Home
AudioAsylum Trader
General Asylum: REVIEW: NAD S500 CD Player/Recorder by Mike S

General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories.

For Sale Ads

FAQ / News / Events

 

REVIEW: NAD S500 CD Player/Recorder Review by Mike S at Audio Asylum

32.102.134.14


[ Follow Ups ] Thread:  [ Display   All   Email ] [ General Asylum ]
[ Alert Moderator ]

Looking for an upgrade to my Rega Planet, I recently had the opportunity to have the NAD S500, Naim CD3.5 and Rotel-991 for home demo over the past few weeks. For kicks, I also posted a part of my impressions at Audioreview.

The prospective players were slotted into my all Rega system:

Planar 3 TT > Planet CD > Straightwire Chorus IC > Mira IA > Naim NAC A5 cable > Jura spkrs

and my headphone system:

Straightwire Chorus > Headroom Little More Power > Senn HD600 and Grado SR225

The NAD S500 was very kind to poor recordings. My pet peeve, hard siblants, were held held in check. Still, the NAD seldom had problems extracting detail or delinating leading edges of sound. Everything was ever so slightly "laid back".
It also had an extraordinary, resonant midrange. Sometimes I felt the NAD conveyed "emotion" in a vocal more convincingly than the Rega. Other times the vocal richness was too "buttery" in my system. Soundstage extended far wider then the Planet; I didn't notice any difference in depth.
Its romantic approach was very appealing with music such as Sinatra or Portishead but it took some excitement out of Asain Dub Foundation and tension out of Laika's latest.
Compared to the Planet, bass was much "rounder", yet deeper in my system. I found this posed a slight problem with tracks featuring fast, tight percussion, say, Ozomatli's "Como Ves". I found the Planet conveyed pace and timing better.
These differences weren't day and night, but I figure at this price range, I'm allowed to be picky!


The NAD operates class A. The case got unusually warm for a CD player. Build quality was the best i've ever seen inside and out (I've never fondled any 5000$+ players). Thick, aluminium construction throughout and soft finned heat sinks on either side. No sheet metal here! Tactile feel of the buttons was tight and crisp. The innards are laid out beautifully, with sensible spacing of the transport, (huge!) toroid and control chips. Also, the blue dot matrix display is the nicest, most readable i've seen and contrasts well with the matt silver sandblasted finish. The finish is quite delicate however, with both dealer units sporting scratches from everyday handling.

Unfortunately, the S500 refused to read a couple of CDs, such as Massive Attack's "Mezzanine" and the OST to "Stigmata" Both my demo unit and the dealer's demo player couldn't read the discs. It was also sporadic in reading a number of other CDs.
Control logic was weird. Pressing RW once didn't start the current track again, but went straight to the previous track. To start a song over again, one has to press RW, then FF! It also lacked any repeat function.

Overall, this is an excellent sounding "round earth" player. But its too polite for my main system, and too refined for my Gen X ear. It's a shame the 2 units I tried had problems reading CDs. Apparently other NAD models have this same problem. Not being able to read certain CDs strikes me as silly, I'd never buy a turntable that wouldn't play certain LPs (78s notwithstanding). Still, if it weren't for this problem I would never have discovered the Naim; which is another story for another day...




This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Schiit Audio  



Topic - REVIEW: NAD S500 CD Player/Recorder Review by Mike S at Audio Asylum - Mike S 14:48:49 06/2/00 ( 6)