Debating switching from Yamaha to NAD

[poleepkwa]

I have had the NAD T758V3 and I swapped over to the Yamaha camp (yes, pre-pro, but still). My experience with NAD has been less than stellar. The first one I received had a very loud hum and buzz through the speakers. This was repaired (not completely eliminated, but better). Some other issues came up and in the end the distributer kindly swooped the unit for me. The new unit also was not completely silent. I was so fedup that I decided to change to something else. So I did a little comparison with a Yamaha and the NAD during the last couple of weeks and the NAD went in for a trade. Dirac in this case is no magic bullet.

 

[Deckard71]

Hi all

I left this thread quietly as I purchased a second hand Arcam 550. I have been 3 weeks struggling to decide which one to keep, Arcam or Yamaha+Roksan

Arcam is much more refined, and Dirac works very well (after having spent hours, days, weeks, experimenting). Bass is controlled and highs are sweet. No more listening fatigue

However, I miss the huge soundstage of Yamaha, the airy sound, sometimes harsher, but bigger and dispersed

I ended up with the decision of keeping the Arcam. The difference vs the NAD of this thread, is that the Arcam does not need Dirac to sound very good (though Dirac improves the SQ) as some owners of NAD have confirmed to me

 

[PENG]

1.300$ the 777 v3?? Where??

Typo by auto correct I guess. Should be $2400.

 

[vavan]

Ok, I took a bunch of measurements

it was really interesting to see your graphs. could you please show overlay of normalized distortion graphs?
I bought f208 couple of weeks ago and would like to compare it
thank you

 

[bozak]

I love how the NAD T777 v3 is absent from the "Measurements list". Perhaps it was an anomaly that didn't "Jive" with the rest of his "Measurements". There are way too many things wrong with this "Measurements list". There is no way to equivocate what these measurements are supposed to show without a baseline. Someone mentioned previously that these measurements mean absolutely nothing as far as being able to judge what any of these components sound like. If 80dB is inaudible (this is a hypothetical argument here), what use is a graph pointing out that one amp has a 109 dB vs another with 105dB? You simply cannot hear these differences.

I bought a Kenwood amplifier (Basic M1A) in the early 1980's that had some of the best "Measurements" I'd ever seen. The amplifier ended up being the harshest, dynamic limited, constrained, strident amplifier I'd ever owned or listened to. It burned up two pairs of Allison speakers crossovers, literally burning up and melting the hot melt glue used to hold the components to the circuit board. It's hard to do that to an Allison Four, or Three for that matter. I compared it to a Harman Kardon amplifier with measurements that seemed worse across the board. You can't trust these measurements to claim what a component will sound like. The HK amplifier was a much better amplifier, it just had worse "Numbers".

I own a NAD T777 V3, and I can tell you that it doesn't have anything wrong with the sound quality or dynamic range. I also own a NAD T 758. It doesn't have anything wrong with it either. I'm not saying any of this due to brand bias, I'm just comparing apples to apples here. There are differences between the sound quality of most of the brands on this list. None of them are disqualified due to this table of measurements, nor can they be judged in any audible way by these numbers. I am pretty sure that a class A amplifier will score differently than a class D amplifier on this list, but that doesn't preclude the type of amplifier from being worse than another.

Anyone who wants to claim that one AVR is better than another based on this list of measurements is not paying attention to what makes a quality audio amplifier. It's the sound of it that the human ear picks up, not what an oscilloscope or distortion meter does, within reason. The SNR of an amplifier is just one of the qualities that go into the total equation of what a quality amplifier sounds like to the human ear. The power output measurements can be argued against as well, as far as what the dynamic power sounds like to different people with different ears listening in different acoustical environments. Using a room correction tool/software such as Dirac can influence the perceived headroom more than a microphone in an anechoic chamber as well. I just can't believe that people buy into these gimmicks like deciding the quality of an AVR by it's signal to noise ratio alone.

 

[Pogre]

I love how the NAD T777 v3 is absent from the "Measurements list". Perhaps it was an anomaly that didn't "Jive" with the rest of his "Measurements". There are way too many things wrong with this "Measurements list". There is no way to equivocate what these measurements are supposed to show without a baseline. Someone mentioned previously that these measurements mean absolutely nothing as far as being able to judge what any of these components sound like. If 80dB is inaudible (this is a hypothetical argument here), what use is a graph pointing out that one amp has a 109 dB vs another with 105dB? You simply cannot hear these differences.

I bought a Kenwood amplifier (Basic M1A) in the early 1980's that had some of the best "Measurements" I'd ever seen. The amplifier ended up being the harshest, dynamic limited, constrained, strident amplifier I'd ever owned or listened to. It burned up two pairs of Allison speakers crossovers, literally burning up and melting the hot melt glue used to hold the components to the circuit board. It's hard to do that to an Allison Four, or Three for that matter. I compared it to a Harman Kardon amplifier with measurements that seemed worse across the board. You can't trust these measurements to claim what a component will sound like. The HK amplifier was a much better amplifier, it just had worse "Numbers".

