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Hi guys, here is what I posted on another forum regarding my new amp purchase:Well I have had enough time with these Nord One-Up NC500 DM's to feel confident enough to post some impressions. I would like to emphasize this is not a review, rather just some humble comparisons to what has been in my system for the previous many years, a pair of Mcintosh 7300's. I have not had enough gear personally, or even less convincing, heard enough other gear in various other places lately enough to provide a proper "review".
Additionally, the 7300's are not the Mc302's, or the 501's, or any other more modern Mcintosh solid state amps, so this is not necessarily a Mcintosh vs. Nord amplifier comparison. (At one point I almost got a set of 501's, but I settled on preferring 4 channels instead, as I horizontally bi-amp my Magneplanar 3.6's and 4 501's were out of the budget. I did believe then that 4 channels of 7300 into my 3.6's using an electronic crossover and bypassing the inferior stock crossovers would be sonically superior to 2 channels of 501 using the stock crossovers. Hypothesis only of course, as I have not had the opportunity to prove this.)
These units took a long time to settle themselves. I thought at one point 200 hours would be enough, but they still changed their sonics substantially well beyond this point. I have heard others make these claims, and always second guessed them, it turns out they weren't exaggerating. If someone else should express their listening thoughts regarding these units (or any class D unit I suppose) without explaining they gave them at least 500 hours of run in time, I would question their results. I have lost count with how many hours I have on them now, as I stopped running them through the night, but it exceeds 400 hours. I did notice some additional change after running them hard early on, and then thermally cycling them (off/on :)) beyond 250 hours. If someone turned them on for the first time and never shut them off, would they sound different? Not sure. If they still improve in sound from this point even better.
At one point I was second guessing what I heard; were the amps changing? Or was it just different times at the day whereby the electricity feeding the system was differing in quality? I have had those experiences before when amp break-in was not a variable, so it is a valid question to which I don't have an answer.
The first overarching premise is that I never thought I could have so much non-fatiguing detail.
You all know what it is like, you get a new piece of gear and you race to hear you favourite songs or pieces first. The reviewer claims he hears his common music like he never has before! Well it is true; I did just that. While I did that I found myself not changing artists after the chosen song but usually just listened to the album in its entirety. That is a good sign :)As my brain typically works best in a point form manner I will break down and describe some differences in various aspects audiophiles deem critical:
Bass: the bass is slightly deeper than the mc's with much more articulation and slam. This is a strong point with these amps. Macintosh amps are no slouch in the bass department, the Nord One-Ups are better. I have moved speaker and seat position to accommodate the preferred quality of bass. With just a few inches of movement with the dipole speakers I can go from audiophile "hi-fi" tight and lean, to more full and bloomy presentation. I think I have them right in the middle for my taste. There are always a small frequency range which resonate a little louder then others only on certain tracks, but this was harder to tame with the Mc's. Both acoustic bass or electric bass; overall everything under 400 Hz with the Nord's is awesome.
Dynamics, Separation and Detail: The Nord's have more dynamics, not just with bass but across my age-declining spectrum. Transients hit with more attack, music has more life. I know these songs, I know the sound is coming, but it still surprised me and raised my heartbeat. Very cool.
In combination with my exaSound DAC/pre, the ability of these amps to distinguish and place different instruments precisely across the soundstage is better. The way it holds onto one note while another note hits, whether the same instrument or a different one in a different space; call it resolution, transparency or space, or maybe just detail? is very satisfying. My system is now much better in this department. All instruments have more detail, which adds to their realism. You can hear more of the pitch on Isaac Perlman's violin strings, more string slap on the bass fretboard with Patricia Barber's music, and a more realistic bite to Miles Davis or Coltrane's sax. Horns are supposed to pierce the air. The Mcintosh was definitely too rounded off and polite. I find the former much more musical. Odd thing is I was one who argued the opposite in years past. It is another huge strength of the Nords. My system already took a turn for the better when upgrading my Wyred DAC1 with the exaSound in terms of detail retrieval. The same level of jump has occurred again.
