LAS VEGAS —
NAD Electronics built on its threeseries
product strategy at International CES with new
products in its Classic series and top-end Master series.
The brand’s third series is the Viso series of tabletop
audio products, the first of which was the biamplified
$700-suggested Viso 1 iPod/iPhone-docking speaker
that also streams stereo Bluetooth. It shipped in the
fourth quarter.
All series are designed to leverage computer audio,
or what NAD calls Smart Music, whether stored on a
PC or in a mobile device. All series have separate franchise
agreements, and Viso is intended to expand NAD
distribution beyond A/V specialists to such outlets as
luxury-goods retailers.
To its Master series, NAD is adding its Digital Suite of
components, which are designed to eliminate all analog
circuitry from the signal path. The components store
and play back digital music, including 192kHz/24-bit
HD music downloads, and use NAD’s Direct Digital
amplifier technology, which directly accepts a digital
PCM signal and uses pulse width modulation (PWM)
to amplify the signal.
The first products in the series include the $2,500-suggested
M50 Digital Music Player and $2,000 M52 Digital
Music Vault, which can be paired with the current
$6,000 M2 DAC/amplifier to reproduce 24-bit/96kHz
music. The M50 and M52 were shown at the CEDIA
Expo and will ship early this year.
The M50 Digital Music Player is a networked CD
player/ripper that sends ripped content to the M52
Vault with 3TB RAID 5 hard-drive array. The M50 also
streams music from a networked PC and streams Internet
radio through a networked broadband modem.
Also for the Master series but not in the series’ Digital
Suite, NAD is launching the M15 HD2 preamp/processor,
shipping in January at a suggested $4,500. Compared
to the model it replaces, the HD2 adds HDMI
1.4a ins and outs, HDMI audio return channel, new
video boards and Ethernet for network control, and it
expands the number of HDMI inputs to six from four and
the number of HDMI outputs to two.
Owners of the current M15 HD can get an upgrade
to all of the HD2’s new features for $950, thanks to the
component’s modular design construction (MDC).
In the Classic series, which includes stereo and hometheater
products such as A/V receivers, the brand is
adding the $2,600 C 390DD DAC/amplifier with builtin
2×150-watt Direct Digital amp and 35-bit/844kHz
up-sampling digital conversion. It comes standard with
a USB input capable of streaming 24-bit/96kHz USB
audio, but two modular upgrades are also available.
One is a $300 HDMI module with three HDMI 1.4a ins
and one out. It’s capable of passing through video twochannel
digital audio up to 24-bit/192kHz. The second
module is the $300 phono amp with built-in 24/192
analog-to-digital converter.
