The Upgrade Company

[vinylphilemag]

Fascinating. I had no idea.

That makes two of us--and I bet we're not alone...

 

[audioguy]

Amazing. And I thought I got an A+ rating because I had no complaints. Apparently it was just my $450 per year that get from me.

This story notwithstanding, I will continue to pay. Most consumers don't know about this "fraud" and any low grade would have the potential to affect my business.

 

[Revel Salon 2]

Thanks !! appreciated....bear in mind that French is my main language...from time to time my phrasing may not be optimal.

 

[mep]

Amazing. And I thought I got an A+ rating because I had no complaints. Apparently it was just my $450 per year that get from me.

This story notwithstanding, I will continue to pay. Most consumers don't know about this "fraud" and any low grade would have the potential to affect my business.

Which if you watched the show, the BBB actually blackmails businesses into paying them or they threaten them with a lower rating. They should all be locked up. It's sad to know it's all a scam and the rating means nothing.

 

[Revel Salon 2]

Guess we now know that the Upgrade Company can wipe the slate clean with the BBB for 425 $.....so his A+ mantra is worthless....

 

[amirm]

My brother was approached in early 1980s by BBB to join. After that, he told me he was going to pass as it was all about getting money in exchange for saying he is a member. And that there was no other value whatsoever. This story though, takes this to the next level.

 

[welwynnick]

Hi All,

Apologies for being a latecomer to this latest thrilling instalment of the TUC saga. I've been following WBF ever since Amir linked it from another forum, and really appreciate the informed and rational debate. I didn't sign up until I saw this thread, and having participated in many of the TUC threads elsewhere, I hoped this one might follow a better course.

What usually happens with TUC discussion is that people don't like some of the following elements of the business model and the way it's promoted:

1. TUC won't disclose the modifications they perform to equipment, which makes people suspiscious of what they're getting for their money.
2. Promotion is to a large part based on the money-back guarantee and customer testimonials, which may come from unreliable, inexperienced or unattributable sources.
3. There are no objective, comparitive, measurements before and after modification, either by TUC or by independant testers.
4. Modified equipment is not loaned for review.

These issues come up over and over again, and though they've been chewed over many times, there never seems to be any resolution. Debators are usually happy customers and sceptical observers. The impasse is never bridged, though this thread seems to have closer than others. Amir in particular has asked all the good questions, yet still leaves the door open, which other sceptics don't.

What this thread hasn't addressed though, is this: a typical TUC customer owns some equipment which they are very familiar with, then sends it away for modification. A couple of weeks later it comes back, and often gets burnt-in for few more weeks. The owner then finds it sounds better than before, and leaves a positive testimonial on AVS or TUC site. What they don't do is compare stock and modified equipment side-by-side, and they certainly don't do it blind. And the objectivists go to town on that. The customer, who is usually a subjectivist, has little defence against this.

Regards, Nick

 

[naturephoto1]

Hi All,

Apologies for being a latecomer to this latest thrilling instalment of the TUC saga. I've been following WBF ever since Amir linked it from another forum, and really appreciate the informed and rational debate. I didn't sign up until I saw this thread, and having participated in many of the TUC threads elsewhere, I hoped this one might follow a better course.

What usually happens with TUC discussion is that people don't like some of the following elements of the business model and the way it's promoted:

1. TUC won't disclose the modifications they perform to equipment, which makes people suspiscious of what they're getting for their money.
2. Promotion is to a large part based on the money-back guarantee and customer testimonials, which may come from unreliable, inexperienced or unattributable sources.
3. There are no objective, comparitive, measurements before and after modification, either by TUC or by independant testers.
4. Modified equipment is not loaned for review.

These issues come up over and over again, and though they've been chewed over many times, there never seems to be any resolution. Debators are usually happy customers and sceptical observers. The impasse is never bridged, though this thread seems to have closer than others. Amir in particular has asked all the good questions, yet still leaves the door open, which other sceptics don't.

