Hi Folks,
I have been living with the NAD C390DD feeding a pair of Aerial Acoustics 10Ts (via Audioquest Volcano BiWired) for over a month and I am really Happy with the sound overall and sound staging.
Can anyone clarify why 2X Upsampling prior to the NAD has such a profound effect? Is it that the Anti Aliasing filter running at a higher rate? Wish the NAD had its own real high quality Upsampler built in? Ah, but which one and can it best be done externally using a Mac Mini as I am using with Pure Music...
Ok, I get the feedback correction sampling theory to a point but still am confused a bit about how it is handling the FET delay and slew rate errors to/from the bridge. Is this truly Integration all fully corrected at this high processing rate?
I would love for someone to tell me where the sonic errors are in what I am hearing! With the 2X Upsampling before the NAD, all I hear is clean and palatable... Of course others may have better ears, but I have over 35+ years of comparing against the best of systems. Yes, the 10Ts are old technology but I wouldn't trade Up (or Down) to anything I have heard... +/- on all.
BTW - Soundstaging is almost as remarkable as the sonic detail that makes me have to listen multiple times to prove to myself... Its scary at times!
I welcome ALL feedback, suggestions and comments! Sound is #1 priority!
-SiCHIPS
I have been using the NAD C390 for a couple years now. Long story, but the bottom line is I've had 3 of these in my system and they all sounded exactly the same. My McIntosh, Luxman triodes, ARC and Wright 3.5 Mono SET are all just show pieces now. I've compared them all to the C390 over and over with all kinds of program material and the result always is the same. In comparison to the C390 they all sound dull, opaque, and most surprisingly, "grainy".
I use a laptop PC for the digital source with J River Media Center software. The PC upsamples the FLAC or WAV file to 192KHz/24bit if it isn't already in that format. The digital signal is sent to the C390 via HDMI (please don't argue with me on this one). The C390 has the newer "audio rate control" specification invoked. This means the C390's clock (with HDMI) takes control of the PC's clock. Jitter basically is non-existent, and so is error correction as the digital data is not being read from a spinning magnetic or optical disc. It's simply being played from RAM.
SiChips, what you really need to pair with this amp are one of the Danley Sound Labs Synergy waveguide horns. I use SH50 with a quad of Epik Empire subs. The SH50 act like a single-point source, but are essentially a broadband linear phase waveguide. All the drivers in the horn acoustically sum as if they were one single point source. Their excellent broadband directivity helps keep initial sound reflections off the room surfaces. However, the directivity is so well controlled you can actually hard pack them right against the wall and not have any (essentially) reflections. As an added benefit this also takes advantage of the "mirror" effect, so it's like having two SH50 side by side (which is one of the intended applications of this type of speaker). You need a long room to take advantage of this and it does tend to reinforce the bass quite a bit. Mine are about 7' from the front wall, 2' from the side wall & toed-in about 30 degrees.
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