It’s been a long time coming, but one of my favourite hifi manufactures has finally come out with a player that plays my favourite disc format (SACD of course).

NAD is a Canadian hifi manufacturer that is world famous for making not too expensive hifi equipment that sounds great. When I say great, I mean that it isn’t just well composed, doesn’t offend, I mean it jams! And it does it right with every kind of music; which is mighty hand for me because I have a very wide range of musical tastes. Their most famous product is the NAD 3020 amplifier from the 70’s, designed by Bjørn Erik Edvardsen, who has been back in the lab there recently to bring out the NAD C320BEE (a real gem in affordable hifi).

I have many friends with NAD amps and CD players, and they have had them a long time. This meaning that they hold on to them. Other units have come and gone, but the NADs stay. I still have a NAD 7150 in the bedroom that serves for night listening with a pair of Onkyo D-TK10 speakers (truly gorgeous!) and as a headphone amp for my Beyerdynamics DT-990. I love it!

Now, back to the present. SACD from NAD, baby!

Now, the sad part is, I don’t have one here in my hot little hand to plug in and listen too, but I promise I will in the next few weeks.
Let me explain the real reason I am so excited. It is all because of this article in the Italian best-selling audio magazine AUDIO REVIEW. I’ve never heard these guys gush like this before!
Here are some quotes:

Lab test:

“…the level of silence and resolution reached by this player in SACD mode is the best ever in our lab tests!” “Only small perplexities emerged using the double-tones lab measure at 19+20kHz, but they are nothing compared to the global, superlative performance.”

and

“Over 19 bits; it’s a record! Normally, we don’t use sensational quotes, but now we must! This graph shows the Philips test SACD pure tone track recorded at –140dB. We never used this disc, cause the noise of the players we tested drowned the original signal. Now, with phenomenal performance of the M5, in conjunction with the very good qualities of the Audio Precision System 2C, the signal line fly out at 16dB over the noise threshold!” …

and then

“Crystal clear sound in Joni Mitchells old recording, with a full and resonating voice and a rich and well balanced acoustic guitar. The smallest details are very well heard, inside an accurate and fine playback.”

the article is here in its full Italian glory, and here in paraphrased English on the NAD site.

As I said, I’ll get one in soonly and give my own eval and compare it to the recent Pioneer PD-D6

Gasp! I’m out of breath!