I'll never buy another NAD.

Thanks for sharing. It was another member who mentioned Gryphon. All I know is a few components in the former NAD Silverline were made in Denmark and I really do not know who NAD's subcontractors were or NAD even had a factory there. Needless to say, all NAD equipments are now made in China nowadays.

 

The most reliable NAD's equipments were mainly made in Japan and I still have quite a number of them that are operating well after twenty some years. Those made in Singapore or Taiwan were generally quite reliable as well ...

I have an NAD 218 that I no longer use, but it works well.

 

I owned their premium CD player purchased in 1988. Cost me $850. Transport crapped out in 4 years. Bought the DX-1 CDP in 1993, took it back. Not a big NAD fan.

 

You had every right to expect that CDP to last a bit longer than 4 years given the price you had paid. I bought my last NAD product in 2005 or 2006.

 

I bought a California Audio Labs DX 1 and I believe it only had a 1 year warranty. The laser failed on me 1 month after the warranty expired. Needless to say, I was P.O'd-really liked that player.

COOPMV-Did you purchase your 218 new and did it see much use when it was in your system?

 

Very enthusiastic review of 2 new M-series components from NAD in the Jan 2015 Stereophile.

 

For the love of god will someone please start a new NAD thread that doesn't feature a brand-trolling tantrum title?

 

My NAD 3020B and 3120 are still going VERY well. No problems whatsoever.

 

I purchased the 218 THX new in 99. It was only moderately used cuz I have four other stereo systems in my house and it was never driven hard since I only listen to classical music. I replaced it with a Conrad-Johnson amp a few years ago ...

 

NAD is a big advertiser in Stereophile too IIRC ...

 

+1 Close this beast.

 

What's your point?

(And please don't say anything you wouldn't say to John Atkinson's face — he is, after all, an excellent and principled editor who doesn't deserve drive-by putdowns.)

 

I'm listening to my NAD C565 Bee CD player right now, which I've had for about four or five years.

It sounds wonderful.

There are better players out there if you have lots of cash, but for the money this is a pretty good spinner.

 

Really? I hadn't noticed.

 

An old impression, as I ended my subscription to Stereophile a few years ago ...

 

Sadly I'm just an aghast onlooker and thread busybody, and otherwise totally unqualified to intervene. The only NAD gear I own is Paul Barton's NAD Viso HP-50 headphones — the best $300 full-size phones I've ever heard, but there's already a thread for that..

 

FWIW - I am a poster in this thread, although I didn't start it. I posted, because my problem with an NAD product angered me more than any other problem I have had with stereo equipment over 40 years. It was an obvious design flaw that they refused to acknowledge as a flaw. I have documented it elsewhere on this forum, so I won't repeat myself.

At the moment, I own several PSB products, and I must admit, I suggested that a friend consider the D-3020.

 

I have a pair of PSB bookshelf speakers for some 15 years and they are excellent speakers for the money and they were both made in Canada. The problem with recent NAD products is quality control, which is nothing to write home about since they moved their entire production line to you know where. It is really not the SQ per se. Back in the 70's or 80's, Consumer Reports used to have one monthly issue completely dedicated to home entertainment products and reviewed their reliability. Perhaps in this throw-away economy, many folks no longer care about product qualities. Audio magazines such as TAS and Stereophile only review SQ and performance, which have nothing to do with product reliability.

 

Totally agree, the HP-50s are the best $300 headphones available.

 

I'm a bit of a NAD fanboi with a few of their products. Still wasn't very happy when power amp c272 went up in a sheet of flame. Turns out the Made In China factory decided to go cheap on the main caps to maximise profits. More unhappy with China factory than NAD. That should teach them something about how cheap down market they can go tho.

 

Didn't Tom Jones sing a song about that? "I'm Never Gonna Buy an NAD"?

 

NAD is just as culpable since it knew what it was getting into from day one. The desire to mazimize proftis overrode everything else ...

 

How do you suggest we approach this? Audio magazines get one sample which the reviewer has for a period of weeks to months. In the case of Stereophile, the reviewer is required to comment on product failures but this is a sample of one. To get reliable data about reliability requires a statistical sample of the units running over a period of time.

 

That's what I meant by "should teach them something about how cheap down market they can go".