"The Upgrade Company" for McIntosh

[mulveling]

Originally Posted by W9TR

This is kind of like buying high end cables. Arrange to hear them in your system, then decide. If you can really return a unit and they honor their 100% satisfaction warranty, there is little risk, right?
Tom

There absolutely is risk. A 100% satisfaction guarantee offered by a legendary company like McIntosh results in negligible risk. Here we have a 100% guarantee offered by a 1-guy company with questionable feedback and presenting quality of work that looks "quirky" at best. You don't have to search far on the internet to see how customer complaints/returns/disputes from situations with similar circumstances often play out...

[MyPal]

Not only that, his band aids are as rough as guts.

[W9TR]

I wouldn't touch something like this without an ironclad money back guarantee.

[harri009]

Originally Posted by Maks

Playing devil's advocate, of course it's positive. If people spend $1,000 on magical secret upgrades, they will WANT to hear a difference and they will likely tell themselves they've heard a difference. I find this testimonial interesting, "Detail is 30% better in a smooth artifact free analog way, never etched nor aggressive." How did he quantify 30% better? Thirty percent of what? How does something SOUND 30% better? There's a lot of snake oil and wizardry in this hobby.

I have always felt that way when it comes to the peter gunn magnestand thing. You ship your speakers off, they return and you hear them for the first time after weeks of waiting and spending thousands, sometimes more than the retail of the speakers. OF COURSE THEY SOUND BETTER .

[MORTIS]

I too would be skeptical of these 'upgrades', but for what its worth, here's another AA members experience upgrading his C712 a few years ago.

http://www.audioaficionado.org/mcint...company-4.html

[syd123]

Originally Posted by harri009

I have always felt that way when it comes to the peter gunn magnestand thing. You ship your speakers off, they return and you hear them for the first time after weeks of waiting and spending thousands, sometimes more than the retail of the speakers. OF COURSE THEY SOUND BETTER .

I completely, wholeheartedly agree. ..A better plan would be to send ONE speaker in for the modification then upon return set it directly next to the other and switch b/w the two using the balance control and compare. If the one sounds better than the other, great! ..send the other in. ..If not, send it back, tell them to return it to it's original condition and refund all money. ..Of course, that will never be the deal they offer.

I did precisely this with my last 3 speaker purchases to see if speaker break-in is real. ..Upon opening my new speakers, I played one speaker fairly loudly overnight, then compared both side-by-side the next morning. Absolutely NO difference.

Expectation bias has an enormous impact on what we hear when we "upgrade" our systems. ..Sadly, very few of us seem interested in trying to separate out the real from the imagined improvements in sound.

[syd123]

Any "upgrade" this company purports to do should be audible in a high-resolution before/ after digital recording which could be given to prospective customers either as download from their website or by having a cd mailed to you. So they claim a modification reduces interference/noise? Great, so using a sample component and a high quality ADC converter, record a high-res before music sample at REC OUT jack. ..Then perform mod and repeat! ..If their mod indeed makes the huge audible improvement they claim, this would certainly allow any prospective to hear it for themselves by comparing the two files. ..What could be more compelling! ..Yet nothing like this is offered.

Instead, they want you to part w/ your component for an indeterminate length of time after which you're so stoked to have it back that you're quite inclined to hear an improvement regardless of whether it really exists. ..It's amazing to me that ANYONE has been taken in by this ploy.

[MyPal]

I've seen McIntosh MC2KW amps advertised with an upgrade option on that website. Who in their right mind would buy grey MC2KW amps from that company & then allow that proprietor to pull them apart & stick crap inside them?

[BillK]

But would you then be hearing the mod or the ADC?

That's always going to be an issue as well, and ignores component interaction.

I'm not defending the upgrade per se, rather noting issues in the test methodology.

Note also that no matter how premium priced the product, price/performance compromises always have to be made and the use of say $200 more in components yields a $600 or so increase in MSRP, and market research may indicate the resultant drop in sales would make it not worthwhile to do.

[syd123]

Originally Posted by BillK

But would you then be hearing the mod or the ADC?

That's always going to be an issue as well, and ignores component interaction.

I'm not defending the upgrade per se, rather noting issues in the test methodology.

Note also that no matter how premium priced the product, price/performance compromises always have to be made and the use of say $200 more in components yields a $600 or so increase in MSRP, and market research may indicate the resultant drop in sales would make it not worthwhile to do.

If the same ADC is used for both the before and after sample, then whatever benefit they claim for the upgrade should still be apparent. ..Unless the improvement is so fragile that the process of recording it somehow removes it. ..And it's kinda hard to imagine why that would be.

Remember, this company claims these upgrades result is SIGNIFICANT improvements. ..They don't make any caveats about your gear having to be just like theirs or that whether or not you hear it depends on "system interaction", etc.. So again, if the improvement is indeed significant, then it should transcend ADC conversion, system interaction, etc..