[Gurra1980]

Hi Nad M51 users!

I have just bought the nad M51 for a discount price, tested it a couple of hours with different amps to my speakers and thought it sounded really good, but I have limited experience with DACs and especially speakers. So I was surfing around confirming my buy on various websites unfortunately I found this test, with a guy who seems very knowledgeable:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ments-of-nad-m51-dac-and-digital-preamp.6681/

But I have seen tests and meassurements on what hifi and stereophile where the dac got great results, so what do you more knowledgeable guys think of it? Is there something wrong with the tested unit, or does it perform bad?

 

[Steve999]

Hi Nad M51 users!

I have just bought the nad M51 for a discount price, tested it a couple of hours with different amps to my speakers and thought it sounded really good, but I have limited experience with DACs and especially speakers. So I was surfing around confirming my buy on various websites unfortunately I found this test, with a guy who seems very knowledgeable:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ments-of-nad-m51-dac-and-digital-preamp.6681/

But I have seen tests and meassurements on what hifi and stereophile where the dac got great results, so what do you more knowledgeable guys think of it? Is there something wrong with the tested unit, or does it perform bad?

He wants to see excellence in engineering, particularly when the gear comes at high prices—that is kind of his holy grail. I personally shop for audio gear at normal people prices and will settle for audible transparency in a DAC (the DAC generally has no effect on sound quality under normal use conditions, IMHO) which can be a pretty low bar from an engineering perspective.

As far as the magazine and audio press reviews of this era, there is so much bias and silliness and ignorance and hucksterism and advertising going on it is really hard for me to take them at face value.

After having read his review, my layperson’s guess is that your DAC performs to audible transparency (i.e., has no audible effect or deviation from accuracy on the sound that finally reaches your ears under any reasonable real-world listening conditions) for in excess of 99.9 percent of the general population. From his review it looks like you will get measurable improvement by upgrading from firmware 1.39 to firmware 1.41 though, and you would apparently also avoid clipping at max volume with an update to firmware 1.41, so if I were in your shoes I'd go ahead and upgrade the firmware, if you haven't already. His review was pretty worthwhile just for figuring that out, in addition to any other insights he provides. [Edit: looking at NADs web page for this product I see they are up to firmware 1.50 now.]

You say you have little experience with speakers also. If you want to get schooled up on something that really makes a difference, get schooled up on speakers. ; ) $1k or $2k will get you an absolutely killer set of speakers if you shop carefully, but then you’ll have to try to learn to set them up right, which is a critical task in terms of sound quality and is not an exact science by any means. You could actually spend a good deal less than that and still do very well.

 

[bigshot]

There are two ways to read reviews with measurements... you can look at the measurements themselves and put them in perspective yourself based on how those attributes sound... or you can slide over the measurements and just read the opinions and conclusions of the person writing the article. Usually choosing the latter is a mistake.

Equipment should be judged for its suitability for the intended purpose. Your purpose is probably to listen to recorded music in your home. You aren't running a recording studio, so you don't need equipment that meets professional specs. Listening to Mahler in your living room, the pro equipment wouldn't sound any different than on the consumer equipment anyway.

Your NAD is plenty good enough to sound audibly perfect to you. There's no reason to look for anything better. Instead, focus on things that will make a significant improvement in the sound quality of your system. Those things are probably better speakers, multichannel sound, room acoustics, and equalization. If you have more money to spend, those are the areas that will give you a lot of bang for the buck. No need to chase specs that you can't hear anyway.

 

[gregorio]

But I have seen tests and meassurements on what hifi and stereophile where the dac got great results, so what do you more knowledgeable guys think of it? Is there something wrong with the tested unit, or does it perform bad?

It seems to "perform bad", under the condition of below digital max. However, "bad" is a relative term, "bad" in what sense? Operating the unit under normal conditions it's going to be transparent and that's as good as it gets as far as our hearing is concerned. However, it's an expensive bit of consumer kit and for that sort money it really should exceed the performance of units that do the same job but are much cheaper (even though it's not audible).

G

 

[bigshot]

Rather than say it should be better for that price, I would say that there are better cheaper options. I don’t think specs improvements you can’t hear are worth any price at all.

 

[Gurra1980]

Well I bought the Nad M51 because I could get it for 1000$ instead of 1600$ it had only good reviews what I could find (before I found that meassurement) and it also serves as a preamp and had hdmi in and out so I can use it with very good results to my TV and Chromecast, and my speakers demands a crazy amount of power to really sing so I could focus on buying a good power amp. So I really am happy now and don't mind if my dac meassures bad where it is inaudible, I'm gonna listen to music on it, not meassure it

Btw regarding the speakers I have auditioned a LOT of speakers the last couple of months and found that my upgraded Qln signature sounded the best of all I heard up to 3000$ (did not listen to more expensive) so the 1500$ total that I paid for them used and for the upgrade it seems like a good deal.

http://qln.se/reference-information/signature-upgrade/

 

[bigshot]

The important thing to remember about speakers is that the way they sound in the store is NOT the way they will sound in your living room. Speakers are only half of the equation. The room is the other half. You should allot as much attention to making the room work as you do choosing your speakers. And once you've done everything you can picking good speakers and making the room acoustically sympathetic, then you should work on crafting a response curve that makes up for any deficiencies. I've found EQing is more of a battle than picking speakers and arranging the room. When you EQ you are making compromises and balancing them. It isn't as cut and dried.

But the advantage to room treatment and EQ is that it can make the most significant impact on sound quality of all. It's amazing that people spend so much money and time on cables and electronic boxes when the real problem is acoustic, not electronic.

 

[Sonic Defender]

I owned the M51 and combined it with my NAD M3. I only sold it as I was moving to a situation where I needed a smaller footprint DAC and saving some money as well by going with the budget iFi iOne which was fine and only recently did I replace it with the SMSL SU-8. I read that review and I don't think that despite the finding was there much talk that the findings were audible. That site constantly trots out the SINAD as the key metric and in that the M51 scored very well.

I rather doubt the "distortion" was audible in any meaningful way if at all. Certainly I never detected any audible distortion and I used it with both speakers and headphones. It is a great DAC from my perspective. I think this is a case of over-emphasizing what the measurements mean in a practical (audible) sense.