16 bits of mathematical resolution: Zanden and AMR high cost brands are both examples. Yet both of these brands are dramatically improved by high cost replacement parts and RFI & EMI shielding, just as Esoteric's $25,000pr D-01 VU 24 bit monoblock dac's & $25,000 P-01 VU transport are.

A testament to our claims being met is the sheer number of upgrades we have put into the systems of enthusiastic music lovers. To attempt to convince you or others of the merits of our upgrades we can claim many things, but nothing speaks louder than the appreciation our customers have. The only way you or anyone else will know if our upgrades elevate a component to State of the Art is to hear it with one's own ears in one's own system

In order to achieve a high performance level that truly satisfies you, your equipment requires the finest electronic parts, wiring, shielding and dampening installed. There is no other way to maintain the highest signal integrity. The top of the line models magazines tout STILL do not have top of the line parts, wiring and shielding installed through-out. A few high end parts here and there. Usually just a better case and remote. Buying new cables or speakers is fine, but it's still a fraction of what The Upgrade Company can provide you with an upgrade to one or more of your components, including your CD player, transport, DAC, Blu Ray Universal player, preamplifier, power amplifier, surround prepro, tuner, electronic crossover, or passive speaker crossover.

SEE PHOTOS

High-End audio manufacturers continue to get by giving consumers just 5-10 pieces of audiophile grade parts in a typical unit while stuffing roughly 100-300 "For Profit" low cost generic parts that do not belong in a high end stereo or high end video unit. The use of widespread generic dirt cheap parts is not only found in audio equipment sold at the Walmart and Best Buy type stores of the world, the fact is these same parts are also found inside your expensive supposedly "Latest & Greatest" purchase. We'll show you some of this to you over on our PHOTOS page. There is so much to show from all of the manufacturer's today. We could fill a book with explanations & photographic evidence of "For Profit Built" practices employed by all manufacturers today.

The typical audiophile model contains 50-300 dirt cheap .05-10 cent surface mount capacitors instead of proven high-performance (high cost) types that require a human to insert into the circuit board, align and hand solder. Instead, manufacturers greedy to profiteer rely on automated assembly devices to insert, align and solder the parts onto each circuit board. The only parts these machines accept are generic parts that are used in everything from remote controls to your laptop computer. The finest most expensive best measuring parts must be installed by hand by a human being. This takes at least 50 times longer then the automated assembly machines take, and therefore costs the manufacturer too much money. Manufacturers simply cannot afford to use the best parts and hand applied shielding.

Mass produced & stock ultra-high end Hi Fi sounds dull, flat and boring:

There is no consumer electronic manufacturer or aftermarket modifier installing the upgrades The Upgrade Company performs. By law.

Unshielded power supply delivery wiring and unshielded analog or digital signal conductors are the single largest cause of noise in all brands. Manufacturer's simply do not have the time it takes to install the shielding, even though they are indeed aware of the great benefits of shielding all power supply and signal conductors. Rarely a high end manufacturer will install a minor amount of shielding only in cost-is-no-object models, at best only 1 or 2 places in their most expensive models, again, due to time to manufacture constraints. For example, on the PHOTOS page you can see for yourself how Esoteric installed flimsy resonant non-adhesive aluminized mylar foil shielding (not the heavy adhesive lined silver shielding/dampening product we use) over some of the power supply wiring runs in their $25,000pr flagship D-01 Monoblock DAC's, but not in any of their lower priced models. One would presume that for $25,000 the manufacturer would install shielding over all of the wiring and conductors to drop signal to noise levels to the absolute best, correct? The S/N ratio, clarity, black background and overall resolution and musicality are all greatly improved with treatment to the rest of the unshielded wiring in the D-01 flagship dac's, before we even start to upgrade the "For Profit" generic parts the manufacturer installed.

The level of improvement The Upgrade Company provides you is far greater then purchasing the most expensive cables or purchasing new models top rated by magazine reviewers.

For pennies on the dollar over supposed "State of the Art" new models that are built by large corporations,"For Profit", and then talked up by the major HiFi magazines around the world.

An entirely new level of performance is waiting for you....

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