Photo Gallery

Click on images to enlarge

Three photos taken of the inside of a brand new, stock, non-upgraded McIntosh MCD-500.

This is a $6500 CD/SACD player that is an excellent player to upgrade, having great engineering and many positive attributes.  However...

1. Draw your attention toward the white colored flat conductors and to the black, white, and colored wiring.
2. Note that all of the black, white and colored wiring and all of the flat white colored conductors are all bare naked & wide open, collecting both RFI & EMI contamination.  
3. Note the hidden skinny bare naked unshielded aluminum 24ga wire serving as the power cord from the IEC inlet to the transformer board.  This is what your multi-thousand dollar power cord becomes once it enters a any number of stock non-upgraded high end audio models.
4. Note the unshielded colored wires carrying the power cord AC to the transformer on the left top, and the bare naked wide open unshielded colored wires coming out of the transformer providing contaminated power to the various sections of the power supply.  
5. Note the (2) black colored power supply wire bundles attached & entering the transport are also bare naked, wide open, collecting both RFI & EMI thousands of times per second with Khz band noise from the MCD-500's clocks, contaminating the transport and raw digital data off the disc.  
6. The entire player is being self contaminated through the bare wiring and bare conductors which are constantly collecting RFI (not to mention EMI) thousands of times per second with Khz band noise from the MCD-500's clocks as well as airborne RF radiation from outside the player, and what travels into the player along interconnects and the power cord.   
7. What do you think this contamination does to the sound of the player when RFI & EMI is reproduced right along with the music?  It ruins it.  Flat and dull sounding. Weak bass, small, hazy and thin, low resolution next to the same player that is shielded by The Upgrade Company's techniques and materials.

By law, no manufacturer nor modification/upgrade firm can approximate or duplicate our shielding.

If we catch them, they are subject to a U.S. Court, World Court, or other international court order to remove it, at the owners or the installer's expense.

**This very serious lack of attention to RFI & EMI contamination is not unique to McIntosh.  All high end audio and video manufacturers suffer from RFI & EMI contamination, which has been largely due to the increased time to manufacture & higher costs required to install proper shielding**

   
Click on images to enlarge

Typical "CLOCK" installation, which amounts to consumer fraud:

EMM Labs

Click on images to enlarge

EMM Labs CDSA - This is a $12,500 MSRP EMM Labs CDSA-SE circuit board that handles ALL of the data after it comes off the disc. It is a purely generic off the shelf circuit board from Philips out of their ~10 year old discontinued SACD player.  There are no audiophile grade or expensive parts on this circuit board.  It probably cost EMM Labs all of $49 or less to put in their $12,500 CDSA CD player.  EMM's "New" XDS-1 has the same level of construction and appears strikingly similar in build. The XDS-1 uses the Esoteric VSOP transport that is manufactured by Pioneer Electronics out of the DV-60/SA-60.  EMM DOES NOT utilize the high end Esoteric VRDS-NEO full disc clamping heavy duty mechanism used in the top of the line Esoteric '01 Series.

 Esoteric DV-60 Universal player in stock "For Profit Condition"

Click on image to enlarge

Esoteric DV-60 PCB - Main circuit board of a $6000 MSRP stock Esoteric DV-60. Note the only audiophile parts are the colorful capacitors, amidst a lot of cheap "For Profit" capacitors that are dull gray/black. The maroon capacitors are also cheap film caps, but not as cheap as the plethora of very tiny tan colored surface mount chip capacitors we can barely see all over this board. Esoteric could and should have used a high number of the red or green colored Wima brand polypropylene capacitors or polystyrene capacitors instead, yet we see only 8 red Wima capacitors on this entire main board. There are no audiophile or even medium grade resistors on this board; all are very cheap. The $6000 Esoteric DV-60 does not contain any RF or EM shielding or dampening either. This is the exactly same look & construction we find in a $99 Philips DVD player from Walmart, except for the 20 colorful audiophile parts.

Note how the overall appearance of this Esoteric DV-60 mother board is nothing like the build quality we see in the photo's for the Esoteric P-01/D-01 transport and dac.  Note the DV-60's circuit board build quality is nearly identical to the $99 Samsung DVD player pictured.

Click on image to enlarge

Esoteric P-01/D-01/G-0Rb Top of the Esoteric Line in Stock OEM Condition

Click on images to enlarge 

Photos of Esoteric D-01 DAC and P-01 transport power supply unit both in their original "For Profit built" condition.  The incomplete shielding of the wiring inside these units is appalling for a top of the line set costing close to $60,000 USD.  Note unshielded wiring left off due to cost & time to manufacture constraints.

Ideally all wiring should be shielded.  Large measurable improvements in signal-to-noise ratio are achieved, large improvements in detail and transparency, bass heft/weight,  and top end clarity are all heard by finishing the shielding of the wiring inside the P-01/D-01 set and adding noise attenuation through ferrite. 

The P-01/D-01/G-0Rb circuit boards are designed well, but still contain quite a number of "For Profit" motive capacitors, resistors, op-amps, and voltage regulators.  The performance can be doubled, signal-t-noise- ratios improved by over 11dB, THD+IMD distortion cut in half.

McIntosh

Click on images to enlarge

McIntosh MVP-881 Universal player shows cheap ultra-thin ultra-cheap aluminum wires with corroded aluminum push-on connectors and no shielding on any power supply wiring or signal conductors, no vibration dampening and cheap fuses. Photos show stock original untouched $8500 MSRP McIntosh MVP-881 in it's "For Profit Built" condition.

McIntosh installs typically a 12"- 24" length of this same black & white ultra thin & cheap aluminum wire, cheap noisy fuses and corroded aluminum fast-on connectors in their preamplifiers, surround processors, dac's and transports, tuners.   This is what your expensive power cord becomes once it enters a McIntosh preamp, player, dac, transport, tuner, surround processor etc.   EMM Labs does much the same thing, but they use ultra thin/cheap copper wire with cheap fast-on aluminum connectors, again no RF or EM shielding, no dampening, and cheap electronic parts galore.

Cheap Parts

Click on images to enlarge

Exterior & interior of a $59 Samsung DVD-C500 DVD/CD player.