Is this not one of the defining characteristics of quality hi-fi (read:expensive) amplifiers? The ability of the kit to unravel minute layers hidden in the music, ones which other lesser gear one struggles to hear? The way it exposes low-level details? Yes, I have heard this before with ultra-detailed gear years ago, and I have also been given a headache before. Sometimes impressive sounding equipment can fatigue after a few short songs. I have been there. I didn't choose my Linn player 12 years ago because it was the most detailed, rather it was the most natural sounding to my ears. These amps do not fatique. Not at all. Actually sometimes the opposite happens: focussing intently to hear that soft passage, those weak unresolved background voices, that can be fatiguing.
Did I mention soundstage? Yup; big smiles. Much better with the Nord's fastened to the Maggies. Wider, deeper, and the aforementioned ability of these amps to not only place the players in a defined space, but also have their sounds last longer in that space as more recent sounds are emitted. That helps support and reinforce that soundstage. More precision of the transient location and that "decay" work in tandem to produce more realism. I recently downloaded a remade Coltrane composition Naima (Chesky Records: Audiophile Piano Collection) The piano is 20 feet in front of me fanning from dead centre to about 20 degrees left of centre, low register to the right and high keys to the left. (That is the way it should be done; I hate it when I am "looking" at the back of the piano player). The bass player is about 18 feet in front of me dead centre, the drummer is 20 degrees to the right of centre, about the same depth as the bass player, and the sax player is 10 degrees right of the drummer, about in line with my right speaker from the seating position but a few feet behind it; about 8 feet back from me. My speakers plane is 6 feet in front of me, and the front wall is 11 feet ahead. How is that for soundstage? ( One crash cymbal the drummer rides for the middle third of the piece is dead centre; on top of the bass; odd....misplaced mike?) The track sound really good by the way.
Impressive dynamics, details galore, and incredible soundstage, anybody predominantly listen to orchestra? These might be your amps. I can confirm all three of my Prof. Johnson's Reference Recording's sound exceptional. They never sounded bad before of course, but now they give goosebumps.
Vocals and midrange: this is the one area where I would say the Mc was better. With all that detail retrieval comes some strange artifacts. It took me a long time to attempt to label the sounds, but it appears different with different vocals. It applies to the treble of poor recorded other tracks as well with some cymbals, and some guitar strums. Neutrality and truth can be painful. These amps are on the hot side regarding treble in general. And they are a little thin in the middle. I understand some may give these 30 seconds of listening and decide it is not for them. If you listening to female vocals 80% of the time I suggest look elsewhere. At least that is what I hear.
For example with Diana Krall: The Girl in the Other Room her voice sounds good, but her raspyness in the title track seems a little smoky and overemphasized; as if she smoked a pack of cigarettes before singing. With Holly Cole Tempation's Take me Home her close miked voice seems to have too much breathe added. Sibilance is good; no problems with s'ess. No problems with any other letters either. Yet Norah Jones Not too Late sounded wonderful. Sarah Mclaughlin and Jennifer Warner sounded very good also. Odd. With all that extra resolution perhaps shows weaknesses upstream and requires upgrades? Or is that what exactly what was recorded and these amps expose the added hi-fi-ish recording embelishment? Wish I had other amps to compare.Another example is Rush Permanent Waves; with my remastered CD I was very disappointed with the opening track The Spirit of Radio. Geddy's voice was too bright and harsh, Neil Peart's cymbals were also poorly resolved, and the song suffered from compression. The other tracks seem to be recorded very differently and had more dynamics, and a much better recorded voice. Was just the popular radio friendly hit Spirit of Radio recorded for radio and as such they hopped up the treble and compressed it, yet left the other tracks for the more serious listeners? Strange. I never really noticed this before but like I keep stating these Nord's shine a new light on your favourite tunes. For better or worse.
Fleetwood Mac: The Very Best of. Bill Inglot remastered CD which is real treat. The original analog tape must have been in fantastic shape, and it must have been well recorded as it sounds awesome. Vocals here are decent; not modern recorded spectacular like Patricia Barber (oh, all of her albums sound awesome with the Nord's as well, but don't they always?) but not offensive either. But so much hidden music buried deep in these tracks. I challenge anybody with any system you own to listen to "Hold Me" on mine and seriously tell me after that you didn't hear anything new. The one exception on this CD: At one point Second Hand News was too much. For whatever reason that one track with small drums in the left channel, a muted guitar strum from the right along with strumming of another layered guitar from both channels, with cymbals all at the same relative frequency range was WAY too bright. This still happened with more than 250 hours on the amps, but now with 400 it is tolerable. All those sounds have settled down marginally which at least allows me to listen to it at moderate volumes. It is still hot, but at least it is tolerable. No issue with any other track on the double disc CD.