I own a NAD T777 V3, and I can tell you that it doesn't have anything wrong with the sound quality or dynamic range. I also own a NAD T 758. It doesn't have anything wrong with it either. I'm not saying any of this due to brand bias, I'm just comparing apples to apples here. There are differences between the sound quality of most of the brands on this list. None of them are disqualified due to this table of measurements, nor can they be judged in any audible way by these numbers. I am pretty sure that a class A amplifier will score differently than a class D amplifier on this list, but that doesn't preclude the type of amplifier from being worse than another.

Anyone who wants to claim that one AVR is better than another based on this list of measurements is not paying attention to what makes a quality audio amplifier. It's the sound of it that the human ear picks up, not what an oscilloscope or distortion meter does, within reason. The SNR of an amplifier is just one of the qualities that go into the total equation of what a quality amplifier sounds like to the human ear. The power output measurements can be argued against as well, as far as what the dynamic power sounds like to different people with different ears listening in different acoustical environments. Using a room correction tool/software such as Dirac can influence the perceived headroom more than a microphone in an anechoic chamber as well. I just can't believe that people buy into these gimmicks like deciding the quality of an AVR by it's signal to noise ratio alone.

I think you'll find most here would be perfectly satisfied with the results of some double blind testing.

 

[davidscott]

I love how the NAD T777 v3 is absent from the "Measurements list". Perhaps it was an anomaly that didn't "Jive" with the rest of his "Measurements". There are way too many things wrong with this "Measurements list". There is no way to equivocate what these measurements are supposed to show without a baseline. Someone mentioned previously that these measurements mean absolutely nothing as far as being able to judge what any of these components sound like. If 80dB is inaudible (this is a hypothetical argument here), what use is a graph pointing out that one amp has a 109 dB vs another with 105dB? You simply cannot hear these differences.

I bought a Kenwood amplifier (Basic M1A) in the early 1980's that had some of the best "Measurements" I'd ever seen. The amplifier ended up being the harshest, dynamic limited, constrained, strident amplifier I'd ever owned or listened to. It burned up two pairs of Allison speakers crossovers, literally burning up and melting the hot melt glue used to hold the components to the circuit board. It's hard to do that to an Allison Four, or Three for that matter. I compared it to a Harman Kardon amplifier with measurements that seemed worse across the board. You can't trust these measurements to claim what a component will sound like. The HK amplifier was a much better amplifier, it just had worse "Numbers".

I own a NAD T777 V3, and I can tell you that it doesn't have anything wrong with the sound quality or dynamic range. I also own a NAD T 758. It doesn't have anything wrong with it either. I'm not saying any of this due to brand bias, I'm just comparing apples to apples here. There are differences between the sound quality of most of the brands on this list. None of them are disqualified due to this table of measurements, nor can they be judged in any audible way by these numbers. I am pretty sure that a class A amplifier will score differently than a class D amplifier on this list, but that doesn't preclude the type of amplifier from being worse than another.

Anyone who wants to claim that one AVR is better than another based on this list of measurements is not paying attention to what makes a quality audio amplifier. It's the sound of it that the human ear picks up, not what an oscilloscope or distortion meter does, within reason. The SNR of an amplifier is just one of the qualities that go into the total equation of what a quality amplifier sounds like to the human ear. The power output measurements can be argued against as well, as far as what the dynamic power sounds like to different people with different ears listening in different acoustical environments. Using a room correction tool/software such as Dirac can influence the perceived headroom more than a microphone in an anechoic chamber as well. I just can't believe that people buy into these gimmicks like deciding the quality of an AVR by it's signal to noise ratio alone.

I too had a Kenwood M1 amp with a NAD preamp and did manage to burn out multiple tweeters on my Polk 7Bs. I chalked it up to the Polk tweeters which were known to have power handling issued at the high volumes I played my music. Funny thing when I replaced the Polks with DCM Time Windows I never experienced any more blown tweeters.

 

[bozak]

I too had a Kenwood M1 amp with a NAD preamp and did manage to burn out multiple tweeters on my Polk 7Bs. I chalked it up to the Polk tweeters which were known to have power handling issued at the high volumes I played my music. Funny thing when I replaced the Polks with DCM Time Windows I never experienced any more blown tweeters.

That amp is notorious for being harsh on speaker elements. The Allison tweeters are cooled by either ferrofluid or grease, depending on whether it's a two way or three way tweeter. They are pretty robust in their design. Speaking of harsh, I guess I was a little bit harsh on my critique of the M1A. I just found it to be lacking in warmth and tonality. It had some kind of "Sigma Drive" gimmick that was supposed to have two sets of speaker wires run to the amp for some kind of feedback loop or something. I never used that feature.

I couldn't believe that it didn't just melt the hot melt glue, but turned it brown and it bubbled up before I noticed it when troubleshooting the speakers.