Yeah, I've heard a few NAD AVP + AMP.
I do like their simple aesthetics.
They don't sound any better or worse than other AVR/AVP.
But for $6K, I expect a lot more than some afterthoughts.
Heck, for $2K I would be complaining about the XLR adapters.
When I saw that part, I thought the reviewer was joking or talking about some other adapters I would never use. But for XLR that I would be using 100% off the time?
At least the Amp doesn't require any XLR-adapters. Right?
If only ATI could get Monoprice their $4K HTP-1 AVP quickly so AH could do a review. I expect no XLR-adapters on the Monolith HTP-1.
This M series is really quite a bit different from their receivers. We can argue until we are blue in the face if one product sounds better than another, but I can say this, the parts inside this processor are better than what are in their receivers and in most other receivers. They currently are using are really good Ti BB DAC, mostly in dual differential mode across the main channels, and are moving toward top of the line ESS Sabre dac's instead. Probably far more important, the analog circuit uses a really good opamp with among the best noise performance in the business. And it has Bluesound.
Now compare the Marantz you mentioned, they have fine DAC's but often not as good. They often aren't true balanced but use a cheap converter chip. They have HDAM, which is conceptually nice, but then they stick cheap and noisier opamps on either side of it. What's the point? So while I don't have technical measurements of both to compare (and I'm sure they both measure very good), I can at least say that the visual inspection under the good made me feel better about the NAD than the Marantz.
Marantz uses HEOS, which I find to be aesthetically worse than BlueSound and to generally be of poorer quality. It has more glitches, doesn't currently support HD versions of the streaming services, etc. Bluesound is, as far as I'm concerned, the best of these systems by heads and shoulders. I have had to review products incorporating Sonos, Musicast, HEOS, and Bluesound multiple times over the last 2 years and I keep coming back to Bluesound as my favorite.
DIRAC is better than Audyssey, that is my blunt assessment. While neither is perfect, my experience with both has shown DIRAC to be a lot better. I find it WAY harder to use, I find it glitchier, but the end result is provably better. Not just the flatness of the line, that is in many ways a trick of little significance to sound. It's that DIRAC has made less mistakes in what it corrects and how and does not increase spatial variance. In fact, I've found it often lessens it.
While fairly expensive, the NAD M series amplifiers are awesome. Perfect no, but at that price point, they have a lot of advantages over other options. They use NCore modules custom built under license by NAD. While Gene found issues in the THX assessment of the NAD, He and Greg Stidsen (of NAD) have both commented that the amp was probably faulty. Other than that, the NCore modules are certainly provably excellent and a lot better than the Class AB amps that Marantz uses. The amps are very low noise, high power, and super efficient. Sure there are really good, maybe even better Class AB amps out there. However the cost and inefficiency of equally or better Class AB amps in enough channels for a modern ATMOS theater is an issue for most. 90%+ efficiency vs 50% or less is an issue when you have 11+ channels running on one or two 15-20 amp circuits. As far as I'm concerned, Class D has become a must and Hypex is one of the best module brands out there.
The rest of your complaints are a mix of "sure I agree its weird or not great" to "actually that's more common than you think." HDMI is an issue, but then who knows how common that is and what caused it. I actually have had hands on with most of the new NAD HT gear as I was doing DIRAC setup for them when it first launched. I didn't run into HDMI problems, including with this piece, when I did that. The variety of gear I was hooking up to these was so vast that I feel like if it was widespread, it would have been a common issue. The only two times i ever saw an HDMI issue, it was mostly the fault of the BluRay player and was addressed in one case with a cable swap and in the other with a player swap (That player, a Sony model) had been a problem with a Marantz receiver as well. HDMI handshake is a common problem so I have a hard time faulting companies too much.
The dongles thing is pretty common. A lot of pro-gear uses breakout cables for XLR to save space on the back. What it takes to enlarge the case over certain standard sizes or even bring this gear to market is a lot more of a bear than I ever realized. Remember that NAD adopted a modular architecture to allow upgrades and is one of the only brands on the market to successfully make that work. Other brands that have successfully brought modular designs to market charge multiples of what NAD does. That makes their projects provably future proof. That means no easy ability to do what you suggest.
To pick on Emotiva again, they have brought modular designs to market and yet the products have been glitchy and no modules ever came to market. They also charge $1000 more for the modular version of their new processor.
Having said that, NAD has been, for whatever reason, been unable to build some of their "stuff" into their devices and had cheap goofy dongles hanging off the back for things like WiFi and Bluesound. Sure everyone did that in the early days of wifi and bluetooth, but at this point that isn't common (and strangely, NAD builds all this into their integrated amps and such).
I think owning an NAD is idiosyncratic but I will also say, since I started reviewing and gained inside knowledge of how these products are brought to market, I've come to have a much more understanding view of all this. While I can't share specific details for obvious reasons, what I can say is that we should all be mad at Dolby, who is the worst offender, and HDMI. The licensing and approval process and way in which this happens is awful and basically makes it exceedingly difficult for small companies to bring competent products to market.