What this thread hasn't addressed though, is this: a typical TUC customer owns some equipment which they are very familiar with, then sends it away for modification. A couple of weeks later it comes back, and often gets burnt-in for few more weeks. The owner then finds it sounds better than before, and leaves a positive testimonial on AVS or TUC site. What they don't do is compare stock and modified equipment side-by-side, and they certainly don't do it blind. And the objectivists go to town on that. The customer, who is usually a subjectivist, has little defence against this.

Regards, Nick

Hi Nick,

Good to see you. I hope that things are going well with you.

Rich

 

[Gregadd]

...often gets burnt-in for few more weeks...

The gurantee is fourteen days!

 

[naturephoto1]

The gurantee is fourteen days!

Before the 14 days you have a good idea of where the performance is going. If the equipment is run non-stop with burn-in CDs you can get 168 hours of burn-in a week. Many of us have found that the sound depending upon the component may take 650 to over 1000 hours of part burn in to reach the ultimate performance. During that time the performance tends to open up even more.

Rich

 

[Gregadd]

I suppose one could evallaute a mail order bride in 14 days.

 

[mep]

I suppose one could evallaute a mail order bride in 14 days.

But wives don't come with a money-back guarantee. It costs lots of cashish to make them go away.

 

[amirm]

I am not going to ask how both of you are so knowledgeable about mail order brides!!!

Nick, it is great to see you here!

 

[mep]

I really don't know anything about mail-order brides other than they can cause you to lose your security clearance. I used to work with a guy who was on his second Russian mail-order bride. When you marry an older Russian woman who has adult children, you have to take them on financially as well. So the guy I knew was always complaining about having to send cash to Russia to upgrade the wife's kids apartment or buy them books and send them to school. It was always something. The government didn't like the fact he was sending cash to Russia and taking trips over there several times a year. They jerked his clearance and he lost his job. I guess the government should put out a list of approved countries to obtain mail-order brides from.

As for me, I'm still on my first marriage and the wife is from NJ. I'm currently doing 32 to life.

 

[vinylphilemag]

As for me, I'm still on my first marriage and the wife is from NJ. I'm currently doing 32 to life.

... With no chance of parole!

 

[Steve Williams]

... With no chance of parole!

only if you pay the warden

 

[JackD201]

I suppose one could evallaute a mail order bride in 14 days.

I would rather ABX a set of mail order brides or join The Bachelor which is 30 days, except, I'm not a bachelor and am 5 short of a 6 pack. All I got is a big barrel of sorts.

 

[welwynnick]

Thanks. Now, help me understand this from one engineer to another.

HDMI carries digital video. The receiver locks to its clock and captures incoming digital samples. To the extent you are getting video and then outputting it on a fixed pixel display (all the display types we use today), there is no possible way to improve the fidelity of the source. Period. Clock and signal variations do not matter for video as long as you are getting the correct picture.

So while I can give you benefit of doubt for audio, I can't for video. If you were making the above claim for analog video that would be one thing. But not digital video over HDMI.

Your turn .

I hope I haven’t missed the party on this thread, but there were a few things I wanted to talk about. This is probably the easiest one. I’ve read several claims from both customers and from TUC that video quality is improved, and got curious. A customer called Dave / Zaks (?) said his Pioneer BDP had improved PQ after the modification. Like many people, I was sceptical about this, but Zaks was quite convincing. Before the mod, his Arcam player was better with DVDs, but afterwards, the Pioneer was better. I initially thought this must be down to the picture settings, but it turned out his TV didn’t have DVI or HDMI inputs, so he was using the component video outputs.

Although we mostly use HDMI these days, this was quite revealing. If you can improve analogue audio, then why not analogue video? It’s just another D to A process, though with a much higher bandwidth. If it’s possible to see improved PQ after the upgrade, that suggests analogue audio could be improved as well. IIRC Zaks said his picture was clearer, with less noise, and better blacks in particular. Perhaps that’s analogous to what’s happening with the audio, but I think there are a couple of issues.

