Lagging behind as usual. Had to wait a couple of days before I had the house to myself without a sleeping child upstairs.
I don't know if anyone else did this, but I boosted the amplitude on source B by 3.5/3.3 dB (left/right) to raise it to the same level as source A.
One thing I learned selling audio equipment is that louder almost always wins, so any fair comparison has to have the source levels matched. You can try and do it with the volume knob on playback but it's tough to do.
I find it totally interesting that we can't even get consensus on something as simple as which source was 'brighter'. This has to be a by-product of the level differences between the sources and what we're each doing with the volume knob.
Now one could argue that whichever source had the amplitude changed has been thru destructive processing. I did it both ways, boost B to match A, cut A to match B so that both 'raw' sources got a chance against the adjusted source. Observations were the same.
It was also interesting to hear that most people tend to be attracted to tonal qualities more than anything else. While the V3 was too bright in the last comparison, I found that in this comparison, I appreciated the extra hf on the v3.
Overall, I did prefer the v3 in this test. It seemed a little more refined - easier to separate and follow the individual instruments and seemed to have a bit more detail.
Did I hear $1000 difference? - no, but at the same time I know the pleasure of owning and touching a really nicely crafted piece of gear and the UA-5 is not such a thing. Still, I think it does an excellent job sonically.
At this point I'd say I have a feel for the differences between v3 and w-mod and am more curious about the various UA-5 mods vs. stock
Thanks again for putting it together Brian.
david