If someone sends in a pair of NAC82s and has one upgraded I will gladly do an A-B comparison for them. As the benchmark for this conversion was the NAC52 and Supercap and other NAC82 modifications on the market we did most of the testing with those. This upgrade was designed for people who aspire to a 52 and don't necessarily want to invest heavily in one when we believe a NAC82 can get you most of the way there. We were basing this on the assumption that many people had heard a NAC52 or know someone who has. We also thought that most owners of the NAC82 have started with a single hicap and the upgraded to dual hicaps or a single supercap and heard the difference. The benefits of multiple rail operation such as better definition and lower noise and are carried through and our upgrade builds on that.
I appreciate that with the big leaps from Naim upgrades unless you've heard one to aspire to you can't make your own comparisons. Just look at the recent NAP300 thread..
I could get the tracks to listen to but would it be valid if I don't have the same pressing, source media, deck, cartridge, tonearm, cd player, cables or speaker, for example?
As ever with any of our upgrades we will happily reverse any mods we do and this NAC82 upgrade was designed to be fully reversible should a: you not like it (that hasn't happened yet) or b: you'd like to resell the amp in its original condition (no-one has asked us to do this yet either).