Firstly, analogue video isn’t actually like analogue audio. Audio is a bipolar signal, but video is unipolar. Sound waves have compression and rarefaction, which translates to positive and negative audio signals (while they’re uncompressed). Although light has positive and negative cycles, when it’s detected it becomes a unipolar signal – remaining positive, without zero-crossing every cycle. More than that, unlike audio, zero light level doesn’t equate to zero analogue video signal, it equates to 300mV out of 1V. That’s the black level commonly used for composite and component video. It means that low-level noise, distortion and other nasties usually remain below the video black level. That’s an advantage video has that audio doesn’t (I think the bigger challenge for audio is to maintain fidelity as signals approach zero, rather than as they approach maximum). So if the upgrades improve analogue video quality such that there’s a visible reduction in the noise that breaks through this 300mV guard band (into the dark shadows of the picture) that means there must be a significant reduction in what must be a quite a lot of noise and interference there in the first place.

Secondly, I agree with Amir that without modifying the video DSP, you can’t improve digital video. I’m happy to argue with anyone that cables, connectors, clocks and caps can improve SQ – even that HDMI cables affect digital audio quality – but digital video is different. In this case, bits really are bits. I think video jitter matters when you have a scanning display like a CRT, but with fixed-pixel displays, its not an issue. The only thing I can think of is where the HDMI timing jitter from the source is poor enough to cause bit errors in the HDMI connection, and the upgrades may tip the balance and reduce any sparklies that you might get with a long cable. Its not like HDMI jitter will cause one pixel to be displaced into an adjacent pixel. I believe David Schulte shouldn’t make any claims to improving HDMI PQ, but let’s not forget that other mod companies do make similar claims.

Got that off my chest. My next post will be more interesting – promise!

Nick

 

[The Upgrade Company LLC]

The Upgrade Company has pioneered the application of specialized shielding technology in consumer video electronics. Through the application of ferrite shielding plates that mount on top of integrated circuit chips, digital video and audio are both dramatically improved on both measurements and in objective comparisons. The use of ferrite shielding plates directly on the chips is one of our proprietary approaches and not legal for any other audio or video company or modifier to use. This has never been done in consumer electronics and is protected by U.S. Law. The first thing clients notice on an upgraded prepro is how much the HDMI video improved. The biggest source of noise and jitter in the digital domain is airborne radio frequency interference: all metallic traces, wiring and the internal traces inside the chipsets collect RFI right out of the air, dramatically reducing performance. We're loaded up with work so I do not have any more time to devote to this topic today, but I'll check back later. By the way, this "What's Best" ID is the only name associated with The Upgrade Company.

 

[amirm]

The Upgrade Company has pioneered the application of specialized shielding technology in consumer video electronics. Through the application of ferrite shielding plates that mount on top of integrated circuit chips, digital video and audio are both dramatically improved on both measurements and in objective comparisons.

Do you have those measurements? Who measured it and with what equipment?

The use of ferrite shielding plates directly on the chips is one of our proprietary approaches and not legal for any other audio or video company or modifier to use. This has never been done in consumer electronics and is protected by U.S. Law.

Which law? Patents? If so, do you have a reference to it?

The first thing clients notice on an upgraded prepro is how much the HDMI video improved.

If I change the size of the water pipe to your house, does it make the water taste better?

The biggest source of noise and jitter in the digital domain is airborne radio frequency interference: all metallic traces, wiring and the internal traces inside the chipsets collect RFI right out of the air, dramatically reducing performance.

It might do all that. Problem is, HDMI video capture is truly digital in nature at some point. Once you recovered the signal, it doesn't matter how much better it is than the minimal detection level. As an example, if I need 2 volts to detect a "1" and you give me 3 or 10 volts, the result is the same. To the extent the customer is getting the right picture and sound, no improvement you do in the signal path can improve the fidelity of HDMI connection. This will be the case even if there is an electrical improvement.

But let's go along with your argument anyway. Do you have an eye pattern for before and after?

We're loaded up with work so I do not have any more time to devote to this topic today, but I'll check back later. By the way, this "What's Best" ID is the only name associated with The Upgrade Company.

Thank you for spending time with us.