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Don't know where to put this, here goes. - Page 3

post #31 of 37
5/3/06 at 9:32am
i'm not sure i'm following the train of thought here. ElectricBlack, are you saying NAD as a brand might be too "esoteric" to be easily located?
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post #32 of 37
5/3/06 at 12:32pm
I bought the NAD C320Bee over the phone for $320 from DMC electronics. Where do you live that its so hard to get stuff shipped to? I sold the amp because it didnt pair well with my speakers but it did sound good.

Here's the link for the tuner and dvd player:
http://www.jr.com/OMBasketDetail.pro...e&param=Update

good luck!
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post #33 of 37
5/3/06 at 7:46pm
Thread Starter 
Some questions. How will the NAD C320Bee compare to the Panasonic SA-XR55? I don't want surround sound. I only want two, stereo speakers that can be wall mounted. The Magnepan MMGW looks like it is more than 2 speakers, and it looks like they are pretty big. How would they compare to the x-series bookshelf speakers?

BTW, that link to the tuner and DVD player dosn't work, and I would like a stand alone CD player. Because correct me if I'm wrong, but generally cd/dvd combo drives are not as good quality as a stand alone drive?
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post #34 of 37
5/3/06 at 8:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by VicAjax
i'm not sure i'm following the train of thought here. ElectricBlack, are you saying NAD as a brand might be too "esoteric" to be easily located?
I'm saying that the NAD C320BEE--the product, not the brand--appears to have a much more limited distribution/availability compared to a number of other products. It seems relatively unpopular, and there MAY be a good reason for that.

On a general level, I'm saying that I've not had much success purchasing stuff that's too..."unique", as it were. (Unpopular?) The products may turn out to be good, really, but they more often to turn out "half-baked" in some way. That's my experience.

I'm not necessarily discouraging the purchase of this amp. (At the right price I might buy it myself, depending. Which is ONE reason I was looking at it so closely.)

It's not this big of a deal, really. Just a small point I was trying to make in one little message, way back there. This has gotten out of proportion.
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post #35 of 37
5/4/06 at 12:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by 003
Some questions. How will the NAD C320Bee compare to the Panasonic SA-XR55? I don't want surround sound.
the panny is a 7 channel receiver, but it has excellent stereo sound (for the money). it has a very clean sound with amazingly low noise. in a stereo set up, it daisy chains the unused channels to "dual amp," and it allows you to use the other surround channels for bi-wiring and bi-amping.

it also keeps the signal fully digital, so if you feed it a digital PCM signal, rather than converting to analog, it feeds a PWM signal to the speaker.

personally, i think it's one of the best-sounding receivers out there. i've never heard it head-to-head against the NAD, but there are some folks over at avsforum who ditched their NAD and Rotel seperates after getting the panny. having said that, the 320BEE is a great value as well... probably better than the panny for driving less efficient or 4ohm speakers.

Quote:
I only want two, stereo speakers that can be wall mounted. The Magnepan MMGW looks like it is more than 2 speakers, and it looks like they are pretty big. How would they compare to the x-series bookshelf speakers?
you can buy them as a pair ($300)... they're just marketed for home theater (as most things are these days). i think they're unbelievable bang for buck. they're designed to be wall-mounted, unlike every bookshelf out there. you'll get a much bigger, more spacious sound than you will with bookshelves (especially a bookshelf with a 4" to 5.25" woofer).

i've never heard those little Onix bookshelves, but i bet they're quite good for what they are. because of their size, i doubt they'll get any deeper than the Maggies (which only go down to 100Hz).
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post #36 of 37
5/5/06 at 6:03am
The av123 bookshelves do go fairly deep with its 6.5" woofer in ported alignment. The specs given were measured by the designer in his anechoic chamber.

This article on amp sound is against the rules of this forum, so don't read it unless you won't be offended. And don't discuss it here.

This here describes a single blind test, so I'll post it verbatim.