My Magneplanar owners manual warned me about this:
There are two principal reasons for needing to attenuate the Magneplanar Ribbon Tweeter:
A. Recordings, typically in the "pop" or "rock" vein, often exhibit a pronounced rise in the treble region.
B. The Magneplanar Ribbon Tweeter is very efficient in its total "energy dispersion." If the surrounding walls are exceptionally reflective, the overall perceived acoustical balance will be tipped towards a "hot" high end.
Attenuation is performed through insertion of a simple non-inductive resistor in series with the tweeter.Well I have bypassed the fuses on the back of the speakers years ago at the same time I replaced the crossovers and stock steel binding posts for Cardas ones, so no option there. But I have some other ideas to warm up the midrange: insert a pre-amp; passive or active, change/upgrade cabling, upgrade sources, linear power supply for the DAC, more acoustic treatments. This hobby is never ending :)
Closing thoughts: I am not going to say they are worth XXX more than I paid for them, or they beat any amps under $$$$$, I honestly have no idea. But I kinda feel like I stole them. I paid just over $5000 for the pair. Each $2500 amp has close to $2000 of XLR's, speaker and power cables connected to them and I have an inclination to upgrade the cables and do the amps more justice. What happened to the 10% rule?
Bottom line is I am enjoying the hell out of these amps! I have listened to more music in the last month than I have in the past year. Now that this critique summary is out of the way I can stop focussing on the sounds and listen to the music!
Edits: 09/16/17
Give the amps more time to break in, what you are describing in the midrange is typical of later stage break in of active electronics. The mids are the last to open up and come on tune and can sound recessed. Also, in a live room, what you said of the tweeter's dominance is true. So do consider soldering in a resistor. get a few values of wire wounds 0.3 to 1 ohm to try out.
What wires are you using?
Re Pre - it is common practice to use a tube preamp with high power SS amps to allow rolling tubes to fill out the midrange and "sweeten" the top end.
The biggest compliment you have given the amp is that it is showing off differences between recordings that were not obvious to you before.
Once a non fan of Jazz curious about my setup came to visit and said that all recordings of each Jazz group were pretty much the same to him since he didn't care for the music itself that much. So I went and played him some Jazz and he was astounded as the recordings sounded wildly different from one session to another and even live recordings (Judy Carnegie Hall, MJQ last concert) were entirely different from one group of tracks to another. He said that he is getting a clue as to what Jazz is all about. Observing him listening I though he was wrapped in the music and oblivious to what I was doing - so I carefully warned him each time before I changed sources or recordings so that he would not be jolted out of his bliss. He seemed disappointed each time I suggested a switch to something else, like he just started getting into it.
Thanks for a very detailed review with useful descriptions.
It seems amazing to me that electronics need 500+ hours to stop changing their sound. There are many who still believe break in doesn't exist at all. If they get even better from here I will report it. If they do get better in the midrange I will be ecstatic. Colin (Nord founder) could already charge more for these hypex based amps than he does; he already raised the prices once.Perhaps It would be useful to some readers here who are not as familiar with these amps to emphasize that the difference between these hypex based amps and others is Colin's custom class A input buffer, whereby one can use different op amps simply by pulling one off and inserting another one on the top of the board. it takes less than 2 minutes! I have the Sonic Imagery op amps in the unit and next will try the Sparkos op amps; which are reported to be a little warmer and rounder; maybe I will prefer them and sacrifice a little sparkle and air. It is an awesome option though; kind of like us with the electronic crossover's with the ability to adjust frequencies near the crossover points to fatten some frequencies up or lean them out. Or just the option to use one amp on the bass and another amp on the mids/ribbons. Let me tell you this is one killer amp for the bass panels! They are reported to be 'up to' 700 watts into 4 ohms, but some published test of the same NC500 circuit with same SMPS1200 power supply has reported about 450 watts continuous into 4 ohms with 0.1% distortion. Let's just say I conservatively have 1800 watts into the 3.6's :)
I am using Transparent plus speaker cables and Audio Sensibility Statement XLR's and Testament power cables. Audio Sensibility is another factory direct company like Nord where their equipment would retail for twice the asking price if it were sold by the dealer; highly recommended cables. My exaSound DAC was also purchased factory direct. No dealer; no middleman taking $1000 of my money for selling me a product I know I want. (All the Transparent cables were purchased second hand)
I recently read the review from Chris founder of Computer Audiophile about the Microrendu and he exclaimed that if he had to pick one album that was the best of all time, from any genre, it would be Miles Davis: Kind of Blue. A guy that has 7500 albums; 5 Terabytes of data on his NAS.
