This is a different mod. I think they may have reduced the price in response to increased competition. I purchased this unit from Sound Odyssey
www.soundodyssey.com for the bargain price of $645 shipped !!!
I would imagine it's a bit better than the Underwood Level 1+ model because of the clock upgrade. The Underwood mod upgrades some resistors and capacitors in addition to Vampire RCA jacks. However, by far, the clock upgrade makes the most improvement after the opamp upgrade, IMHO. The resistors and cap upgrades are okay, but they don't improve the sound the way a dedicated clock would. I'm sold on the low-jitter argument after hearing some sources with very low jitter readings. The Trichord 4 clock, like the LC Audio X03 clock, is a clock on steroids. It absolutely raises the quality of the signal going to the DAC chip. It's also much more expensive than the cap and resistor upgrades, but less labor intensive to install. Therefore, much of the markup for the Underwood mod is for labor costs since it's not done in-house in that sense. I mentioned that difference with the owner who basically agreed with me on that distinction. He felt the clock upgrade was a better tweak as the stock resistors and caps weren't too bad. I would have to agree on that, but take it with a grain of salt as I have very limited knowledge of these things.
As for the sound? Awesome! I love it. I've recently auditioned a SACDmods C222ES and Benchmark DAC 1 among some other sources. This unit beats the 222 hands down for Redbook probably due to the better opamps in it. The 222 can't touch it for its dynamics and speed/attack. It's pretty close to the Benchmark but I'd have to do a side-by-side on it. The Benchmark had that upsampling signature to it which I found a little too aggressive or harsh due to the DAC 1's already neutral (bright?) sound. Suffice it to say the Music Hall has got some great resolution and it's definitely a high-end player. The highs are crystal-clear without being fatiguing and the bass has real slam to it. Beck's Sea Change sounds just beautiful with its HDCD encoding. It's not SACD-level but its still a bonus as I'm finding out a few of my cds are HDCD encoded and I wasn't aware of that.
I have about 50 hours on it so its just breaking in. Also, I'm soon having a power supply installed just for the clock itself, which should improve the sound a bit. The final upgrade is a ZapFilter which I'm also going to add sometime soon. However, the opamps still sound pretty good to my ears.
I highly recommend it if you really want to enter high-end on a budget. For $645 brand new, this unit is hard to beat!