Electronic Visionary Systems is a creation of myself, Ric Schultz. I have been an avid high-end enthusiast and tweaker for over 46 years.

Back in the mid 70’s I came across two gentlemen that changed my way of dealing with audio. Until then I knew how to solder and had assembled a Heathkit receiver but I had never made my own equipment from scratch.

Trevor Lees came from Australia with a wealth of tube and tweak knowledge. I met him after he had taken the phono stage from the highly regarded Bruce Moore designed Paragon 10 preamp and put it into a Dyna PAS 3 chassis with a better power supply and no line stage. This simple phono stage kicked ass. My first audio job was stuffing the circuit boards for his PAS mods. Trevor was the first person I have ever heard of that played with wire, paralleling switches (lower contact resistance), car batteries for heater supplies and most importantly he pushed using just one half of a dual triode (something that makes a big sonic difference that practically no one has done since). Trevor showed me that you can take a simple circuit and get big results if you take it far enough.

Sieg Modes lived for perfect sound. His wideband solid state amp in the 70’s was the cream of the crop. His 60 watt per channel stereo amp had a 700k bandwidth (about 7-9K open loop bandwidth), was fully regulated, completely DC, had non-inductive emitter resistors and no inductor in the output. He spent countless hours making this wide bandwidth amp stable. Sieg had at one time the World’s best head amp (30 meg bandwidth!) and the World’s best interconnect (a litz cable design that he was given while on the astral plane in a dream). This man loves bandwidth! Sieg taught me about taking the time to take something to the nth degree and thinking theoretically as well as doing listening tests.  By the way, his amp is in its zillionth incarnation and currently has a 5 meg!!! bandwidth.  This brilliant and sweet man left the earth plane several years ago....still miss him. 

In the early 80’s I worked for Monster Cable, Audible Illusions and MFA.

Here are some of the noteable products and services I have done since 1988:
 
1.  In 1988 I started to make my own passive preamps for people and in late 1989 came up with the idea for a volume control (the shunt attenuator) that has just one fixed resistor as the series element and uses a switch with resistors for the shunt element. My Stepped Attenuators and Ultimate Attenuators were reviewed in July 1990 by Robert Harley in Stereophile Magazine. They were class A rated for 7 years.  The shunt attenuator is used today by Reference Line, BAT and others. Selling the attenuators for 17 years I had only about 3% return!!!  The latest Nude Attenuators were discontinued a few years ago.

2.  In 1995 I designed a DAC using the best parts and execution that I could. I used the UltraAnalog input receiver, the HDCD digital filter, UltraAnalog DACs (covered in copper foil and Mu-metal), and had no output filtering or output buffering. The balanced version has five 56 watt transformers, 17 regulators and two power cords. All parts are the world's best and are all hardwired/handwired directly together with 6 nines copper wire, Wonder wire, etc. The very limited edition totally hotrodded Hand Made DAC-1 is still thought of as one of the most transparent DACs ever made.

3.  In 2000 I made a series of DACs called the Millennium DACs.  These DACs are highly sought after and one can still read rave reviews on AudioReview.com  

4.  Modifications of CD players, DVD players, SACD player and Universal players.  I have performed serious mods on many, many Sony CD players, Sony DVD players, Oppo Players, Toshiba players, Philips players, Pioneer players, etc.  The last mod I did was to the Oppo 205 and that mod was discontinued a couple of years ago.

5.  EVS amplifiers and amp mods....in early 2005 I modded amps from Nuforce......and then started making custom amps using the UCD class D modules......this was followed by amps using the IcePower modules and a couple of years ago sold some amps using the very latest IceEdge modules.  I have modiifed class D amps from VTV (Purifi based), modded the Hypex NC400 amps, modded the LSA Voyager GaN amps, etc.  I have made and sold a couple of pure class A amps (my own design).

6. The EVS Ground Enhancer and Music Purifiers (released May 2022) are my latest products.  These inexpensive goodies can transform a system from good to great. 

 

My goal has always been to sell/make/modify gear to be the most transparent I can. I will not sell any component if there is a better product at a similar price. I try to treat each customer as if they are myself. I want every person to have the best sound system that their budget allows. If I don't have the best products for someone, I tell them who might or does.

Philosophically, I would call myself a purist. What I want is live breathing musicians in my listening room. I want to feel the emotion and delicacy of this wonderful thing we call music. I design equipment to have as little signature as possible. I don’t want tube sound, I don't want transistor sound, I want the component to disappear. I believe that the signal path should be as short as possible (I have not used a line stage since 1979!).  I read everything I can find about tweaking and have talked to countless audiophiles who continuously educate me. In my mods and products I use the world’s best parts and execute them in the best ways I know. I design strictly for sound. Purity is the goal. Every part and every power supply must be made as linear as possible.