It's not really an NAD product. Maybe
I used to work for NAD as an amp designer before they were sold to the Canadians, and if they have a similar business model then it is likely you unit was not designed by NAD.

If you buy an amp or CD player you usually get a lovely sounding design product in one of their ugly grey boxes. It has been carefully tuned to have the best possible sound for (relatively) beer money.

However, their av processors are huge design projects. One model could take 3 man years or more to design (usually more). So the job was farmed out to Chinese design houses such as Gold Peak. The trouble there is that these people know f'all about sound quality, or quality in general. NAD then has a tweak with the circuitry to give it a family sound, and usually to stop it humming like a hive of angry bees, and then flog it. A major problem is that the engineers who designed it don't earn enough to afford av processors, so the first time they use one may be the one they designed, so don't understand the product as they need to to make it usable. Why the fuck would they know about 1080p sources when blue ray is not available in China? (Arcam and Harman Kardon do the same) NAD did start getting it's CD players done this way with some success. However this CD player turned out to be a stolen design from Arcam. This may be why Arcam and NAD pulled out of Gold Peak, and the R&D manager of Gold Peak is working somewhere else, flogging of Arcam and NAD circuitry as other brand names.
( jagwap, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 1:59, 2 replies)

Wow, that's very depressing.
I love music most of all, so like music-focused products, but I also love games and movies, and you need surround for those, and musical sounding AVRs are like hens' teeth below the high end.

NAD's actual amplifier sections are so damn good at the price, I mean, really phenomenally powerful, that I was willing to endure a degree of bugginess in the HDMI handling and I really didn't need much beyond a crossover and delay for the speakers. I didn't anticipate just HOW buggy this thing would be.

The replacement, the T757 features their (previously high-end) modular construction (and the press seems to indicate a purist approach with the video), so I may audition the thing to see if it has a stable, responsive S/PDIF section. I would assume that the modular stuff is an in-house job, as it was only featured on their top-deck stuff before.

Failing that I suppose I could resort to Denon or Pioneer, but their cheaper models don't sound particularly good for music. Maybe some used separates one day. Always wanted an old Rotel power amp with the stonking great heat sinks on it.
(Ladyfingers is in your wardrobe,, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 4:33, closed)

There's a simple solution
Get an integrated or pre-power amp that has a bypass AV input (this bypasses the volume control on this input only). Then plug the left and right front channels from the av processor into that. Then you'll have an uncompromised stereo system with surround added on when required. ARCAM and Cyrus (Cyrus needs a three finger salute on power up) have this feature, along with others. Cyrus are good musical sounding products. Not as warm and cuddly as your NAD, but once you're used to it, much more rewarding.

There's a good chance NAD seeded the design with their amplifier circuits. However the devil is in the details.
( jagwap, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 6:22, closed)

I was under the impression
that more recent NAD receivers were done by ANAM?

In terms of AV receivers, I gave up on the smaller companies years ago. As you say, the requirements in terms of time, resources and licenses that go into even very humdrum receivers are too high for smaller companies to reasonably achieve. Arcam AV product sounds impressive but the web is awash with people finding problems with them. In contrast, my Yamaha has done everything asked of it. If I didn't own an entirely seperate two channel system I might care more that it sounds a bit plodding with music but I do so I don't if you know what I'm saying.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 14:21, closed)

That's what disappointed me so much.
I went into the purchase assured that NAD had stripped the receiver down to the absolute basics. And, in a way, it is stripped down. The sad thing is that the few features that are there are just shoddily implemented.
(Ladyfingers is in your wardrobe,, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 15:10, closed)