Quote:
Well, I and a five (4M, 1F) friends of various audio/music backgrounds (one has a system anchored by B&W N805s, one has a DM from Yale, one was a player in a major symphony orchestra, and so on) did a single-blind listening test between the XR55 and my previous setup (Marantz AV600 pre-proc, Adcom GFA-535II, and Adcom GFA-2535) when the XR55 was basically new. (I had watched "The Daily Show" twice though it and that's about it.)

Obviously, the test was not multichannel, because the Marantz does not do Dolby Digital or DPL2. Levels were matched at 1kHz with a scope and the matching was confirmed at 100Hz and 16kHz. Speakers were 12" Tannoy duals, which are both extremely resolving and moderately efficient (~94dB/w/m). Source material used was orchestral (Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting Shostakovich), jazz (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones), female vocalist (Natalie Merchant live). All were fed from a Powerbook to an Apple Airport Express and encoded in Apple Lossless. Though it doesn't matter, all of the panelists had seen BFF and Natalie Merchant live before; I was the only one who had heard Ashkenazy conduct live, though not this particular piece.) Cables were switched manually, or pretended to be switched using a calculated time delay, which is the flaw in the test. The listening and equipment were in different rooms (~25' of speaker wire) so that the listeners could not see what was going on. Each musical excerpt was played 7 times over 1/2 hour. After the data were crunched in SAS, it was clear that there was no statistically significant sonic difference between the Marantz/Adcom separates and the Panny.

As a control, the next day the same panelists ran a second single-blind test, this time using two pairs of identical speakers (KEF Q-Compacts) rather than swapping leads on one set. As the geometry of the Q-Compact precludes vertical stacking, one pair was set next to the other horizontally on the same stand, with a horizontal center-to-center spacing of about 7", to either side of what was consider the ideal placement azis. At random intervals, the leads were swapped, so that one set of speakers was connected to the other electronics. (Or simply connected to the same ones after a delay to simulate swapping.) Two statistical analyses were run, using SAS. Controlling for change of speaker pair (which was statistically significant, as one would expect) the difference in the components was not significant.

The conclusions are obvious: no difference. However, the Panny is much smaller and uses far less energy for the same result, so on balance I think it's a win for the little guy. If size or energy efficiency aren't concerns, then the Panny would've lost because I already had the other gear and the Panny was (small) additional expenditure.

Previously, this system or components within it had been found sonically identical to several other chains, generally featuring more expensive gear (the Adcoms vs. Classe amps, the Marantz pre vs. a Meridian 501, that sort of thing) but there's no valid reason to think that what what works "up" won't work "down", too. Any receiver of competent design should sound the same as the Panny, or for that matter a multi-kilobuck Meridian/Classe separates system, on appropriate speakers.
His conclusion is that the differences are very small and that you need to be trained to hear them. When your budget is on the line, take that into consideration.

To be clear, I know there can be drastic differences in the sound between amps, but in my experience, these things are usually very measurable. For example, one of my digital amps could not handle a large rise in impedance in the bass region of one of my pairs of speakers. Measurable in spl. My current amp plays it flat. Tubes provide audible distortion. Etc.etc.
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post #37 of 37
5/5/06 at 6:22am
The NAD C320BEE just plain doesn't sound good. I would avoid it. NAD stuff gets recommended by a lot of people who haven't heard it, or who've only heard their older stuff, which was better. Notice that of the two other people in this thread who've actually owned the C320BEE, one found it wasn't a good match with his speakers (I'm being cynical here, but perhaps because it isn't a good match with any speakers) and the other prefers the Panasonic. Add me to the list of people who'ved owned that amp and didn't like it.

That said, ooheadsoo is right, most amps sound similar, except for ones that are flawed like the C320BEE, the Sonic Impact T-Amp, and a handful of amps from the new crop of digital amps that can't handle an uneven load. In your price range, the money is usually better spent on speakers. Knowing the designer and the value behind the Onix x-series speakers, I would give them serious consideration, but I have not heard them.
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