NAD Targeting ‘Digital Natives’ With New Digital Music Amps

NAD is trying to bridge the old and the new in a new line of downsized performance-audio music products inspired by the digital music era. The company launched three products in the new Digital Classic Series at a press event in New York Wednesday celebrating the two-channel company’s 41st anniversary with sleek new gear that addresses the needs of the streaming and MP3 world and the “younger demographic that we're mostly missing,” said Greg Stidsen, director-technology and product planning for NAD parent Lenbrook.

"Everything has changed in our industry,” Stidsen said, citing the way consumers acquire and listen to music and the way music is distributed. Stidsen’s wakeup call came when he tried to give his son “closets full” of analog stereo components that he had been collecting over the past 40 years. It was “fantastic stuff,” all in fine working order, but “I couldn’t give it away,” he said. His son, part of the younger generation NAD now wants to reach, wanted a music playback solution that was small, could fit on a tabletop and didn’t have a disc drawer since none of the music he owns is on CD.

Stidsen said the new products -- a DAC/amplifier ($499), a DAC/receiver ($499) and a network receiver ($1,200) that resemble stylized glossy routers and modems more than traditional audio gear -- are a “big departure” for a company known for making black boxes that adhere closely to the standard 17-¼-inch wide audio component footprint. Stidsen picked up the new “seven to eight-pound” pound D 3020 DAC/receiver with one hand, comparing it in size and weight to the 3020 analog amplifier it pays homage to, a 69-pound behemoth that was the first amplifier to sell more than a million units.

While the look is entirely new for NAD, the company is sticking to its audio roots with a charter to deliver high-performance audio, competitive in performance with very expensive gear, but at a lower price point, Stidsen said. The company has an ambitious goal of trying to resonate with two very different consumers. Stidsen said NAD’s traditional audiophile customer “really knows good sound but a lot of these guys are living in the Paleolithic Age.” That customer doesn’t know how to access and stream music, is afraid of computer audio and just wants to listen to CDs, Stidsen said. NAD is hoping to ease that customer into computer audio while also appealing to the “digital native” who has never bought or owned a CD. “All their music is on their smartphone or their computer and they're streaming from Pandora and Spotify,” Stidsen said. “To them, the hi-fi industry is Apple,” he said. “They love good music,” he said, “but they don’t necessarily know what good sound is."

D 3020 has two coaxial, one digital and one analog input, delivers 30 watts per channel and includes aptX Bluetooth for streaming from smartphones or tablets. To boost the sound quality of digital music, the receiver’s USB input uses asynchronous mode to insure the lowest possible jitter, or timing errors, from unstable computer audio outputs and supports 24/96 HD studio master music files, Stidsen said. A separate amplifier is used to deliver high-quality audio to headphones, he said. The 50-watt-per-channel D 7050 network receiver includes two optical and two digital inputs, no analog inputs and adds Ethernet, Wi-Fi, AirPlay and DLNA along with Internet radio.

The Digital Classic products were designed to be highly energy efficient to meet or exceed European energy usage requirements, Stidsen said. They use less than a half-watt in standby mode and automatically go into standby mode when music isn’t playing, he said. The amplifiers are efficient class D designs, he said.

All three Digital Classic products will ship in July to NAD’s brick-and-mortar dealers and its four online e-tailers: Crutchfield, Audio Advisor, Spearit Sound and ListenUp. The online partners, in addition to those with storefronts, were chosen because they're “qualified to sell the product,” Stidsen said. NAD doesn’t want the line “misrepresented” and wants a “good customer experience,” he said, so consumers “can get answers to questions with people on the other end who really know what they're talking about."

NAD also previewed new headphones in the company’s fledgling Viso sub-brand, which has broader distribution, Stidsen said. The first VISO product was a docking tabletop music system that began shipping last year, and headphones will join the lineup this summer, Stidsen said. Viso products are standalone products, not components like those in the Digital Classic line, he said.