Edits: 09/17/17 09/17/17
The NC500 modules themselves don't require 500 hours of "break in" so I assume this subjective improvement is the result of the circuitry in the Nord input buffers. It would be interesting to know what components are responsible for this.
Assuming this "break in" is real and not unknown to Nord, then I think the buffers should be "broken in" at their facility so paying customers do not have to deal with it.
Dave.
You're a non believer?
Colin is not making much money buying the parts, assembling them and marketing/ selling them. If he ran them in 24/7 for 2 weeks it would definitely add to the price.
Audio Sensibility does offer burn in with their cables. Check it out on their website. 3 days of burn in for $10. I'll do it myself and save some money. Most reviews just state they ran them for several hundred hours then listened. I don't mind the whole process; a new piece of gear doesn't happen very often for me.
"If he ran them in 24/7 for 2 weeks it would definitely add to the price."
How so? When the buffers are complete he could install them in a dedicated, powered jig for a few weeks and when ready then install them into the larger amplifier setups. Assuming he's producing numerous amplifiers, there should always be "ready-to-go" buffers available immediately.
Charging customers for component "burn-in" (real or not) is ridiculous.
Dave.
The amp's op amp options are a good place to roll to get your balance of audio properties right. I am not up to date on the current options in op amps - discrete and integrated. Burson and Dexa lines were what was at the top op amp options. I don't know the current crop.
The wiring seems like solid choices, I would have liked to use OCC copper too, but it is too costly for me to experiment with for my DIY cabling. I find it baffling that Audio Sensibility build with expensive OCC stranded copper in what appears to be unsealed terminations, where stranded copper has a limited lifespan due to oxidation. I would have expected them to either seal the terminations or used individual solid core conductors without stranded bundles.
Since you are biamping I think you can use different wiring for bass and top end amps The bass wiring should be a bundle of solid core wires to get you down to the 9-10 gauge area. There is little point to having OCC wiring for the bass cables. That is not where their benefits are, that would be in the top end. And in biamp you don't need the top end to be as heavy, a composite of 14 gauge is fine for the speaker wire. OCC is a great choice. .
I forgot to add: I chose the Neotech OCC option for the internal wiring to the binding posts; an extra 45 pounds (money, not mass). I wish Magneplanar would have offered this with the 3.6's.
Excellent discussion and points made, Watts and Satie! I concur regarding Kind Of Blue; it is sophisticated enough to be interesting to hard-core Jazz fans, but also assessable enough for non-fans to engage them. What a rarity that it also possesses great recorded sound---a lot of my favorite music was unfortunately recorded indifferently or worse.
A good point made is in regard to how a high performance system allows one to better appreciate the music itself. When I got my first really good set-up in '72 (bi-amped Tympani-I's with ARC electronics and a Thorens/SME/Decca record player), a friend came over, and I played him some music. He was a music major in college, and had a Masters Degree in the field. He was very partial to J.S. Bach (who isn't?!), so I played him his Concerto for 4 Harpsichords and Orchestra, a piece with a lot of notes flying by at breakneck speed! The music is very dense, and it is hard to keep the parts played by each harpsichord separate from one another. My friend knew the music intimately in written form (the score), so his mind filled in what his really bad stereo didn't make audible. When he heard the piece on my system, with all the notes fully audible, he finally understood why I, unlike he, needed such a system to hear the music as well as he did in his mind.
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