Below is a mini review of the T753. To give you an idea of where I am coming from I will start with a brief history of my dealings with NAD.
I purchased a T752 refurb about a year ago from Yawa. I really enjoyed the sound and features of the unit, and I thought I was finally done upgrading for a while (haha). About two weeks after receiving the 752 the front left channel of the amp blew and almost blew my speaker. They replaced the unit with a NIB T752. While I really liked the sound of the unit, the fact that my old one died and the number of posts about failures made me sell it unopen. I end up getting $50 more than I paid for it on Ebay.
Just recently I reconfigured my system and I now have growing needs for multi-zone audio/video. Because of that I decided to give NAD another try.
I purchased a refurb T762 from Yawa and it was DOA. The screen would flash and the unit would lockup after about 5 minutes of use. Obviously I wasn't too happy. They decided to replace it with a NIB T753 for no charge besides me shipping the T762 back to NAD for repair. Side note: I detailed what was wrong with the unit to Yawa. On the trouble-ticket they had me mail with the unit it just said 'locked up.' I added a detailed letter so the tech can know what to look for.
I received the 753 mid last week. I hooked it up and first checked for the issues that have been posted here. I notice no hum through any of the speakers with any surround mode. There is a slight hiss with my ear right next to a speaker with the volume tured up quite a bit (-10 and up). With the receiver at max volume with the source paused it is audible from about a foot away. I have yet to hear a receiver or even most preamps that are completely silent when turned up that much, so I consider that normal.
DD/DTS/PLII sounds great and is very enveloping. One great feature of the NAD receivers is the five different sound presets. I have one for cable (sub hot) and for DD/DTS soundtracks (properly set). With a simple macro on my MX700 remote everything sounds great.
Music on the 753 sounds excellent. The soundstage is very accurate and precise. The bass is very well controlled and overall it seems to be a very 'natural' sounding receiver. I realize most people call NAD warm, but I wouldn't consider it overly warm. It is one of the best sounding receivers I have heard, along with the Rotel RSX1055 (which has it's own issues..and the new one has hiss issues..NAD/Rotel should get together on this QC thing). In the past year I have also had in my home the following: Denon 3803, Elite 45TX, Sony STRDA2000ES, Rotel 1055.
One issue that I saw a lot of complaints about in the past was dropouts with CD tracks. It seems that NAD has fixed that, but they over-corrected it. Now instead of a slight mute I often will hear the static noise that they were trying to block. It only happens when I switch from a non DD/DTS souce to a DD/DTS source. It lasts for about 1/8 second. CDs and all other digital sources do no exhibit this new problem.
The only other issue I have encoutered is with the component video switching. Because my HDTV only has one HD input and I need two, I have to use the receiver. When the screen displays a bright white image the screen will start to roll and then quickly sync again. I had this issue with a Rotel receiver about 5 years ago. I've only seen it twice and both times were on the first day. I haven't seen it since and the receiver has been on quite a bit.
My system: NAD T753 Main speakers: ACI Sapphire Center: ACI Protege Surrounds: Axiom QS4 Sub: Onix UFW-10 CD/DVD: HTPC (home theater PC). I have 400 CDs ripped into a lossless format. They are bit-for-bit the same as the original CD, but take up half of the harddrive space as WAV files. I use the internal DACs of the NAD. I also have 60 DVDs on the computer, all easily accessible via a freeware front end program called myHTPC. It has greatly simplified my system, and it is cool JVC standalone DVD/CD player Home Theater Master MX700 remote
Kevin, I would love to see the details of your HTPC implementation... Perhaps you could post a separate thread on the subject. I'm interested in eventually building an audio server.
And glad to see that your new NAD is working much better for you.
The fans are barely noticable from 5' away. If my room were completely silent I might be able to hear them. Since my family room opens to my kitchen the motor in my refidgerator is louder (and it isn't that loud).
I'll look at my serial number later if I remember to. When I ordered it I verified that it was a new unit. I was pretty much guaranteed that it once since Yawa had to wait a week before they got them. They were sold out.
john h
Unregistered guest
Posted on
i like the sound out of the speakers, but i think the fans on my 753 are annoying on quiet music passages and tv dialogue. on start up there's a muffled rattle for a couple minutes as they get up to speed. returned it once. dealer says normal. nad says if unit is placed on sounding board(i.e. wood shelf) fans are more noticeable.
it's my 3rd NAD received in 20 years and i'm not off to a good start on this one.
For the record since I've heard some NAD fan noise complaints, I can't hear mine at all on my T773. I know a different model than the T753 but point of note to anyone concerned.
If I put my ear up to the reciever I can barely hear them, kind of like a whisper. That's what it takes for me to hear anything at all.
Kevin, what sound card are you using in your HTPC? I assume you're doing SPDIF out to your NAD? I have a homebuilt Linux box running MythTV, which includes a Music component. I stream mp3s to the frontend from a backend server, and play them via my NAD T763. It works great! I use an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 sound card in the Linux box, but have to do OSS emulation via ALSA. I haven't yet gotten true SPDIF output via ALSA.
Anyway, just curious :-) Are you using FLAC for your lossless encoding? All my CDs are encoded to 192kbps mp3, but with large-capacity hard drives being so cheap these days I'm considering doing it all over again using FLAC.
I run an XP HTPC running myHTPC as the front end. All of my audio is via the SPDIF of my external USB soundblaster MP3+ "soundcard." It is very cheap, but it passes the audio signals without resampling them (44.1). No mucking with Kernal streaming with this cheap box.
I also have a CHAINTECH CT-AV710 7.1, but I don't use it. I purchased it just in case the Soundblaster couldn't pass a digital stream without resampling.
I use Windows Media lossless for all of my music. I was going to use Monkey's Audio but since my portable audio player supports WMA it made more sense for me to rip them once lossless and then batch convert them to 128K for my car and portable player.
I have 500GB in my system right now. I have 400 CDs and about 50-60 DVDs on it. It is great having my wife or any guest be able to easily play a CD or DVD.
